WHY DISASTER

AND
DEVELOPMENT?
ANDREW E. COLLINS
DISASTER
STUDIES
• The causes, impacts and longer-term
consequences of disasters are often
brought to the attention of
international audiences specially the
disaster risks being out of control
through climate change.
• There have been significant
contributions to disaster studies over
the decades from disciplines such as
geography, environmental studies,
economics, sociology, public health
and planning.
DISASTER STUDIES

After all, expert knowledge has not been ‘expert’ enough to prevent the disasters.
Increasingly, the role of local knowledge, grounded in local realities, provides a
crucial component of the subject area.
This is often beyond the reach of the formalized academy and of textbooks.
DISASTERS IN THE
CONTEXT OF DEVELOPMENT

• The aim of this course is to address how we can approach

and apply a disaster and development perspective in an
integrated way for engaging some of the major crises of
our times.
• Disasters in the context of development are considered to
be any severe disruption to human survival and security
that overwhelms people’s capacity to cope.
NATURAL HAZARD AND NATURAL
DISASTER
• A natural hazard has essentially been considered to be all those aspects of the physical
environment that can cause us harm, disaster being when people are adversely affected.
• Thus, an earthquake occurring in a remote part of the East African Rift Valley, where there
are no people living in buildings or motorway flyovers likely to collapse, would not be a
disaster, but conversely the same strength of tectonic event in a built-up area would be.
• This example also suggests that where there is little or no development, events that may
cause disaster in some locations are less relevant as human survival and coping is not put
at risk.
• However, immediate loss of life alone is not the sole criterion for defining disaster in much
of this field.
UNDERSTANDING DISASTERS

A well-used approach to the understanding of disasters is to look at

hazard and vulnerability together, as detailed by Blaikie et al. (1994)
and further revised for Wisner et al. (2004).
VULNERABILITY

Oliver-Smith (1996) points towards three varieties of socially and

technologically produced conditions of vulnerability:
1. Behavioral and organizational – concerning decision making and systems;
2. Social change – concerning societal resilience and values;
3. Political economic and environmental – concerning exposure to hazards for
historical-structural reasons.
MDGS AND DISASTER
MULTILEVELED APPROACHES

Hazards, vulnerability and capability can be assessed at the global, regional, local
community, household or individual level, something we refer to as a multileveled
approach.
Multileveled approaches are used in many types of geographical and economic studies.
It is the idea that processes of change in the environment, society or the economy
happen at different levels which interact with each other. Examples in environmental
management are provided by Wilson and Bryant (1997) and, by way of example in a
regional study, by Abrahamsson and Nilsson (1995).
DEVELOPMENT INDUCED DISASTER