VULNERABILITY REDUCTION
Disasters are rarely “natural” - they are created by mankind, whether due to ignorance, misinformation, self-delusion, negligence - or avarice. If buildings were adequately constructed and appropriately placed, earthquakes and most other natural hazards, such as cyclones and floods, eruptions and landslides, would not cause the disasters about which we are otherwise so well informed. It is a regrettable fact, however, that most people do not have access to options for where, or in what, to live; houses already exist and places for new building, of whatever kind, are often limited to those that have not previously been preferred, that is, they are the most exposed and the most vulnerable to natural hazards, being on the lowest land, on the littoral margins and coastlands, or on steep landslide-prone slopes. People’s vulnerability is, therefore and in most cases, created by other people, and/or by social and economic pressures too often brought about by other people.
“The vulnerable state of populations and settlements is as much a contributor to the cause of ‘natural’ disasters as are the physical phenomena with which they are associated. What are called ‘earthquakes’ and ‘hurricanes’ are the natural forces; what are seen afterwards are the results of the impact of those forces on human settlements (where) damage destruction and death are conditioned by the decisions and actions of society over time.” James Lewis Development in Disaster-prone Places: Studies of Vulnerability 1999 pp4-5. IT Publications (Practical Action). London.
“Earthquakes don’t kill people; collapsing buildings do. While earthquakes may not be preventable, it is possible to prevent the disasters they cause…Many…deaths (are)…the result of buildings that folded in on themselves because concrete was diluted, steel bars were excised, or otherwise substandard building practices were employed.” James Lewis Global Corruption Report 2005 p23.
Publications
Article: Conserving the past at the cost of the future?
Article: The artist as witness: Zainul Abedin and the Bengal Famine of 1943
Article: 'Climate and Disaster Reduction'
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Climate and Disaster Reduction
February 2007James Lewis
Sarah Granich (Tiempo 62 January 2007) has usefully reviewed declared statements of international organisations and institutions concerning disaster reduction, gently deploring a certain lassitude of comprehensive adaptation to climate change. The same could be said, just now, of most national governments, so it is not surprising if the international bodies representative of their participation make no advance. We all know of governments reluctant to be stirred into action not of their own making nor of their own immediate purpose or political interest - this in the contexts of recent extreme events. Why do such great divides persist between specialist findings and policy implementation?
Already eighteen years since the 1999 IPCC report, the first intergovernmental acknowledgment of climate change, much of the response to the 2006 fourth report is as if the process had just started. Without going beyond our own countries we can see divisions between those actions devoted to reducing emissions on behalf of a more amenable future, and those to do with hazards already imminent or manifest. Take only one UK national sector to see the carbon-free house of the future on the one hand and, on the other at the same time, permitted built development on flood-prone sites and failures of recent construction against moderately high winds.
When UK “disasters” research began in the early 1970s, international programmes on the ground were a poor cousin to development. But, for the past twenty years or more, the situation has been the reverse; development budgets have lost out to those allocated in one way or another to disasters. More tragically, “disasters” became disassociated from “development”, seemingly for better access to direct funding.
Whatever the reason, the regrettable split that ensued between the two camps of “disasters” and “development”, has been a cause of persistent divisions and a reason why policies for disaster reduction remain too narrowly focused to cope with climate change and all of its associated hazards. Aspects of this disassociation are discussed by the author in the IT (now Practical Action) publication “Development in Disaster-prone Places: Studies of Vulnerability” of 1999 (p127 et sec). In the twenty years since sea level rise became a concern, there has been adequate time for multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral and multi-temporal policies to have been formed to take account of one of the greatest disasters to befall the world since Noah built his ark.
The Davos 2006 recommendations are a major step forward but though their substance has been part of disasters literature since 1999 and before, it has been restricted, constrained and made piecemeal by which camp it belonged to, impeded in the formation of an “integrated participatory approach” for all disasters, all risks and most crucially - all vulnerabilities. Strategies for vulnerability reduction in developmental contexts would serve the potential victims of all the extremes of a changing climate; social vulnerability to one thing being very often social vulnerability to another. But understanding of the causes of vulnerability has not been helped by globalised and institutionalised conceptions of disasters in distant places. Vulnerability is pervasive in local, community, and domestic contexts, and our insights into its often invidious processes have to be achieved at similar levels of application.
Most disaster policies and programmes remain impeded by overly narrow focus on what happens in and after the event, but insufficiently on what has taken place before - and what is continuing to take place before subsequent events; too often brought about, it has to be said, by inappropriate, socially and environmentally insensitive, and even corrupt “development”. Attempts in recent years, to integrate a developmental dimension into disaster recovery programmes, serve to emphasise this ongoing but pathetic state of affairs.
Integrated national, community and domestic strategies for continued reduction of emissions, which will make environments less severe in the future, have to be accompanied by mutually supportive and parallel strategies to reduce already apparent vulnerabilities to the hazards of climate change and more: sea level rise and associated storms, sea-surges, coastal and riverine flooding, high temperatures - and earthquakes as well.
Hazards are not a comfortable topic. Though it is more amenable to implement measures for a more acceptable future than to take action for a fearfully hazardous present, the bullet is there to be bitten for recognition of a problem and for the ultimate achievement of comprehensively advantageous vulnerability reduction.
Also at http://www.tiempocyberclimate.org/newswatch/comment070217.htm
Vulnerability, climate change and sustainability |
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| 2009 | Places, people and perpetuity: Community capacities in ecologies of catastrophe (with Ilan Kelman) ACME An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies http://www.acme-journal.org/ (forthcoming) |
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| 2008 | Self sufficiency and sustainability: a study of Marshshfield www.datum-international.eu |
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| 2008 | The Creation of Cultures of Risk: Political and commercial decisions as causes of vulnerability for others An Anthology. September http://www.islandvulnerability.org/docs/lewis2008risk.pdf |
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| 2007 | Climate and Disaster Reduction http://www.tiempocyberclimate.org/newswatch/comment070217.htm |
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| 2001 |
Continuum
or Contiguum? Development for survival and vulnerability reduction Paper presented: Session VI: Disaster and Development - a vital connection 5th ESA Conference Helsinki September Abstract @ http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/esa/helsinki.htm |
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| 2001 |
Understanding normal
hazardousness Alliance Charities Aid Foundation, London June www.allavida.org/alliance/articles/2001/pr20010614_6.cfm |
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1999
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Development in
Disaster-prone Places: Studies in Vulnerability
Publisher @ www.oneworld.org/itdg/publications.html |
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| 1999
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Vulnerability reduction
for the new millennium: Small measures are the key Commonwealth Currents Commonwealth Secretariat London 4 pp18-19 Publisher @ http://www.thecommonwealth.org/ dynamic/press_office/index.asp |
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| 1995 | PROPOSAL Project Identification and Equitable Development Planning for Vulnerability Reduction in Areas Affected by Natural Disasters and/or Civil Strife: Jamaica Hurricane / Flooding / Earthquake Environment and Community Development. Submitted to: UNCHS (UNHabitat); UNDHA; UNEP & UNHCR: The International Advisory Group for a Development Agenda. In collaboration with the Disaster & Emergency Reference Centre, University of Delft March | |
| 1994 | PROPOSAL Networking and Technology Exchange for Disaster Reduction in the Context of IDNDR Europe. India. Bangladesh & Nepal. Submitted to: European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO),Brussels. October | |
| 1991 | Vulnerability reduction
in development for human settlements Proceedings of the Cairo Seminar: Training for Disaster Reduction II 2-5 September Disaster and Emergency Reference Centre (DERC) and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) DERC Delft |
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| 1989 | REPORT Access to Life-saving Services in Urban Areas Overall framework, editing and panel member United Nations Environment Programme and the World Health Organisation UNEP & WHO Geneva |
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| 1988 | PDF Commentary: Report on Reports Environment (White, Gilbert F: Ed) Washington DC July/August pp3-4 |
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| 1988 |
PDF Open Letter in
response to Confronting Natural Disasters: An International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction Natural Hazards Observer XII/4 p4 March University of Colorado |
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| 1985 |
The Environmental
Interrelationships of Vulnerability On the Line Natural Hazards Observer IX/4 March University of Colorado |
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| 1985 |
Project identification
in hazardous environments AODRO Newsletter 3/3 pp1-3 Australian Overseas Disaster Response Organisation |
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| 1984 |
PDF Environmental Interpretation
of Natural Disaster Vulnerability: The crucial need Guest Editorial The Environmentalist 4 177-180 Elsevier Sequoia Geneva |
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| 1984 | PROPOSAL Ecology in Action for Disaster Mitigation (based upon the UNESCO "Ecology in Action" Programme) An exhibit of five posters Submitted to the Man and Biosphere.Programme UNESCO Paris |
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| 1983 | REPORT The UNEP Natural Disasters Programme-An Evaluation: UNEP's Crucial Role for Natural Disaster Mitigation United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) With archive access Nairobi Datum International |
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| 1982 | REPORT Planning for Human Settlements in Disaster-prone Areas Fifth Commission on Human Settlements 1982 United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS Habitat), Nairobi (with Alcira Kreimer) Datum International |
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| 1982 | Natural disaster mitigation:
Environmental approaches in Tonga and Algeria The Environmentalist 2/3 pp233-246 Elsevier Sequoia Geneva |
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| 1981 | PROPOSAL Proposals for the Development of Mitigation Services The Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administrations, London Datum International |
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| 1980 |
PDF De integratie van
een beleid voor rampenbestrijding in de ecologische problematiek (The ecological integration of disaster relief) ASPECTEN van internationale samenwerking 6 pp237-239 Ministry of Foreign Affairs The Hague |
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| 1980 | PROPOSAL The Ecological Integration of Disaster Relief A Proposal submitted to the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, The Hague Datum International February |
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| 1979 | PDF PROPOSAL The Ecology of Natural Disaster Proposal Submitted to the United Nations Environment Programme, Environmental Assessment Service UNEP Nairobi |
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| Disaster Vulnerability: Outer Concept versus Inner Condition Mass Emergencies 4/4 Amsterdam.Elsevier (accepted in 1979 for Volume 4 No 4 before publisher's discontinuation of the journal) http://www.massemergencies.org/Lewis1979.pdf |
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| 1979 |
The Vulnerable State:
An Alternative View Chapter 5 Disaster Assistance: Appraisal, Reform and New Approaches (Lyn Stevens; Stephen Green: Eds) pp104-129 NYU Press/Macmillan London |
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| 1979 | REPORT The Ecology of Natural Disaster: An examination of the relationship between the activities of man and conseguent Alteration in the environment which may increase or decrease the incidence and severity of natural disaster UNEP Nairobi (WG.33/lnf.1) January |
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| 1978 |
Towards Self-reliance
in Disaster also Quand la Catastrophe s'Abat … Pouvoir compter sur les propres moyens Development Directions p32 June/July Canadian International Development Agency |
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| 1977 |
PDF Some Aspects of Disaster
Research Disasters 1/3 pp241-244 Pergamon |
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| 1977 |
A Primer in Precautionary
Planning for Natural Disaster Occasional Paper 13 Disaster Research Unit University of Bradford |
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| 1977 |
A Philosophy of Precautionary
Planning (with O'Keefe P; Westgate K N) International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 2 pp95-104 Elsevier |
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| 1976 | PDF Review essay on Gilbert F. White: Natural Hazards: Local, National and Global Mass Emergencies 1 pp229-233. Amsterdam.Elsevier (discontinued by the publisher in 1979) http://www.massemergencies.org/v1n3/White1_Review_v1n3.pdf |
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| 1975 | Proposals for a Working Method of Indigenous Resource Co-ordination as Part of a predisaster Plan Occasional Paper 3 (based upon Mexico) Disaster Research Unit University of Bradford |