week 1 Flashcards
broad definition disaster
- extreme phenomenon of great intensity and limited duration
- occurring at a certain location
- involves a complex interplay between physical and human systems
- causing loss of lives and threats to public health as well as physical damage and disruption of livelihood systems and society
- outstrips local capacities and resources –> requires outside assistance to cope with
disaster risk reduction
reduce the challenge or increase the coping
disaster as speech art
declaring something as a disaster can be seen as a political act, there might be a political agenda involved. leader can be seen as savior. a disaster is what has been declared a disaster by authority
risk and hazard
risk: chance of something happening x the impact (hazard times probability)
hazard: anything that can cause harm
control/engineering paradigm
- a modernist dream of reducing risk to 0
- focus on structures (dykes), warning systems
- assumes that hazards are external and we can control them. views the world as if nature is constant, disasters are caused by physical activities and the solution for disasters is structural mitigation
- R = H
- idea that we can have total control of the risk, wants to make it as fail-safe as possible
- national unitary approach: based on protecting people on the same way.
behavioral paradigm
- incentives, zoning
- assumes that people expose themselves unduly to hazards, they can make other choices
- nature is random and human decisions cause mistakes, this can be solved with non-structural mitigation
- focusses on reducing the exposure of people to disasters, not on the source of the disaster, but on the impact. focusses on the behaviors that exposes people to disaster. conditions people to move out of harm’s way
- disaster infrastructure does not prevent all damages and causalities because of invisible behaviour: social pressures, opportunity, ignorance, perverse incentives –> therefore you should educate people and give them proper incentives to stay away from danger
- R = H x I (if you cannot reduce the probability, you’ll have to focus on the impact)
- you can influence people and correct their perceptions so the impact is reduced
vulnerability approach
- some people have more choices than others - it’s the political economy, nature is short term, the effect of disasters are dependent on socio-economies. in response, you can develop
- we are not all equal and do not all have equal opportunities. there are structural differences with how people are placed with respect to disaster. a structural way of understanding risk by understanding the social and political economy and political ecology
- disasters are not natural. social vulnerability can be reduced by CBDRR
R = H x (I/V) –> risk is conditioned by different vulnerability and coping capacities. vulnerability makes the impact of disaster worse for some
vulnerability
the extent to which an individual, community, sub-group, structure, service, or geographic area is likely to be disrupted/damaged by the impact of a particular disaster. why do some people always find them in precarious places? why is risk so unevenly distributed –> the political economy (capitalism) pushed them there
solution to reduce vulnerability
reinforce local capacities (CBDRR), go around institutions. in the 3rd paradigm, the community is the center
holistic/complexity paradigm
- emergence, adaptive systems approach
- convergence of DDR and CCA: resilience and sustainability to solve systemic risks.
- nature is resilient, disasters are a result of unsustainable use, we need to be more resilient
- paradigm takes systemic interconnections and feedbacks into account. disasters are seen as incidents who reveal structural vulnerabilities
- mix of technical and social interventions (three paradigms combined)
- risk management
R = H * V (I + V + C) –> we cannot rlly make a formula anymore, there are fundamentally different views to handle these risks since they are systematic - disasters are hard to steer but you can adapt to them
risk management
potential interventions to prevent threat or to change its entrypoint - by influencing behavior and needs, offer alternate behaviour, isolate danger, to avoid exposure or reduce the vulnerability to the negative impact
disaster risk management/reduction, critiques, phases
- DRM also considers pre-disaster risk reduction
- critics: conceptualizes disasters in a too simple way, a disaster always results in another disaster, undervalues the impact of pre-disaster risk-reduction activities
- mitigation –> preparedness –> response –> recovery
- it is possible to identify and intervene in different stages of pre- and post-disaster phases of DRR
drought risk management in dry lands
- softens the consequences of drought
- thinks about how to mitigate the consequences and prepare + how can we respond and reconstruct society after a drought. mitigation actions: stock water, animal feed, food, make animals more productive on the long term
how to work with drought cycle management
- get knowledge about the system of the community
- determine key vulnerabilities and capacities
- determine relevant steps of intervention in all steps of the DRR cycle
- be flexible: context dependent
what to do in each phase
mitigation: building rainwater tanks, restrict water usage
preparedness: coordination/preparedness meetings, alert to upcoming emergency, store feed and food, provide people with transport
response: de-stock livestock so you can do something with it, meat distribution to needy families, mobile health clinics, veterinary services, food for livestock
recovery: help people invest in new infrastructure, food for work/foodcoupons, desilting water pans, restocking
