Factors and significance of disasters
FACTORS OF DISASTERS
The magnitude of each disaster, measured in deaths, damage, or costs
increases with the increased marginalization of the population. This
is caused by a high birthrate, problems of land tenure and economic
opportunity, and the incorrect allocation of resources to meet the
basic human needs of an expanding population. As the population
increases, there is a competetion for land resources and the best
land is taken up and those seeking land for farming or housing are
forced to accept inadequate land. These issues are subsequently
discussed in detail.
Poverty
The most important single influence on the impact of
a disaster is poverty. Disaster studies show that the wealthiest of
the population either survive the disaster unaffected or are able to
recover quickly. Poverty generally makes people vulnerable to the
impact of hazards. People in urban areas are forced to live on hills
that are prone to landslides, people settle near volcanoes or rivers
that invariably flood their banks. Droughts claim poor peasant
farmers as victims. Famines more often the result of a lack of
purchasing power to buy food rather than an absence of food.
Population growth
There is a connection between the increase in losses
from a disaster and the increase in population. More people and
structures where a disaster strikes implies that there will be more
of an impact. More and more people will be affected by disasters
because more will be forced to live and work in unsafe areas.
Increasing numbers of people compete for a limited amount of
resources (such as, employment opportunities, and land) leading to
conflict.
Rapid urbanization
Rapid population growth and migration are related to
rapid urbanization. It is characterized by the rural poor in an area
of conflict moving to metropolitan areas in search of economic
opportunities and security. Here again, competition for scarce
resources, an inevitable consequence of rapid urbanization, can lead
to human-made disasters.
Many landslides or flooding disasters are closely
linked to rapid and unchecked urbanization which forces low-income
families to settle on the slopes of steep hillsides, or along the
banks of flood-prone rivers. Many earthquake victims in urban areas
are impoverished families whose sites of residence have failed
because of landslides.
Transitions in cultural practices
Societies are constantly changing and in a continual
state of transition. These transitions are often extremely disruptive
and uneven, leaving gaps in social coping mechanisms and technology.
Examples of transitions are nomadic populations that become
sedentary, rural people who move to urban areas, and both rural and
urban people who move from one economic level to another. These
examples exhibit a shift from non-industrialized to industrializing
societies.
Such transitions result in new materials being used
incorrectly. In disaster prone areas, inadequate new construction
techniques may lead to houses that cannot withstand earthquakes or
wind storms.
Transitions have been complicated by the fact that
disaster survivors may not have a social support system or network to
assist in the relief and recovery from the disaster. The traditional
coping mechanisms may not exist in the new setting causing the
population to become increasingly dependent on external intervention
to help in this process.
Conflicting as well as transitional cultural
practices can also lead to civil conflict, for example, as a result
of communal violence triggered by religious differences.
Environmental degradation
Many disasters are either caused or worsened by
environmental degradation. For example: deforestation leading to
rapid rain run off, which contributes to flooding, destruction of
mangrove swamps decreases a coast line’s ability to resist tropical
winds and storm surges.
Drought conditions may be worsened by: poor cropping
patterns, overgrazing, the stripping of topsoil, poor conservation
techniques, depletion of both the surface and subsurface water
supply, and, to an extent, unchecked urbanization.
Lack of awareness and information
Disasters can also happen because people vulnerable
to them simply do not know how to get out of harm’s way or to take
protective measures. This might also be due to a lack of awareness of
what measures can be taken to build safe structures on safe
locations. People may not know about safe evacuation routes and
procedures or where to seek assistance in times of acute distress.
War and civil strife
War and civil strife are regarded as hazards extreme events that produce disasters. War and civil strife result in displaced people. The causal factors include competition for scarce resources, religious or ethnic intolerance, and ideological differences. Many of these are also byproducts of the preceding six causal factors of disasters.SIGNIFICANCE OF DISASTERS
Disaster studies are currently becoming a new research field. Their meaning should be understood in the context of people subjected and also by those who can feel their threat. Their impact should be assessed and their re-occurrence anticipated.
Medical ethics and disaster
Extreme
conditions during disasters make it impossible to provide the
individual medical care that victims require. While
medical ethics forbid any negligence or ignoring patients, it becomes
a critical issue of choosing to help certain victims over some
hopeless cases. For example the dilemma of rescuing an old, trapped,
terminally sick person versus saving a trapped healthy person.
Imagination in disaster situations
Disasters convince us of the
importance of “maintaining flexibility”. The role of imagination in disaster
situations is extremely important as it
allows the exploration that results in unexpected solutions to problems. It is also the imagination that hastens our recourse to
a state of emergency by prompting us to picture even worse situations
than the reality before our eyes. The question of degrees of disaster is of fundamental importance. H1N1 pandemic shows that the
criteria retained for triage protocols by experts and the general
public are not always identical.
Getting to Grips with Disaster
The
concept of disaster has disappeared from the landscape of
modernity, and it has very little credibility in the scientific
community. Viewed as outdated, it has been ousted by probability
studies, which are thought to correspond more accurately to the
complexity and uncertainties of modern societies. Risk, as it is conceived today, reduces disastrous events to
their bare essentials. In this context, disaster retains its status of a collection of very different things, and its lack of specificity weakens any real scientific
interest. So at best, disaster is viewed as a field of study. Risk, a new paradigm in rational
thinking, thus presented itself as an alternative that enabled us to
get beyond an outdated, fatalistic view of the world. The idea of risk has erased disaster.
However, disasters have resurfaced now and then, and
inevitably have become subjects of investigation and it is
clear that a series of recent events have brought this concept back
to the centre of attention. The tsunami of 2004, Katrina in 2005, the earthquake in Haiti in
2010, coupled with technological failures like Bhopal 1984, Chernobyl 1986, the
Concorde crash in 2000 or human atrocities such as massacres
and terrorist acts, a disaster is characteristically
applied to events with disparate origins and various degrees of
consequences.
The Parameters of the “Problem”
It is difficult to get to grips with a
disaster, because its ramifications are so vast and so widespread.
Disaster forms a bridge between percept (lived experience,
emotions, facts) and concept (thoughts, ideas,
potentialities). A disaster embodies a rupture, and irreversibly
induces an externality; hence the constant reference to disorder, to
unrest, and therefore to the realm of emotions. Disaster is creation,
and introduces all by itself a whole new universe that has just
collided with the routine.A disaster is more than a realized risk. In that case, a disaster would then be nothing but a forecasting failure or a defective preventive model; this assumes that the disaster was predictable and the disaster would be restricted to its accidental and factual dimensions. However, the main characteristic of a disaster is precisely its disruption of established patterns and of perceptive and cognitive models, categorizing it out of hand into the realm of interpretation. Studying one or more disasters involves confronting a quite specific relationship with time, which does not conform to the linear temporal model of rational thought.
Risk, on the other hand, is more of “a not-yet-occurred-event” which always leads to preventive action. Completely directed toward the future, it is based on a progressive logic aimed at anticipating and predicting tomorrow’s crises. The “risk factory” becomes a joint enterprise that consists of foreseeing the worst and suggesting alternatives to the surrounding uncertainty. So looking at disastrous events through the magnifying glass of risk means avoiding any further setback, by identifying points of leverage, in particular through “feedback”. It can be seen that reducing a disaster to a realized risk means confining it to a model and also drains it of its contents by treating it merely as a consequence or a failure.
Methodological Bias
Beyond these aspects, which could appear merely
speculative, there is plainly the question of how to approach the
field. Considering a disaster as a realized risk assumes a
methodological position that conforms to a particular paradigm. In
fact, thinking about risk and disaster together, or
even seeing the latter as simply an aspect of risk, leads to a
dangerous bias.Disaster becomes an opportunity for experimentation. In this model, researchers will concentrate mainly on objective factors, which can further the definition and then the management of a public problem. Although every disaster is unique, they all have this characteristic, and involve a methodology of having recourse to identifying the many dimensions of the object of study.At first, the process of designating the event: has to be identified by giving it a name, inserting it into a series of similar events, depicting it by using founding images. This process consists of making the regular and known emerge in an environment marked by a rupture in the forms of intelligibility. After grasping the operative temporal regimes, the spatial framework within which the drama is unfolding should be identified. Since several different areas are involved, a local analysis, at the same time discerning the global effects is to be carried out.
Issues at Stake
Amalgamating catastrophe(s) with risk, as is done by most current disaster studies. is not simply an epistemological issue, it concerns a larger issue about research policies and finance. Risk has assumed such importance that it is now the only concept in the public arena. The fact that it was based on a paradigm that effortlessly bestrides the arcana of public policies means that its success is assured for many years to come. There is no doubt that this concept is useful when it comes to studying the relationship of our societies to modernity, and that the sociology of science has everything to gain by taking it on board. Nevertheless, risk is ill suited to disaster studies. Without casting doubt on the legitimacy of this concept, its hegemonic position demands reconsideration. To say nothing of the heteroclite character of the concept’s applications (major technological risks, natural hazards, risk prevention in public health, risk-taking in adolescence, etc.).
One of the essentials in this issue is research funding. Even when research on the terrain of disaster emerges from time to time, there is very often a tendency for these first studies (many of which come from doctoral theses) to evolve towards an enquiry in terms of risk. In the development of research programs of any kind, the chances of finding funding are ten times greater when they adopt the risk model.
Farther down the road, fitting the study of disasters to the risk paradigm brings certain guarantees: reassuring funders, making work for experts, and ensuring that the research can actually be implemented on the ground. This strategy also has the advantage of segmenting the roles. One could say that journalists deal with the issues in the heat and play up the emotional side, while researchers and experts have to maintain their capacity for cool analysis. This is a caricature, but something very like this vision organizes current research policies. But as we have seen, the whole point of disaster studies is the business of translation, which consists of treating the disaster as a reality in its own right. Out of this dynamic are born the richest and most innovative studies. Without advocating creativity at any cost, we must ask whether real research can be done without being driven by the ability to invent, to renew, and to imagine. Disaster study is an amazing field for such an ability, and it seems to me essential to keep that field alive. That leaves the issue how to avoid falling into the position of excessively glorifying the subject as you would an unchanging work of art, but this great danger should be a challenge rather than a constraint. It should also make us reflect on the position that we take as researchers in the field. The mere fact of generally adopting the risk model is somewhat reductive. So to impose this model even though it is not universally shared, and to make it the paragon of modern societies, immediately impounds any other point of view. In this scheme, whatever might be said, the terrain does not come first, it is subjected to a series of signposts, and analysis is possible only through this lens. During the tsunami of December 2004, it was surprising to see the extent to which western models (especially that of risk) were imposed on the public scene. In some ways, there was a whiff of imperialism in this outlook. It was forgotten that risk is a “rhetoric” (Revet, 2010), nothing more, in the same way that divine anger and ultra-powerful nature are or have been.
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