Disasters, development and vulnerability

Impact

Between 1971 and 1995 they caused each year, on average, more than 128,000 deaths and affected the lives of 136 million people. Every country is affected by natural hazards to some extent. However, most disasters occur in the poorer countries of the Third World: some 97 per cent of deaths and 99 per cent of people affected between 1971 and 1995 were in developing countries; and the economic consequences of disasters there can be massive.

To some extent this is an accident of geography: many Third World countries are in regions prone to the most severe hazards such as earthquakes, droughts, volcanoes, floods, landslides and cyclones.

This is only part of the story, though. Third World states find it particularly difficult to protect their people against disasters. Lacking the wealth, infrastructure and institutional capacity enjoyed by other parts of the world, they cannot afford the same levels of protection as countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere, which have invested substantially in a wide range of preparedness and mitigation measures including scientific forecasting, safer buildings, regulations on the use of land, extensive emergency management systems and insurance cover.

Buildings nearly submerged by lahars (mudflows of ash and other volcanic debris) as a result of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines: the man with the ladder is walking on the lahar, at roof height. (Click on picture to see enlarged version).

The language of disasters Natural hazard The 'natural' physical event itself - earthquake, flood, volcanic eruption, cyclone, etc. Its intensity and impact can vary considerably. Vulnerability The extent to which a person, group or socio-economic structure The language of disasters is likely to be affected by a hazard (related to their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from its impact); the strength of physical structures in standing up to a hazard. The language of disasters Natural disaster The impact of a natural hazard on a community. A disaster is usually defined as an event (causing death, injury, loss of property, economic damage, etc.) that overwhelms a community's capacity to cope.

Development at risk

Development resources have to be diverted to deal with the consequences of disasters. The World Bank, for example, diverted some $2 billion of existing loans between the 1987 and 1988 financial years to fund reconstruction and rehabilitation after natural disasters.

Disasters also place a huge burden on international aid budgets, to the detriment of development programmes.

Humanitarian (i.e. emergency) aid from the world's wealthiest countries - the members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee - has more than trebled in the 1990s, from about $1 billion in 1990 to well over $3 billion in 1995. Most of this sudden increase is due to conflicts, but in the 1980s the rising impact of natural disasters such as the famin e in the Horn of Africa was already pushing emergency budgets up rapidly.

Meanwhile, long-term development assistance from the same countries to the world's poorest has stagnated at around $60 billion a year and is even falling in real terms.

As a proportion of aid overall, humanitarian assistance rose from 2 per cent in 1990 to just under 6 per cent in 1994. The British Government spent 2 per cent of its bilateral aid budget on relief in the 1982/3 financial year; but in 1992/3 it was spending more than 10 per cent.

Bangladesh: a river bank eroded by floods, with houses just beyond. (Click on picture to see enlarged version).

Vulnerability

Disaster statistics are hard to calculate with any accuracy or consistency. Nonetheless, all the evidence points to a steep and continuing rise in deaths and injuries from disasters since the 1960s, and there is a general consensus among researchers and insurers that the number of disasters is increasing.

This rise cannot be explained by a parallel rise in the number of earthquakes, cyclones and the like. What we are seeing is an increase in the effects of disasters on people - or, in other words, an increase in people's vulnerability to disasters.

The poor often have to live in dangerous locations: these bare hills, and the houses built on them, are vulnerable to landslides. (Click on picture to see enlarged version).

It is the social, cultural, economic and political environment that makes people vulnerable. This is most apparent in the economic pressures that force many of the poor to live in cheap but dangerous locations such as flood plains and unstable hillsides; but there are many less visible underlying factors - social and political as well as economic - that affect people's ability to protect themselves against disasters or to recover from them.

Some groups are more vulnerable than others. Class, caste, ethnicity, gender, disability and age are all factors affecting people's vulnerability. Those who are already at an economic or social disadvantage because of one or more of these characteristics tend to be more likely to suffer during disasters.

Vulnerability is not just poverty, but the poor tend to be the most vulnerable. In 1976 an earthquake killed 1,200 people and made 90,000 homeless in Guatemala City. Almost all of them lived in slum areas and many of their homes were in dangerous ravines and gorges - these were the only places they could afford to live in. The rich, in better constructed houses and safer locations, were affected far less.

More recently the Red Cross of Viet Nam looked at flood victims in the Mekong Delta and found that the wealthier inhabitants were better able to withstand floods. They could afford to raise the foundations of their houses above the usual flood level, and because they did not depend on a daily wage for their economic survival their livelihoods were not so badly affected. The landless poor, on the other hand, had little room for manoeuvre: floods cut them off from food, fuel and income by stopping them from collecting wild vegetables, cutting firewood and working as day labourers.

A home is often a workplace too. This woman had to rebuild her house, where she runs a small sewing business, after an earthquake. (Click on picture to see enlarged version).

Poverty and disaster - a cyclone in India A wealthy and a poor family live 100 metres apart near the coast of Andhra Pradesh in southeast India. The wealthy family has six members, a brick house, six cattle and three acres of land. The head of the household owns a small grain business and has a truck. The poor family (husband, wife and two children) has a thatch and pole house, an ox and calf, half an acre of poor land and sharecropping rights for another quarter of an acre. When the cyclone strikes, the wealthy farmer has received a warning on his radio and leaves the area with his family and valuables in the truck. The storm surge (flood) partly destroys his house and the roof is taken off by the wind. Three cattle are drowned and his fields are flooded, destroying the crops. The youngest child of the poor family is drowned; their house is destroyed; both animals are drowned; their fields are flooded and the crops ruined. The wealthy family use their savings to rebuild the house within a week. They replace the cattle and plough and replant their fields. The poor family does not have savings and has to borrow money for essential shelter from a local money lender, at exorbitant rates of interest. They manage to buy a calf but have to hire bullocks for ploughing their field, which they do too late since many others are in the same position and draught animals are in short supply. As a result, they go through a hungry period eight months after the cyclone.

The development process

The 1980s and 1990s have shown that development has its ups and downs, its failures as well as successes. Closer study of natural disasters' impact has undermined the belief that victims' lives can soon return to normal. Moreover, it is now all too apparent that the development process itself makes people vulnerable to natural hazards.

There are many aspects to this. Population growth, governments' economic and other policies, and rapid urbanization, are among the major underlying causes of increased vulnerability.

In many Third World countries population pressure, coupled with the need to live close to places where work can be found, compels people to build their homes in places at risk from floods. Peasant farming in drought-prone areas can be undermined where governments choose to support other agricultural sectors that produce crops for export. Where social structures are weakened by political interference or economic forces, traditional collective efforts against disasters - such as the repair and maintenance of dykes as protection against floods - may be abandoned.

The most visible link between development and disasters is through environmental degradation. A recent World Bank publication estimated that 80 per cent of the poor in Latin America, 60 per cent of the poor in Asia and 50 per cent of the poor in Africa lived on marginal lands characterized by poor productivity and high vulnerability to natural degradation and natural disasters.

This Filipino fisherman lives near the sea shore, where his home is exposed to typhoons; but he also earns his living from the sea. (Click on picture to see enlarged version).

Our impact on the natural environment can heighten the risk of disaster in many ways. For example, cutting down trees causes soil erosion and landslides that in turn can silt up rivers and cause flooding downstream. Building on flood plains reduces the amount of ground surface that can absorb rainfall: the rain then runs off much faster into rivers, putting pressure on river banks and thereby increasing the likelihood of flooding. Overgrazing and overcultivation can lead to soils becoming exhausted or to erosion and landslides. The removal of mangroves, to make way for hotels or commercial prawn farms, renders coastal communities more vulnerable to the strong winds and sea floods brought by cyclones.

More disaster terminology Disaster work, like any other professional discipline, has its own terminology and jargon. These three terms are commonly used. Disaster management This term encompasses all aspects of planning for disasters and responding to them. Preparedness Measures to forecast disasters, take precautions when they threaten, and arrange for the appropriate response (e.g. organizing evacuation procedures, stockpiling food supplies, and training and equipping rescue services). Mitigation Any action to minimize the impact of a disaster. This ranges from physical measures such as flood defences or methods of making buildings more secure to training, legislation and raising public awareness. Mitigation can take place at any time before, during or after a disaster.

Living with risk

A study of the Karakoram area in northern Pakistan in the 1980s found that houses tended to be sited in dangerous locations, against mountainsides and in the line of landslides and floods. Their owners were aware of the risk but chose to build there rather than use up precious agricultural land, of which little was available in this mountainous area. When asked about the risk of disasters such as flooding and earthquakes, people said they had more pressing problems to face such as the lack of education and health, and the difficulty of selling crops at a decent price.

A community in Colombia joins together to rebuild after a severe earthquake. (Click on pictures to see enlarged versions).

In the Indian city of Indore, many slums are found on the banks of the several rivers that run through the city, or on the floodplains. Slum dwellers live here for good economic reasons including proximity to markets and job opportunities in the centre of the city, the cheapness of the land and the better chance of getting funds for improvement because of the slums' visibility. They also see social benefits such as access to health services, schools, water and electricity (illegal connections are often made to water and electricity supplies), the presence of well established social support networks, and access to entertainment.

Fighting back

If this human factor adds to the problem, it also provides part of the solution. Those who make economic and development policy, and those who have to implement it on the ground, must be made more aware of issues of risk and vulnerability, as well as of ways of overcoming them, and they must be helped to incorporate disaster planning into their development programmes.

The people of Igbalangao on Panay Island in the Philippines use dough to make a map of their village, assessing the vulnerability of each household. (Click on picture to see enlarged version).

Disasters can be prevented, or at least their destructiveness can be minimized. This is certainly not easy, and we need to improve our expertise in this field. There is, moreover, plenty of debate about which methods of preparedness and mitigation are most effective in particular circumstances: much more effort is needed to identify and promote models of good practice. However, our understanding and skills are sufficient already to be put to good effect in aid and development programmes.

This ought to be straightforward enough but in practice it is harder to achieve. Entrenched attitudes and institutional separatism in government and aid agency circles, coupled with the general stagnation in budgets, have hindered the two worlds of disasters and development from drawing together. Closer integration is beginning, but we still have a very long way to go.