Ben Wisner

Reframing disaster policy: the global evolution of vulnerable communities

The Social Construction of Disaster Disaster is widely perceived as an event beyond human control. The capricious hand of fate has moved against unsuspecting human communities, creating massive destruction and despair.[i] The sudden randomness of the event accentuates the cruelty of its effects, as surely the victims would have acted differently, had they known the risk. Other nations and organizations rush humanitarian aid to rebuild damaged communities, but stop short of examining the policies and practices that contributed to the event.

Risk and the Neoliberal State: Why Post‐Mitch Lessons Didn't Reduce El Salvador's Earthquake Losses

Although El Salvador suffered light losses from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, it benefited from the increased international aid and encouragement for advance planning, especially mitigation and prevention interventions. Thus, one would have supposed, El Salvador would have been in a very advantageous position, able more easily than its economically crippled neighbours, Honduras and Nicaragua, to implement the lessons of Mitch. A review of the recovery plan tabled by the El Salvador government following the earthquakes of early 2001 shows that despite the rhetoric in favour of learning the lessons of Mitch, very little mitigation and prevention had actually been put in place between the hurricane (1998) and the earthquakes (2001). The recovery plan is analysed in terms of the degree to which it deals with root causes of disaster vulnerability, namely, the economic and political marginality of much of the population and environmental degradation. An explanation for the failure to implement mitigation and preventive actions is traced to the adherence by the government of El Salvador to an extreme form of neoliberal, free market ideology, and the deep fissures and mistrust in a country that follow a long and bloody civil war.

Changing household responses to drought in Tharaka, Kenya: vulnerability, persistence and challenge

Drought is a recurring challenge to the livelihoods of those living in Tharaka District, Kenya, situated in the semi-arid zone to the east of Mount Kenya, from the lowest slopes of the mountain to the banks of the Tana River. This part of Kenya has been marginal to the economic and political life of Kenya from the colonial period until the present day. A study of more than 30 years of change in how people in Tharaka cope with drought reveals resilience in the face of major macro-level transformations, which include privatisation of landownership, population growth, political decentralisation, increased conflict over natural resources, different market conditions, and environmental shifts. However, the study also shows troubling signs of increased use of drought responses that are incompatible with long-term agrarian livelihoods. Government policy needs to address the challenge of drought under these new macro conditions if sustainable human development is to be achieved.

Untapped potential of the world's religious communities for disaster reduction in an age of accelerated climate change: An epilogue & prologue

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An introduction to neglected disasters

– see front matter 2009 Published by doi:10.1016/j.religion.2009.12.006 The papers in this theme issue point toward three sets of questions one can ask about faith, faith communities, and disaster. These questions indicate possible directions activism and practice may take in order to reduce the human, economic, and environmental cost of natural hazard impacts. The foci of these questions are sociology, politics, and theology. The first of these concerns the role that faith communities have had or could have in responding to disaster, preparing locally to resist them, in recovery, and in preventing them or reducing potential losses. The second, politics, addresses the role of faith leaders as spokespeople and lobbyists for community safety and policies that are required at national and international levels to bring about risk reduction. The third interrogates the way the natural hazards and disasters are understood by theologians and lay people across the diversity of the world’s faiths and wisdom traditions. This brief final contribution to the special issue of Religion discusses these three sets of questions in the context of growing clarity about the role of climate change in future patterns of disaster risk and growing self organization and activism by civil society in efforts to manage risk at the local scale. Contributions to the theme issue do not directly address the sociological and political (or policy) aspects of disaster risk as I have defined them. They are confined to detailed accounts of mytho-poetic and theological accounts of specific events. However, to someone outside the discipline of religious studies invited to comment from the point of view of policy and the practice of risk management, these two potentials leap out.

“Lets talk about you …”: Opening space for local experience, action and learning in disaster risk reduction

This theme issue of Jamba takes up the question of neglected disasters. It is an important topic because the world is changing, disasters are changing, and theory is changing. All these changes call for a re-assessment of why some human suffering and social disruption receive attention from authorities, donors, researchers and the media, while some does not. Recent progress in both development studies and disaster studies provides tools for answering this question. Development and disaster studies date in their current forms to ways of thinking that were current in academic and policy circles in the late 1950s and 1960s. At that time the world was recovering from world war and former colonies of Europe were gaining independence. It was a world in which (with some exceptions) conflict was held in check in an uneasy cold war balance. It was also a world where a growing UN system held the promise of meeting humanitarian needs when they arose. That world is no more. ‘Development’ has changed.

Small Cities and Towns in Africa: Insights into Adaptation Challenges and Potentials

Purpose n n n n nThe purpose of this paper is to report on the creation of innovative methods for engaging in conversations about everyday risk. n n n n nDesign/methodology/approach n n n n nA range of methods from conventional survey research to open-ended, semi-structured conversations and focus groups were used in the series of studies that serve as the subject of this meta-study. The meta-study uses participant observation, key informant interviews and project reports to narrate and evaluate the evolution of Frontline as an action planning, monitoring, advocacy and research tool. n n n n nFindings n n n n nThe Views from the Frontline (VFL) methods began as the bottom-up mirror of a top-down monitoring approach used by the United Nations (Hyogo Framework for Action Monitor). Limitations of such bottom up monitoring led to creation of guidelines for formalising local knowledge resulting from actions – Action at the Frontline (AFL) and, later, Frontline, a flexible tool for eliciting experiences of everyday risk. The earlier VFL monitoring approach had shared outsiders’ assumptions about the nature of the “problem” and limited the degree to which local residents could express their own experiences and priorities. n n n n nOriginality/value n n n n nExtensive use of this suite of methods has shown that civil society organisations are fully capable of conducting credible research when properly supported and motivated. Use of these methods has so far provided strong support for policy advocacy at the global scale, has had moderate success in liaison with national policy makers and slow but promising results as a learning/action tool at the local scale. Frontline has as yet untapped potential as a resource for academic research.

We’ve seen the future, and it’s very diverse: beyond gender and disaster in West Hollywood, California

This chapter is a counterpoint to those in the rest of this volume that treat Africa’s large cities. As Simon (Int Dev Plann Rev 36(2):v–xi, 2014) has observed, most study of African urban climate change adaptation has focused on the challenges to large cities. So, by way of heuristic exercise, we attempt to approach a set of questions about small African cities and towns facing climate change. What climate-related hazards are faced by small cities in Africa today and will be confronted in the future? What kind of enabling capacities should be strengthened so that staff in small cities can take the initiative to adapt to climate change? What obstacles do the governments and residents of small cities face in adapting to climate change? What potential is there for risk reduction and improved livelihood security even in the face of climate change? Reviewing literature and using case studies from Eastern, Southern and Western Africa, we find that small cities have potential not only to protect their infrastructure and residents from climate related hazards, but also to serve as catalysts of climate-smart development in their hinterlands. However, governance problems and a lack of finance severely limit the ability of small African cities to realise this potential. More research is urgently needed to inform feasible solutions to bridge these governance and funding gaps.

Community Resilience to Disasters

Abstract This viewpoint describes changes in the way that gender and sexual identity are perceived by various disaster risk reduction stakeholders in the city of West Hollywood, California, USA. In general in Europe and North America, and elsewhere, the trend has been for so-called ‘vulnerable’ groups or groups of people with ‘special needs’ to be seen after a time as groups of people with agency, with ‘special contributions’ and with capacities in relation to disaster risk reduction. This transition from ‘victim’ to ‘stakeholder’ has been observed as regards women, youth, the elderly and people living with incapacities or disabilities. The important contribution of our viewpoint is to document a similar transition or evolution of roles for lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, transgender and queer (LGBITQ) groups in the city of West Hollywood. The broader context of the city’s site, situation, demography, exposure to hazards, civic culture and the organisation of public safety is also described.

The Societal Implications of a Comet/Asteroid Impact on Earth: a Perspective from International Development Studies

Resilience has become a common word in aiming to articulate how communities should deal with disaster. Both ‘resilience’ and ‘community’ are contested through multiple definitions. Different understandings are explored through four artificial and overlapping hazard categories: (1) natural (or environment) hazards; (2) technological hazards; (3) violent social crisis such as terrorism and violent crime; and (4) nonviolent social crisis. The most encompassing and successful approaches for community resilience to disasters involve full participation of all community membersxa0inxa0having access to resources andxa0choices for helping themselves deal with day-to-day and longer term challenges.