At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters

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AT RISK The term ‘natural disaster’ is often used to refer to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. However, the phrase ‘natural disaster’ suggests an uncritical acceptance of a deeply engrained ideological and cultural myth. At Risk questions this myth and argues that extreme natural events are not disasters until a vulnerable group of people is exposed. At Risk focuses on what makes people vulnerable. Often this means analysing the links between poverty and vulnerability. But it is also important to take account of different social groups that suffer more in extreme events, including women, children, the frail and elderly, ethnic minorities, illegal immigrants, refugees and people with disabilities. Vulnerability has also been increased by global environmental change and economic globalisation—it is an irony of the ‘risk society’ that efforts to provide ‘security’ often create new risks. Fifty years of deforestation in Honduras and Nicaragua opened up the land for the export of beef, coffee, bananas and cotton. It enriched the few, but endangered the many when hurricane Mitch struck these areas in 1998. Rainfall sent denuded hillsides sliding down on villages and towns. The new edition of At Risk confronts a further ten years of ever more expensive and deadly disasters since it was first published and discusses disaster not as an aberration, but as a signal failure of mainstream ‘development’. Two analytical models are provided as tools for understanding vulnerability. One links remote and distant ‘root causes’ to ‘unsafe conditions’ in a ‘progression of vulnerability’. The other uses the concepts of ‘access’ and ‘livelihood’ to understand why some households are more vulnerable than others. The book then concludes with strategies to create a safer world. Ben Wisner is Visiting Research Fellow at the Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics and at the Benfield Greig Hazards Research Centre, University College London, and Affiliate Researcher with the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College, Ohio. Piers Blaikie is Professorial Fellow, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia. Terry Cannon is Reader in Development Studies in the School of Humanities and at the Natural Resources Institute, both at the University of Greenwich. Ian Davis is Visiting Professor, Cranfield University Disaster Management Centre.

An excellent overview of the different human responses to natural hazards, dispelling the belief that little can be done to avoid the tragedies associated with natural hazards. Gareth Jones, Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Strathclyde

Paradoxically in today’s world safety coexists with risk. Chronic threats, novel risks and dangerous trends ranging from new viruses to global warming crowd in on us. At Risk offers a rational analysis of the disasters and hazards that concern us. Allen Perry, Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Wales Swansea

At Risk has become a classic of disasters literature. Its key argument, that the analysis of disasters should not be segregated from everyday life, is an important lesson for students, researchers and practitioners. Dr Maureen Fordham, Senior Lecturer in Disaster Management, University of Northumbria

AT RISK Natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters Second edition

Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon and Ian Davis

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2004 Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon and Ian Davis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data At risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters/Ben Wisner…[et al].—2nd ed.p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Natural disasters. I. Wisner, Benjamin. GB5014.A82 2003 363.34–dc21 2003009175 ISBN 0-203-42876-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-43924-4 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-25215-6 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-25216-4 (pbk)

CONTENTS List of illustrations Foreword: The Great Wave Preface to 2004 edition Preface to 1994 edition List of abbreviations and acronyms

vi viii xi xiii xv

PART I Framework and theory 1 The challenge of disasters and our approach

3

2 The Disaster Pressure and Release model

45

3 Access to resources and coping in adversity

79

PART II Vulnerability and hazard types 4 Famine and natural hazards

113

5 Biological hazards

145

6 Floods

174

7 Coastal storms

210

8 Earthquakes and volcanoes

237

PART III Towards a safer environment 9 Towards a safer environment

Bibliography Index

279

329 395

ILLUSTRATIONS Figures

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2a 4.2b 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 8.3

The social causation of disasters Pressure and Release (PAR) model: the progression of vulnerability Numbers of great natural disasters 1950–1999 Economic and insured losses (with trends) for 1950–1999 The Access model in outline Access to resources: ‘normal life’ The Access model in the transition to disaster Pressure and Release (PAR) model: famine in southern Sudan ‘Normal life’ before a famine From normal to famine conditions ‘Pressures’ that result in disasters: the Irish Potato Famine, 1845–1848 Access to resources to maintain livelihoods: the impact of AIDS Household coping mechanisms in the face of AIDS ‘Pressures’ that result in disasters: flood hazards Major rivers and distributaries of Bangladesh region, showing extent of flooding in September 1988 ‘Pressures’ that result in disasters: Bangladesh floods, 1987 and 1988 New Orleans: hurricane evacuation worries Explanation for deaths caused in Andhra Pradesh cyclone of 1977 ‘Pressures’ that result in disasters: Divi Taluk, Krishna Delta, Andhra Pradesh cyclone of 1977 The ‘release’ of pressures to reduce disasters: the Mozambique cyclone of 1979 The release of ‘pressures’ to reduce disasters: Bangladesh cyclone risk Distribution of damage during the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City relative to the lake bed ‘Pressures’ that result in disasters: Mexico City earthquake, 19 September 1985 Access, vulnerability and recovery from the Mexico City earthquake

8 47 57 57 81 89 94 133 134 136 155 165 166 188 198 202 215 220 221 224 229 245 246 249

8.4 The release of ‘pressures’ to reduce disasters: the situation following the recovery of Mexico City from the earthquake of 19 September 1985 8.5 Zones of greatest damage in Kobe, 1995 9.1 Hazard, Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment Matrix 9.2 Cartoon figures used in local discussions by CRDN to contrast vulnerability and conventional approaches 9.3 Flip-chart example of community discussions 9.4 The release of ‘pressures’ to reduce disasters: progression of safety 9.5 Stages in the development of a safety culture

250

253 290 291 293 300 324

Tables 1.1 Hazard types and their contribution to deaths, 1900–1999 1.2 Deaths during disasters, listed by cause, 1900–1999 1.3 Level of human development and disaster impacts 2.1 Largest cities in hazard areas 3.1 Time periods for components of the Access model 7.1 Most intense cyclones in north Indian ocean, 1970–2000 9.1 Types of information required for risk assessment, including vulnerability, capacity and exposure to hazards

3 4 23 65 96 226 297

FOREWORD The Great Wave The cover of our book reproduces a very well-known image. In 1830 Katsushika Hokusai created a woodblock which was to become the most famous Japanese work of art in the West and a major influence on nineteenth-century impressionist painters. This is commonly called The Great Wave, a simplified version of the Japanese title: In the Hollow of a Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa. The picture is one of the greatest depictions of a vulnerable situation in the history of art, and it conveniently contains the key elements associated with reducing vulnerability that forms the substance of this book.1

Element 1: disaster The first element is inferred, not depicted. This is a disaster in which the boats are smashed and the fishermen drowned. However, rather than create this image, the artist is concerned to portray the struggle of people whose livelihoods and property are ‘at risk’.

Element 2: hazards The second element is the portrayal of two hazards, both very well known in Japan. Firstly, a storm or a tsunami.2 Secondly, in the background Hokusai has reproduced the classic volcanic form of Mount Fuji. The image of Fuji has deep symbolic and religious significance in Japan, and volcanic eruptions are also a hazard.

Element 3: vulnerability The third element concerns vulnerability to storm conditions. This is expressed in three closely linked ways. The first is the ‘social vulnerability’ of the fishermen; the second is the ‘economic vulnerability’ of their livelihoods; third, the viewer can imagine the

‘physical vulnerability’ of their boats and fishing nets. The viewer cannot see the wives, children and extended families back on shore. The loss of a fishing boat or a net will have an impact on their well-being and livelihoods. However, the contributions by those on shore to economic and social life may also help to buffer any such loss. Social networks may assist in repairing a boat or replacing a net. Social arrangements may provide for widows and orphaned children. Farming and other economic activities may supplement income from fishing. In addition, one cannot see in the painting the moneylender or the fish wholesaler who may take advantage of a disaster at sea to profit at the fishermen’s expense.

Element 4: capacity and resilience The final element relates to capacity and resilience, sometimes called ‘coping mechanisms’ or ‘capacity’. This dynamic human capacity can be observed in two ways: one appears to be non-structural whilst the other is structural. Put in more precise terms, one approach depicts a pattern of behaviour while the other shows adaptive design. The first concerns the skills of the fishermen. Clearly the helmsman in each boat is making certain that each boat is facing directly into the great wave, rather than lying in an exposed position parallel with the wave crest. In storm conditions this is standard maritime practice to avoid a giant wave breaking over boats and smashing them to pieces. If the viewer looks carefully at the it is also possible to see a further adaptation to the storm threat. The oarsmen appear to have interwoven their oars into a lattice, perhaps to prevent them being smashed by the giant wave, or as a device to form a ‘sea anchor’ extending on each side of the boat to maintain them at a right angle to the waves. The fishermen are bent over in a crouched position to protect their faces from the impact of the waves. The second adaptation to note may be in the design of the boats. The curved bow may well have been an adaptation to the wave conditions ‘off the Coast of Kanagawa’. Traditionally the design of boats has made good use of the ‘strength-gain’ achieved from using curved planes and forms.

Element 5: culture Hokusai’s great work of art is a reminder of the awareness of such hazards in Japan as well as the way in which all households, groups and societies cope with and adapt to such threats to their everyday lives and livelihoods. This reality has received wide expression in art, poetry and music. And in traditional architecture there have been extensive adaptations to seismic risks and fire threats. However, cultures are never static, and whilst there may have been a cultural awareness of storms and storm protection in Japan in

1830, this knowledge may have been lost and may be in need of renewal. Today fishermen need not go out to sea when advanced satellite warning systems and weather radar can warn that storms are imminent.

Notes 1 Another view of the picture is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hokusai/. 2 Tsunami is the Japanese name for a ‘harbour wave’, a great wave generated by an undersea earthquake or subterranean landslide. It seems that it is unclear whether Hokusai intended to portray a tsunami, or simply a storm, although many interpreters have assumed it is a tsunami.

PREFACE TO THE 2004 EDITION The world, and the authors, are 15 years older since a book called At Risk was first discussed. We are happy that the first edition has been widely used, translated into Spanish1, and generally been well received. We are less happy about some of the likely reasons for the growing popularity of the notion of vulnerability. One concern is that the term is being used indiscriminately, in a similar manner to ‘sustainability’. It is in danger of becoming a catch-all term, with its analytical power and significance diminished. But the term is also becoming more popular as a simple reflection of the growth in people’s vulnerability: it is increasing, and more people want to know why. During the past 15 years millions more people have been affected by disasters triggered by natural hazards. These millions are at risk in part because of global economic and political processes that were only becoming recognised in 1988. Looking back, the era in which we first collaborated seems antediluvian. The flood of post-Cold War economic globalisation, the wars and tensions generated by the break up of the Cold War political order, and growing impacts of global environmental change have all contributed to vulnerability. Thinking about all these changes, it was clear we needed to revise our book. Time has brought changes in our lives as well. Three of us are now retired from fulltime teaching. Davis, Visiting Professor at Cranfield University, retired from the Cranfield Disaster Management Centre and continues to make contributions on postdisaster shelter and risk reduction activities. Blaikie has retired from his post at the School of Development Studies (University of East Anglia) and continues to consult and to publish research on resource management in Africa and South Asia. Wisner retired from his position as Director of International Studies and Professor of Geography (California State University, Long Beach) and works as a researcher with the Crisis States Programme of the Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics, as well as consulting for international agencies and NGOs. Cannon is still at the University of Greenwich, where he is Reader in Development Studies in the School of Humanities, and also carries out research and consultancy for the Natural Resource Institute, also at University of Greenwich, London. The first edition was conceived at the same time that the seeds were sown of what was to become the 1990–1999 UN International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (UNIDNDR). At Risk was published in the middle of that decade. The second edition comes well after the end of the IDNDR. Lives lost to disasters, and the economic costs of disasters, increased steadily during that period. How could so much international attention be devoted to a subject with so little to show for it? This question haunts us because we know and respect many of the people who worked tirelessly during the IDNDR. Why is vulnerability increasing despite the best efforts of many scientists, policy makers, administrators and activists? We hope that our second edition will help to answer this question.

As before, yet so much more so, we are indebted to such an enormous number of people we cannot possibly name them all. So we hope they will know that they are included when we express our immense gratitude to many of the same people we thanked the first time and now number, together with many new ones, among the friends, colleagues, publishers, students, conference participants, members of NGOs, and government and UN officials that helped us. We must also thank Kim Allen and Carol Baker for precise and helpful editorial suggestions, and Angela Allwright for the art and science she lavished on many of our illustrations. Also as before, we are particularly grateful to our families for their patience with the ups and downs of our common project over these last three years. Royalties from this edition are being donated to three groups that are all active in promoting vulnerability reduction approaches to disaster reduction in developing countries: La RED in Latin America, Peri Peri in southern Africa and Duryog Nivaran in South Asia (for more details, see Chapter 1, note 39). April 2003

Note 1 (P.Blaikie, T.Cannon, I.Davis and B.Wisner, 1996. Vulnerabilidad, el entorno social, político y económico de los desastres, La RED/IT Development Group, Peru. Available for download on the internet at: http://www.desenredando.org/public/libros/1996/vesped/)

PREFACE TO THE 1994 EDITION Long before they met each other, the four authors encountered many of the hazards discussed in this book as they worked and visited in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They shared a dissatisfaction with then prevailing views that disasters were ‘natural’ in a straightforward way. They shared an admiration for the ability of ordinary people to ‘cope’ with poverty and even calamities, and this perspective has strongly influenced the book. The authors brought to this project complementary skills and expertise. Blaikie had written on the socio-economic background to land degradation1 and poverty in Nepal,2 and more recently on the AIDS epidemic in Africa.3 Cannon has incorporated teaching on hazards into his work for many years, and is active in the Famine Commission of the International Geographical Union. He has edited a collection of studies of famine4 and published extensively on development and environmental problems in China. Davis had spent many years studying shelter following disasters5 and the growth of disaster vulnerability with rapid urbanisation;6 he also brought to the project years of practical work in training government officials in disaster mitigation. Wisner had been concerned with rural physical and social planning since the mid-1960s. This took the form of landuse studies,7 research on drought coping,8 and work on rural energy9 and health care delivery.10 As the project began he was about to draw these themes together in a systematic study of ‘basic needs’ approaches to development in Africa.11 This book has taken a long time to complete, with all the complications of multiple authorship, and the added difficulty that the four were for much of the time in three different countries. We met about six times for several days, and progressed from sketched outlines to substantial drafts at each meeting. Much paper and many electrons and floppy disks sailed back and forth among us. A great deal of ideological baggage was stripped away as a consensus view of hazards, vulnerability and disasters emerged. We provided crash courses for each other in areas of our own expertise. The result is a fully co-authored book, although we are aware that some idiosyncrasies of style and variations in point of view may still be visible here and there. The process had lots to recommend it, even if speed is not one of them. Yet the book has managed to appear midpoint in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). It arrives in the context of this decade (with its overemphasis on technology and hazard management), in the hope that it will establish the vital importance of understanding vulnerability in the context of its political, social and economic origins. The book reasserts the significance of the human factor in disasters. It tries to move beyond technocratic management to a notion of disaster mitigation that is rooted in the potential that humans have to unite, to persevere, to understand what afflicts them, and to take common action. While the book was being written, there has been growing awareness of vulnerability

to disasters, and of the range of causal factors. We welcome this groundswell of changing awareness, and appreciate the insights of many other contributors to the analysis of disasters. There are so many people to thank for their encouragement and help in the production of this book that it would be impossible to compile a list that did not offend by erroneously omitting some. So if all those people, including those affected by disaster, friends, colleagues, publishers, students, conference participants, members of NGOs, government and UN officials, will forgive us for not including their names, let us express our thanks to them in this way. In particular we must also thank our families for their patience, for enabling our meetings and providing a great deal of help and moral support.

Notes 1 Blaikie (1985b); Blaikie and Brookfield (1987). 2 Blaikie et al. (1977, 1983). 3 Barnett and Blaikie (1992). 4 Bohle et al. (1991). 5 Davis (1978). 6 Davis (1986, 1987). 7 O’Keefe and Wisner (1977). 8 Wisner (1978b, 1980). 9 Wisner et al. (1987); Wisner (1987b). 10 Wisner (1976a, 1988b, 1992a); Packard et al. (1989). 11 Wisner (1988a).

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS $

Indicates US dollars unless otherwise stated

BFAP

Bangladesh Flood Action Plan

CPRs

Common Property Resources

CRED

Centre for Research in the Epidemiology of Disasters (Louvain)

DFID

Department For International Development (UK foreign aid ministry)

ENSO

El Niño Southern Oscillation

FAD

Food Availability Decline

FAO

Food and Agricultural Organisation

FCDI

Flood Control Drainage and Irrigation

FED

Food Entitlement Decline

FEMA

Federal Emergency Management Authority (USA)

FEWS

Famine Early Warning System

G7/G8

Group of 7 (now Group of 8) major economic powers

GM

Genetically Modified

GoB

Government of Bangladesh

HDI

Human Development Index

HEP

Hydro-Electric Power

HIPCs

Highly Indebted Poor Countries

HYV

High Yielding Varieties (of food grain plants)

IDNDR

International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction

IDP

Internally Displaced Person

IFPRI

International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington DC)

IFRC

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Geneva)

IMF

International Monetary Fund

ISDR

International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

LDCs

Less Developed Countries

MDCs

More Developed Countries

MSF

Médecins Sans Frontieres

NGO

Non-Government Organisation

OAS

Organisation of American States

OFDA

(US) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance

PAHO

Pan American Health Organisation

PAR

Pressure and Release (model)

PRC

People’s Republic of China

RENAMO

Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Mozambican National Resistance)

SAP

Structural Adjustment Programme

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNEP

United Nations Environment Programme

UNICEF

United Nations Children’s Fund

UN OCHA

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

UNRISD

United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

USAID

United States Agency for International Development

WFP

World Food Programme

WHO

World Health Organisation

Part I FRAMEWORK AND THEORY

1 THE CHALLENGE OF DISASTERS AND OUR APPROACH In at the deep end Disasters, especially those that seem principally to be caused by natural hazards, are not the greatest threat to humanity. Despite the lethal reputation of earthquakes, epidemics and famine, a much greater proportion of the world’s population find their lives shortened by events that often go unnoticed: violent conflict, illnesses, and hunger—events that pass for normal existence in many parts of the world, especially (but not only) in less developed countries (LDCs).1 Occasionally earthquakes have killed hundreds of thousands, and very occasionally floods, famines or epidemics have taken millions of lives at a time. But to focus on these (in the understandably humanitarian way that outsiders do in response to such tragedies) is to ignore the millions who are not killed in such events, but who nevertheless face grave risks. Many more lives are lost in violent conflict and to the preventable outcome of disease and hunger (see Tables 1.1 and 1.2).2 Such is the daily and unexceptional tragedy of those whose deaths are through ‘natural’ causes, but who, under different economic and political circumstances, should have lived longer and enjoyed a better quality of life.3

Table 1.1 Hazard types and their contribution to deaths, 1900–1999

Hazard type in rank order

Percentage of deaths

Slow onset: Famines—drought

86.9

Rapid onset: Floods

9.2

Earthquakes and tsunami

2.2

Storms

1.5

Volcanic eruptions

0.1

Landslides