Abstract
The relations of development and disaster offer a starting point for an overview of disaster risk reduction (DRR) in African contexts. A social vulnerability approach is adopted with its goal of improving conditions for persons and places most at risk. However, this approach faces serious contradictions in both the disasters and development scenes. Disaster events and losses have grown exponentially in recent decades. So have advances in disaster-related knowledge and the institutions and material resources devoted to disaster management. Evidently, the latter have not reduced disaster incidence or over all losses. Similar contradictions appear in development. By some measures, in most developing countries the economy has grown much faster than population. Yet, indebtedness, unemployment and insecurity seem worse in many countries. Poverty, the avowed target, remains huge in urban, peri-urban and rural areas singled out by disaster losses. Problems also arise from separate treatment of development and disaster. Climate change and the global financial crises challenge some of the most basic assumptions. The promise of ‘developed nations’, built around massive use of fossil fuels, puts global and African economic growth on a collision course with environmental calamity. The 2008 financial crisis has undermined the safety of global majorities, as well as reliance on development assistance. The case for alternatives in development and DRR is reinforced, including the vulnerability-reducing responses highlighted in the Hyogo framework for action. However, this is being undermined by a return to a civil defence-type approach, an increasingly militarised, and for-profit, focus on emergency management.
Highlights
Disaster is widely linked to development issues, especially in so-called developing countries (DCs); that is, recipients of external development assistance according to various criteria of need or donor preferences, a category which includes most African countries
Van Niekerk (2008) shows how the historical relations of development and disaster have had an influence on disaster risk reduction (DRR) globally and in terms of major institutional actors
Only pre-disaster and post-disaster measures can improve safety and reduce disaster risks, improvements that rarely occur without the meaningful involvement of communities at risk. This present paper examines certain contradictions in the relations of disasters and development and, in doing so, must struggle with some contradictions of its own
Summary
Improvements in safety appear likely only where economic and social change increase capacities and protections ahead of extreme events In such terms, disaster cannot be segregated from everyday, on-going conditions and development (Fordham 2003; Wisner et al 2004). Development programmes themselves often fail to benefit those most at risk and can, increase their vulnerability, or even turn into disasters for them This is a challenge, given the still dominant emphasis on agent-specific natural or technological hazards and emergency management, which can divert attention and funding away from long-term safety measures (Gilbert 1998; Hewitt 1983a; United Nations [UN] & World Bank 2010).
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