Abstract
The transition from a response-based paradigm to an anticipative, prevention-based approach remains a stubborn challenge in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Whilst the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has advocated the latter since the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction in the 1990s, many countries have been slow to move from a response-focused approach to a preventative one. International policy guidelines have successfully informed the national DRR policies in various countries; however, their further translation down to the regional and local level is full of complex political challenges, exacerbated in many areas by an increased frequency of disasters. In this paper we explore the case of India, using the example of landslide risk management. Through an analysis of the evolution of landslide risk governance during the last two decades in two hilly regions – Darjeeling in the Himalayas and the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats – we demonstrate that while the national government appears to have made considerable efforts to move in line with the UNDRR approaches, the eventual outcome of these efforts at the regional and local level is largely an incremental improvement on the existing DRR approach and not a paradigm shift in understanding and addressing disaster risk. We argue that overcoming these issues requires attentiveness to a situated understanding of disasters and institutions at the local level, and not treating apparent gaps between policy and action as functional challenges to be overcome with new science from national level.
Highlights
A conceptual shift towards anticipatory management of disasters began in the mid-1970s, as the culmination of a change in comprehen sion of disasters from ‘acts of God’ to social phenomena [1,2]
In this paper we explore this apparent lack of ‘compliance’ with the Act, through interviews with officials, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and first-responders involved in landslide risk management in two mountainous districts in India1: the Nilgiris and Darjeeling
In the opening section of this paper, we showed how the shift from disaster management to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the international policy guidelines was a slow one, based on a transition in considering disasters as ‘acts of God’ beyond human control to social phenomena stemming from the interaction of two main components: hazards and vulnerability
Summary
A conceptual shift towards anticipatory management of disasters began in the mid-1970s, as the culmination of a change in comprehen sion of disasters from ‘acts of God’ to social phenomena [1,2] Before this point, the international effort was largely reactive, institutionalised through bodies such as the United Nations Disaster Relief Office, created in 1971 to promote the ‘study, prevention, control, and prediction of natural disasters’ [3]; emphasis added). The current UN terminology regards Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) as ‘the policy objective of disaster risk management’, with disaster risk management being the application of DRR strategies to prevent, reduce and manage disaster risk [6] Echoing these shifts within the UN, India underwent a major shift in its approach towards disasters in 2005 with the introduction of the Disaster Management Act (referred as ‘the Act’ from here on) [7,8][9], like many countries in the mid-2000s [10,11,12]. A change in focus towards inte grating national-level management with a bottom-up, situated approach to disaster management in India is instead the paradigm shift that is required
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
