Abstract
While much work has been invested in addressing the economic and technical basis of disaster preparedness, less effort has been directed towards understanding the cultural and social obstacles to and opportunities for disaster risk reduction. This paper presents local insights from five different national settings into the cultural and social contexts of disaster preparedness. In most cases, an early warning system was in place, but it failed to alert people to diverse environmental shocks. The research findings show that despite geographical and typological differences in these locations, the limitations of the systems were fairly similar. In Kenya, people received warnings, but from contradictory systems, whereas in the Philippines and on the island of Saipan, people did not understand the messages or take them seriously. In Bangladesh and Nepal, however, a deeper cultural and religious reasoning serves to explain disasters, and how to prevent them or find safety when they strike.
Highlights
This paper presents research examples from five settings—Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines, and Saipan—where attempts at disaster risk reduction (DRR) have not worked
These failures can be broadly said to have occurred because DRR institutions misunderstood how people perceive risks, and how they behave in relation to different hazards and warnings
The findings relate mainly to situations where the early warning system (EWS) in place did not generate expected results, owing to differences in risk perception and willingness to prepare for hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions
Summary
I will not go, I cannot go: cultural and social limitations of disaster preparedness in Asia, Africa, and Oceania 753 the cultural, in Bangladesh and Nepal there were mismatches between evacuation policies and how people themselves explained disasters, pointing to higher powers and beliefs. The general assumption of many DRR organisations is that individuals will prepare for and evacuate in response to early warning messages (Cutter, 2003; Mitchell, 2000; Morrison, Duncan, and Parton, 2015) Often, though, this is not the case. This paper explores the influence of cultural and social contexts on perceptions of hazards and disasters and the responses to them using case studies from across the world It aims to increase understanding of why people do not always act as expected among those framing scientific and technological ideas about disaster risks. Current DRR assumptions regarding people’s evacuation behaviour involve socioeconomic and technical approaches that assume that people will prepare and respond to early warning messages if they have the means to do so (Mercer et al, 2009; Bankoff, 2015). The government was caught by surprise as it had not expected a severe typhoon at this time of the
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