Abstract
Natural disasters are usually regarded as damage factors causing high private and social costs. Notwithstanding the incontestable validity of this premise, natural disasters do not necessarily lead to a structural deprivation of the area affected. Recent studies have clearly shown that in the long run one may even observe positive socio-economic effects (‘blessings in disguise’).This paper investigates this challenging proposition by developing a risk-disaster-opportunity framework for a territorial system, and by analysing the socio-economic impacts of natural shocks from a resilience perspective. This is inter alia done by designing a typology of natural disasters, and by presenting a systematic classification of long-range impacts.An empirical test of the above proposition of positive recovery effects of natural disasters is carried out by using, in particular, long-term data from the worldwide EM-DAT database. The attention is then focussed on positive feedback loops in spatial systems that are affected by a natural perturbation. Various case studies (USA, China, Haiti, Chile, Japan) are undertaken in order to test the existence of long-term ‘blessings in disguise’ effects, using in particular the HDI-index. In various cases, such positive effects appear to exist, depending on the effectiveness of public management of natural disaster phenomena.
Highlights
This study presents a review and an examination of natural induced shocks and their economic impacts by using a holistic resilience-based approach that highlights the importance of perturbations in the evolution and development of territorial systems.We live in a ‘risk society’ (Beck 1992) where threats multiply, as we face more types of hazards— just the ‘usual’ natural risks, and an increasing number of human-induced natural perturbations
This paper investigates this challenging proposition by developing a risk-disasteropportunity framework for a territorial system, and by analysing the socio-economic impacts of natural shocks from a resilience perspective
This sustains the conclusions of Cavallo et al (2010) who analyse the impact of natural disasters on GDP, combining information from comparative case studies chosen with a synthetic control methodology, and state that, unless a natural disaster triggers political turmoil, it would not affect economic growth (Cavallo et al 2010)
Summary
This study presents a review and an examination of natural induced shocks and their economic impacts by using a holistic resilience-based approach that highlights the importance of perturbations in the evolution and development of territorial systems (e.g., cities or regions). Shocks may transform into disasters which are serious disruptions of the functioning of a community or society at any scale (neighbourhood, city, region, country), causing significant human, material, economic or environmental losses which affect or exceed the ability of society to cope with, by using solely its own resources (UN 2016) Such disasters appear at the intersection of hazardous events (that may become shocks), exposure and vulnerability, but they are highly influenced by lack of capacity to resist and reduce the consequence of these events. They share the following features: they are all well-known natural catastrophic events; their occurrences are not very distant in time; these events affected many people; and they induced major economic damages Their significant impact was not the only criterion for their selection: they exhibit five different approaches in disaster and post-disaster management, and a different resilience capacity and performance. Up-to-date data on these important disasters and time series on economic indicators (before and after the shock) will be analysed in order to test and highlight the various scenarios and to explain the adaptive/transformative potential and final outcomes of these events
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