Planetary disasters: moving the UN disaster risk reduction framework into cosmopolitised reality

Abstract

ABSTRACT I aim to advance the governance of disasters by making it correspond with cosmopolitised reality. Following Ulrich Beck, this correspondence is essential for handling disasters in a constructive way because cosmopolitised reality does not simply challenge existing institutional settings; it reflexively undermines them. I achieve my aim by intervening into a distinct part of the disaster governance discourse, the UN Disaster Risk Reduction Framework discourse. Grounded in a systematic analysis of this discourse, I identify the concept ‘systemic risk’ as a discursive hook to introduce a new concept, ‘planetary disaster’. ‘Planetary disaster’ inscribes the distinctly integrated nature of cosmopolitised reality into the idea of ‘disaster’. With that, it opens new horizons in imagining disaster governance and its institutions.