Disaster Justice Research Articles

Invoking “Indigenous Circumstances” in Disaster Governance Implications for Disaster Justice

Invoking “Indigenous Circumstances” in Disaster Governance Implications for Disaster Justice

Reframing Disaster Justice: Conceptual Provocations, Practical Insights, and Research Directions

Reframing Disaster Justice: Conceptual Provocations, Practical Insights, and Research Directions

Feminization of Responsibility in Community Recovery: Rethinking Disaster Justice through the Lens of Care

Feminization of Responsibility in Community Recovery: Rethinking Disaster Justice through the Lens of Care

Grounding Disaster Justice: Perspectives from Practitioners

Grounding Disaster Justice: Perspectives from Practitioners

Disaster Justice in Philippine Contexts: Revisiting Frameworks and Interrogating Practices

Disaster Justice in Philippine Contexts: Revisiting Frameworks and Interrogating Practices

Disaster Justice in Climate Resettlement: Is There a Potential for Equitable Processes and Outcomes?

Disaster Justice in Climate Resettlement: Is There a Potential for Equitable Processes and Outcomes?

Demanding Disaster Justice: Social Movement Framing and Mobilization after Super Typhoon Yolanda

Demanding Disaster Justice: Social Movement Framing and Mobilization after Super Typhoon Yolanda

Foreign labour migration in Nepal in relation to COVID-19: analysis of migrants’ aspirations, policy response and policy gaps from disaster justice perspective

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the effectiveness of migration policies in dealing with the challenges that Nepalese migrants faced during this pandemic from a disaster justice perspective. Like in other periods of natural or human-made crises, the Nepal Government brought new policies and programmes to help the victims in their reintegration. In this context, this paper examines what policies and programmes worked and what did not work based on the findings of a large survey conducted among migrants and qualitative information collected during the implementation of a programme on reintegration. The paper highlights that understanding the social vulnerability of migrants is critical to devising policies that could benefit them in such disasters. It demonstrates that socially vulnerable groups are not only disproportionately affected by disasters and are less capable of resilience and recovery; they are also not supported well by public institutions like the government. This situation makes such migrants further vulnerable to poverty, physical exploitation and psychological stresses, which calls for policies and programmes that support them in preparedness and, in the event of a disaster, long-term recovery until they become resilient. This study shows that local governments are in a better position to target the ‘socially vulnerable’ and to implement reintegration programmes.

Community resilience, governance, and [in]justice in the context of informal housing after an F3 tornado

ABSTRACT Communities around the world are experiencing significant challenges created by climate change. A large body of resilience literature has examined how communities respond to natural disasters created by this phenomenon. However, resilience studies often fail to acknowledge anthropogenic factors that create and reproduce local vulnerabilities and injustices. Drawing on community resilience and socio-spatial and disaster justice work, this case-study examines whether post-disaster responses contemplated existing injustices and the local views necessary to address housing problems after an F3 tornado in a Southwestern Uruguayan community. Field work was conducted in 2018. Methods included spatial mapping analysis, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, participant observations, and analysis of secondary data. Findings reveal how post-disaster decisions omitted existing injustices materialized by precarious and informal housing conditions, ignoring the views of community residents who responded by claiming “the right to the community.”

Climate Disaster Risk, Disability, and Resilience

This essay examines the everyday inequalities, stigmas, and injustices that leave people with disabilities highly vulnerable to escalating climate change risks. It argues that including people with disabilities in disaster risk reduction processes is essential to shaping inclusive, effective policies and practices. Examples of several programs that have done so are discussed. Focusing on the strengths of people with disabilities as resilient change-makers and as the experts in their own lives—instead of viewing them as dependent on others—can lead to the changes necessary to recognize their personal sovereignty and deliver disaster justice. Third in a series on disability rights around the world.

Geographies of Doing Nothing–Internal Displacement and Practices of Post-Disaster Recovery in Urban Areas of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Disaster-related internal displacement is on the rise in many countries and is increasingly becoming an urban phenomenon. For many people, as in the case of the earthquake disaster 2015 in Nepal, protracted or multiple disaster displacements are a lived reality. While the drivers of displacement are relatively well understood, significant uncertainties remain regarding the factors that trigger prolonged or secondary displacement and impede ending of displacement or achieving durable solutions. The purpose of this article is to illustrate and theorise the discourse of reconstruction and return that shapes experiences, strategies, and policies in order to gain a better understanding of the obstacles to pursuing durable solutions that are still shaping the reality of life for urban internally displaced people (IDPs) in Kathmandu Valley. I use the concepts of ‘fields of practice’ and ‘disaster justice’ to provide insights into the theorisation of the links between social inequality, structural forms of governance, and the reconstruction process itself. Findings demonstrate that the application of these concepts has great potential to expand our understanding of ‘realities of life’ and practices of IDPs, and thus contribute to a more differentiated evidence base for the development and implementation of appropriate disaster risk reduction policies and practices.

Disaster justice for people with disabilities

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to examine disaster justice for people with disabilities (PWD).Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the capability approach, the article explores distributive injustice that PWD face in dealing with disasters. It discusses procedural justice with a focus on the agency of PWD and their participation in decision-making processes concerning disaster risk reduction.FindingsIt argues that disaster injustice faced by PWD can be construed as the inequalities of capabilities that they experience in coping with disasters. Furthermore, although social structures play an important role in creating and perpetuating disaster injustice, PWD, as agents of change, have power to transform social structures that, in turn, bring about justice for themselves.Originality/valueThe article raises the need for considering the equality of capabilities and human agency in achieving disaster justice for PWD.

“UNNATURAL” DISASTERS AND INJUSTICE IN THE INDIAN RISKSCAPE: UNLEASHING YOUTH POTENTIAL

The vulnerabilities that turn natural hazards such as hurricanes and earthquakes into disasters are rooted in inequality. The overarching aim of this article is to shed light on the nexus between social justice principles and the mitigation of disaster impacts. The article uses ‘disaster justice’ – an offshoot of ‘environmental justice’ – as a conceptual lens to help enrich understanding of the differential impacts of disasters upon communities and to craft more inclusive policies and programmes. In India, among the world's most disaster-prone countries, as elsewhere, there is growing recognition that children and youth, who assume a disproportionate share of the burden created by disasters, are an underutilized demographic force multipliers for disaster risk reduction. The country's multi-hazard risk and vulnerability profile has led Indian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) not just to provide post-disaster relief but increasingly to integrate into their work programs designed to unleash the potential of young people to develop the resilience of their communities.

Contested notions of disaster justice during the 2011 Bangkok floods: Unequal risk, unrest and claims to the city

The 2011 Bangkok floods, a slow onset event, flooded significant parts of the city. The state's response to flooding followed a traditional cultural and hierarchical approach to justice within Thailand, stemming from Buddhist values, an informal caste system and monarchical order. This resulted in a spatially uneven outcome, with the ‘preservation’ of the central city and two‐month‐long floods in outer suburbs, exacerbated by inadequate management and coordination. Suburban communities sought a more egalitarian notion of disaster justice, with hazard burdens shared more equitably and people having adequate access to decision‐making over the distribution of disaster risk and compensation for damage. Extensive damage, and reduced livelihoods, caused friction between the two views, and protests, contestations and conflicts during the floods, in four different community contexts in northern Bangkok. By generating alternative discourses, challenging the hierarchical notion of justice and taking direct action to removing floodwalls, protesters sought to reshape the spatiality of the floodwater and claim inclusive citizenship and their right to the city. Existing perceptions of disaster justice, usually focused on liberal state responses to understanding disasters as natural episodes, are alone inadequate to explain the outcomes of and responses to disasters in different cultural contexts.

Disaster justice in Nepal's earthquake recovery

Many policies on disaster governance and community resilience aim at enhancing justice outcomes at the local community level. In so doing, they tend to focus on equal distribution of a set of rights and goods among the communities. However, these rights and goods are defined by an underlying value structure, and such structures tend to mirror the interests of the powerful groups in the community. The fundamental problem is that the equality of the rights and redistribution of the goods cannot remedy disaster injustices. Taking a case study from Nepal's earthquake 2015, this paper aims to link key works on disasters with justice theories - an attempt, which could help strengthen the conceptual foundations of policy responses to disaster recovery. We use the Nepal case of earthquake recovery to demonstrate the relevance of disaster justice lens which emphasizes the role of disaster justice champions, critical politics of knowledge, accountability, representation and disaster justice convictions. We demonstrate that the platform of critical knowledge politics is important where civic science and traditional science is deliberated, interrogated, negotiated and integrated. We argue that only when disaster justice champions with convictions of priority to the disadvantaged effectively utilizes the platform of critical knowledge politics, it is possible to influence political deliberations and decision making that can potentially enhance disaster justice in practice. Finally, and in a more theoretical sense, we argue that in order to enhance disaster justice, responses need to be informed by the understanding of 'justice as redistribution' as well as 'justice as recognition'.

Understanding disaster (in)justice: Spatializing the production of vulnerabilities of indigenous people in Taiwan

Existing disaster studies scholarship tends to uncritically privilege official institutional responses to disasters over bottom-up, community-based reactions and adaptations in the longer term. Meanwhile, the state-recognized disasters mostly exclude socioeconomic and environmental contradictions that generate disasters by making people vulnerable in the first place. Discussion of disaster justice, then, is limited to the immediate state responses to understanding disasters as natural episodes, often incorporating distributive justice into its policy responses. A more spatialized understanding of disaster justice should move beyond these dual limitations—constraints in defining disasters as isolated episodes and in planning for recovery as only emergency responses—and pay attention to the socio-spatial production of risk. This approach would better attend to underlying societal vulnerabilities created through urbanization, in this case, of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. A spatialized understanding of d...