Disaster Vulnerabilities

How can human societies reduce disaster vulnerabilities, and why is this so difficult?

Over anthropology disaster course we have learned different approaches, means and solutions how disaster management can be prevented or what will change after it has occurred. It is difficult to admit that we can’t control everything. We, as humans, are vulnerable to many factors but in this discourse my main interest is vulnerability as tool to prevent or maintain disasters. This raises many questions to what I try to give answers in my essay. I want to know to what are we vulnerable in the context of risk and hazard. What makes us vulnerable to threats we encounter and how can we prevent some of those threats? Vulnerability has been one of the means

Governmental policy or economic forces have promoted similar inappropriate forms of production in many parts of the world, which set in motion processes of soil erosion, desertification, and deforestation and produce conditions of extreme environmental vulnerability to natural hazards. In effect, such processes are creating both vulnerability and the preconditions of a disaster agent (Oliver-Smith 1996:315). These problems mainly occur in developing countries where resources are limited and economical or political influence is less noticeable. Structural forces, like the poverty and racism that heighten vulnerability by preventing the poor from receiving education and health care access, the multinational greed that prevents life-prolonging treatment drugs from reaching the poor, and neo-liberal economic policies that force governments to slash safety nets and reduce spending on crucial social services (Doug 2005:5), are especially noticeable in high-risk countries. All these can be prevented or reduce social vulnerability by different methods, but unstable economy, energy crises and recession over the world from the beginning of 21st century have

The two are variants of the same hegemonic discourse that identifies one and the same parts of the globe as the abode of mainly disadvantaged people who dwell in poorly governed and environmentally degraded spaces. The concept of vulnerability still encourages a sense of societies and people as weak, passive and pathetic (Bankoff 2001:29). Increasing vulnerability to hazard continues relatively unabated today, largely because of the undermining of indigenous adaptations, based on long-term experience in local environments, through direct government policies or political economic forces creating production systems inappropriate to local culture and environmental conditions. Large-scale economic interventions such as mining, forestry, irrigation, hydroelectric, and industrial enterprises are creating hazardous conditions around the globe. Government economic policies designed to enhance growth are setting in motion processes with dangerous, potentially catastrophic ecological consequences (Oliver-Smith 1996:315). Accordingly, the discourse of vulnerability delimits a large part of the globe whose inhabitants are three to four times