Improving Effectiveness in Disaster Planning

On the first day of the Water Science, Policy and Management course the professors tell you what makes water unique. “Remember, water is the only natural resource that has both the power to create and destroy. We need water, but in moderation and at the right times.” Water is therefore inherently risky. Globally water variability—too much, too little, too infrequently—correlates strongly with national GDP. Even at the sub-national level, those areas with greater water variability tend to be areas of human underdevelopment and insecurity, except where a relatively wealthy government can overcome hydrology through infrastructure investment (ex. the cases of Japan or the American Southwest). Having spent the last several months working with the US government to improve the procedures related to US disaster relief response and reconstruction, particularly from the perspective of high performance building and affordable housing in high risk areas, this week’s readings in political ecology provide a lens through which to combine disaster planning and relief with risk assessment—tasks traditionally undertaken by disparate and poorly connected communities. Johnson (2011) generates a political ecology for the risk industry in which risk is actively produced by the risk insurance industry in order to create an inexhaustible market of identifying, calculating, and securing risk. Inherently political in nature, Johnson frames this market as depending upon three factors—the ability to create and leverage: fear, value (economic), and science/knowledge. Of the three factors, science is the least well integrated into the ecosystem the author creates in that science is itself not a factor, but a tool to drive fear. On one hand climate change science enables the industry to calculate risk that must be secured against. Simultaneously, all insurers receive climate models and risk analysis from the same two companies—a stove-piping and commoditization of knowledge that creates industry fear of further risk and requires more security-seeking behaviors. In Melling’s “Flood hazards in urban Guyana” (1999) the author seeks to reframe flooding and flood vulnerability as a product of political and social structures rather than an accident of nature in itself. The author first grounds his argument in the history of how riverside territory was seen throughout Guyana’s history, how the history of Guyana and the capital Georgetown affect the city’s development, and how the interplay between social and economic inequalities and political structures create and magnify flood vulnerability. This article is strongest as the author defines the link between poverty and vulnerability and how the undemocratic power structures in Guyana create risk. [In fact, if Melling were to apply his excellent definition of vulnerability (exposure + resilience + resistance) to Johnson’s article he would most likely model the insurance industry as one seeking to minimize exposure and increase resilience by spreading risk, but which suffers from limited resistance.] Both of the case studies included exhibit the author’s intended counternarrative wherein vulnerability and capacity are uneven and a vulnerability results from existing unequal political, social, and economic structures and institutions. However, including two case studies adds little to the article and its conclusions as there are few meaningful insights from the peri-urban case study in particular that could not be garnered from the urban case study. In addition, in his concluding remarks Melling fails to aggregate the lessons from the case studies to create meaningful and useful coherent “lessons learned” for urban managers. While he does note that development should be more inclusive and democratic and should link together flood prevention and development, none of the specifics from his case studies are used to develop a framework or set of actionable recommendations. Perhaps the subjects of Melling’s article could use a form of the insurance discussed and critiqued by Johnson. Both articles point to the necessity of a framework for understanding disaster that includes historical and current social, political, and economic factors, and which sees risk events as rooted in a particular place and as part of an ecosystem. This ecology of risk is especially useful for understanding key supply chain vulnerabilities (such as knowledge), how existing power structures exacerbate or create greater than necessary risk, and for seeing and measuring the constraints on how successful a particular development or vulnerability intervention might be. In the real world, this means resource managers, city planners, development officials, and nontraditional partners creating comprehensive narratives for risk and vulnerability that are rooted in space and time and finding innovative forms of insurance (beyond traditional economic structures) to build capacity and improve security for the most vulnerable populations. Works Cited: Johnson, L. 2011. Chapter 9 in Peet et al. “Climate Change and the Risk Industry: The Multiplication of Fear and Value.” Pelling, Mark. 1999. “The political ecology of flood hazard in urban Guyana.” Geoforum Vo. 30 (3).