The news is full of disasters: droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, chemical spills and more. They are more frequent, and their scale of impact is growing according to UN reports. A whole industry focused on disaster risk reduction and response has grown up. But does this address uncertainties or just focus on risk, trying to improve prediction?
Moving from global UN discussions around the ‘Sendai framework’ to the rangelands of southern Ethiopia, the sixth chapter in the book, Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World, looks at how disasters are constructed and responded to by different actors. It finds that externally-imposed technological and financial solutions focused on early warning, anticipatory action, risk management or ‘de-risking’ (such as through insurance) are not trusted and do not integrate well with local experiences of multiple, intersecting uncertainties.
This article is from Zimbabweland, a blog written by IDS Research Fellow Ian Scoones. Zimbabweland focuses on issues related to rural livelihoods and land reform in Zimbabwe.
