We need to stop creating disaster risk
Mapping hazards provides essential data for disaster risk reduction plans. Here, two practitioners show and explain the risks faced by a community in Haiti.
While we have made significant progress in saving lives and reducing losses through disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives, disaster risk continues to increase. This is partly due to the relentless creation of disaster risk - the process through which humans construct hazard and vulnerability. While some benefit from such processes, it is often who disproportionately embody disaster risks.
A recent review of disaster risk creation discourses indicates that to account for rising risk, we must further risk reduction efforts by proactively avoiding the creation of disaster risk. This requires changes in how we frame, manage, and assess risk, as well as new forms of intervention.
Current risk framings obscure risk creation
Disaster risk is created partly because current risk framings do not account for the priorities of those being put at risk. This means that even amidst risk reduction programmes, those with marginalised voices still bear high risks. of two barangays in the Philippines shows how a sidelining of local narratives on risk is paralleled by a lack of strategies to protect farmer and fisher livelihoods, leaving them vulnerable to future hazards. Accounting for local risk narratives here could help better distribute risk management resources in line with local priorities.
Current efforts to manage disasters are not focused on disaster risk creation
DRR initiatives often . 'Build back better' approaches, for instance, frequently that produced the very risks they set out to reduce. This upholds risk-creating processes by simply preserving the status quo.
Likewise, during disaster response, symptom management might be prioritised over system reform. Such approaches systematically fail to address risk-creating processes and reinforce response-dominated systems. Much of our knowledge on disasters neglects the politics central to disaster risk creation, focusing instead on apolitical and palatable technocratic interventions.
Disaster risk creation is not being measured
To make productive changes, we must first understand the problem. However, risk creation is not systematically measured or tracked. This results in a lack of accountability towards instances of risk creation - likely a key enabler to the of risk-creating activities. Instances of risk creation should be better studied to anticipate initiatives' probable risk-creating consequences.
Existing analytical tools could be adapted to measure risk creation. For instance, the approach, is a versatile tool that could be employed to understand disaster risk creation better. This group of methodologies establishes causal chains between observed disaster loss and damage and the social drivers of risk creation. Alternate approaches could, instead of considering purely manifest loss and damage, connect both observable and anticipated loss and damage to risk creation processes.
Interventions to avoid disaster risk creation are lacking
As something created by human actions, disaster risk creation is avoidable by changing human actions. There is, however, a significant dearth of understanding of practical means through which to avoid the creation of risk.
Communicating how risks are created could help to undermine risk-creating decisions. However, a collective understanding of disaster risk creation may not be so simply determined when different groups hold divergent perspectives. Attempts to draw focus towards risk-creating processes are frequently sidelined where they conflict with power-holding groups' competing interests. To counter this, and capture lived experience and knowledge, it will be essential to highlight the risk perspectives of those bearing the burden of disaster risk creation processes. explores the extent to which the voices of affected communities align with those of risk management practitioners. Shedding light on sidelined risk concerns could help integrate them into risk management practice, preventing such concerns from being neglected, or worse, exacerbated.
We need to turn decisions in favour of avoiding rather than creating disaster risk. The bearers of inequitable risk should be empowered to demand change from those creating it. Risk communication and engagement are mechanisms through which avoiding disaster risk creation could begin to be promoted as a social and institutional priority. shows how risk mapping can enhance youth engagement with risk knowledge in post-landslide resettlement sites, while simultaneously highlighting complex socio-environmental risk drivers. However, no significant ends will be achieved without changing prevailing power dynamics. This necessitates prioritising social justice and collective action to drive transformational changes.
A call to action
We need to address risk creation to continue progressing in DRR. With the up in less than five years, we need to start advocating more for avoiding risk creation through global policy. This will demand investment and political engagement to first unpack and then oppress risk creation. It requires being critical of 'risk-reducing' efforts not attuned to disaster risk creation. It also demands that the bearers of risk be supported in their agency to overcome imposed risk conditions - through community engagement, equitable resource dissemination, and greater accountability in related policies. This requires new forms of knowledge, interventions and , necessitating the engagement of researchers to assess pathways to risk creation and , policymakers to mandate equitable protection mechanisms, and , questioning whether they are in some way contributing to the creation of risk.
Grace Muir is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Her PhD research looks at the concept of disaster risk creation in the context of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects in Indonesia. She completed her Master of Science (MSc) in Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation at Lund University, graduating June 2023. Before this, she completed her Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Geography at Durham University, graduating June 2021. Her MSc and BSc dissertation projects centred on glacier lake outburst floods, respectively assessing impact-based forecasting capacities in Nepal and the physical outburst dynamics of a glacial lake system in Argentina.
Dr Aaron Opdyke is a Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Engineering at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the interface of infrastructure and social systems, examining this nexus in humanitarian response, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation. His work examines disasters across social and engineering boundaries, developing new methods and tools to assess disaster risk which integrate scientific, local, and indigenous knowledge. He holds a PhD and Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder and a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Civil Engineering from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obsipo. He is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of California (USA) and a Chartered Engineer (CPEng) in Australia.