Disasters and Poverty: The Risk Nexus
A Review of Literature
Background Paper for the 2009 ISDR Global Assessment Report on Disaster
Risk Reduction
Shefali Juneja*
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat, Geneva
August 2008
* With thanks to Andrew Maskrey and Terry Jeggle for their review and inputs.
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I. THE RISK-POVERTY DEBATE: Contemporary perspectives
Since the 1960s, different paradigms in research, policy and practice have emerged as a result of efforts
to explore the dynamic relationship between disasters and poverty. In the academic literature, there has
long been cognizance of the disproportionate impacts that disasters have on poor people, and the
recognition that being poor itself implies being ‘at risk’. However, attribution of the exact nature of
mutual impacts between disasters and poverty has depended on the evolving conceptual frameworks and
perspectives adopted in research, policy and practice.
Policy and practice have – somewhat reluctantly - been influenced by conceptual shifts in the academic
discourse to varying degrees in the past three or more decades. Explicit policy acknowledgement of the
mutual impacts between disasters and poverty has only very recently been achieved since the late 1990s,
while the academic literature since the early 1970s had long established the mutual links.
It should be said at the outset that within the context of new development challenges across the world –
noticeably in terms of the dynamics of economic globalization and climate change - the risk-poverty
nexus is increasingly being treated with the attention it deserves, even if its translation into policy and
action has been marked by a ‘conceptual lag’ in past years. It is worth briefly highlighting two significant
and competing perspectives which are predominant in the contemporary ‘risk-poverty’ discourse.
The ‘realist’/ techno scientific perspective broadly seeks to define risk and responses to it in terms of
measurable, calculable probabilities. The risk-poverty interaction from this perspective is seen as the (in)
capacity of households and individuals to ‘manage’ their response to the consequences of an adverse
shock or stress event, such as a natural hazard. The ‘response’ has been typically defined as the function
of a household’s asset endowment and access to insurance mechanisms (World Bank, 2002: 135). This
perspective is dominant among economists, planners and advisors in international monetary and financial
institutions and donor agencies.
An alternative thesis is presented by the ‘social constructivist’ perspective which suggests that exploring
the risk-poverty nexus is contingent on how the notions of risk and poverty come to be constructed,
identified and dealt with in particular historical, socio-cultural and political contexts. Risk, poverty and
vulnerability as defined by this discourse, are expressed as political constructs and hence are to be dealt
with differently, pertinent to context. This perspective has been adopted in the sociological risk literature
and among civil society activist groups across parts of the developing world, who emphasize ‘relative’
contexts as being central to understanding risk - poverty interactions.
Before engaging in greater detail with the contemporary ‘risk - poverty’ debate as delineated by these
two dominant perspectives, it will be useful to anchor this discussion in some historical reference. It will
be especially important to examine how perspectives from the past decades have evolved and crystallized
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in the contemporary discourse, if future directions for a more integrated perspective on the risk - poverty
discussion are to be realized.
II. RISK, POVERTY and VULNERABILITY: Evolving paradigms since the 1960s
Traced chronologically, since the 1960s, six broad trends can be identified in attempts to address the
interaction between disasters and poverty. The wide ranging and still evolving concept of ‘vulnerability’
has been central to defining the nature of this interaction.
Physical Vulnerability
A first significant trend is represented by the early disaster risk reduction literature of the 1960s, when
the concept of vulnerability was initially used by engineers and architects to study the differential impacts
of hazards such as earthquakes and cyclones, on various types of physical structures and locations.
Vulnerability was viewed as a measure of the propensity to damage a structure could face from a hazard
of a given intensity (UNDRO 1979). While this predominantly ‘physicalist’ analysis was not undertaken
from a social perspective, such studies often concluded that the space/ locations which poor people
inhabited and the houses and built environment they lived in were particularly vulnerable to natural
hazards.
Before the late 1970s – when the concept of vulnerability was first used to explain disasters as the
outcome of socio-economic and political processes, there were a range of prevailing views - none of
which dealt with the issue of how society creates the conditions in which people face hazards differently
(Wisner et al 1994).
The concept of vulnerability acquired quite a different meaning when researchers in the 1970’s began to
postulate that vulnerability was not just an attribute of physical structures but of social groups and that
vulnerability was socially produced or at least influenced, in the sense that it is development processes
that lead to certain social and economic groups becoming vulnerable (Wisner et al 1994; Hewitt et al).
The causality of disasters thus shifted from the purely physical to the social and political realm.
Social Vulnerability
Between the 1970s and early 1980s, a second trend emerged where the dominant theme was an
exploration of the social production of risk and the concept of social vulnerability and exclusion came to
frame this discourse. This perspective examined patterns of vulnerability and risk as being socially
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produced - as part of and resulting from development activities. Seen as endogenous manifestations,
poverty and associated conditions of deprivation were identified as root causes of disasters.
Writing in 1976, Westgate and O’Keefe proposed that ‘vulnerability should be a term that embraces not
merely risk from extreme phenomena but the endemic conditions inherent in a particular society that
may exacerbate that risk’ (cited in Vatsa and Krimgold 2000). Natural disasters also came to be seen as
not natural per se and by no means accidental, but rather as characteristic for the place and/ or society
in which they occur. This perspective highlights the historical, cultural, social and political processes and
structures – the ‘root causes’ - that lead to ‘unsafe conditions’ (Blaikie et al 1994).
Wisner et al described disasters as being a “complex mix of natural hazards and human action… for many
people disaster is not a single, discrete event” (ibid 2003: 15). This perspective presented ‘social
causation’ as a framework for assessing risk - poverty impacts with evidence of how repeated and
cumulative shocks from famine, disease, wars and displacement erode whatever attempts are made by
people to accumulate resources and savings.
Through the 1970s, while researchers in Europe were concerned with processes of the social production
of vulnerability, North American sociologists, focused on studying the ‘human aspects’ of vulnerability
framed by a consideration of ‘context’ to analyse how different social, economic and cultural attributes,
influence the capacities of households, communities or individuals to respond to and recover from a
disaster.
Prominently, Dynes and Quarantelli in 1973 analysed the family and community context of individual
reactions to disasters. These and successive sociologists made reference to a wide corpus of research
and findings from different parts of the world demonstrating some unity in trends in reactions to disaster
warnings, reactions to threat, reactions to impact and coping with loss, concluding that the family and
the larger community contexts act as mediating structures within which individual reactions to disasters
and their aftermath are framed. This discussion has an interesting application in contemporary risk
discourse from the social constructivist position – where risk perception is as important in determining
responses and coping or adaptation strategies as an objective ‘knowledge of risk’. That is, risk messages
are constructed within, and as a result of social, economic and political contexts.
In 1976, Dynes and Quarantelli also undertook interesting research on the ‘human’ aspects of
vulnerability by assessing the conditions in which community conflicts are manifested during natural
disasters. They concluded that there is unity in purpose and action at the community level, during
preparation for a natural hazard event, contributing to the general lack of conflicts ex-ante. However,
they found that there are contexts which could tend to produce conflict during the rehabilitation phase, in
the aftermath of a disaster. Such conflict mainly centers around the ‘allocation of blame’ and the
‘allocation of resources’ for rehabilitation (ibid 1976: 146). Although Dynes and Quarantelli’s research was
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conducted amongst American Gulf coast communities affected by hurricanes, the research findings could
have an interesting resonance across communities in different regions.
The exacerbation of socio-economic and gendered vulnerabilities owing to community conflicts in the
aftermath of disasters has been explored by policy in the past decade, but its application to programming
is not very widespread. However, the consideration of the disaster – conflict interface viewed through a
poverty reduction lens has been recently assessed by a few agencies working in conflict-affected and
disaster-prone countries or regions (Action Aid study in 2005, UNDP BCPR in 2007 – both not released).
It should be noted that these have been motivated by a view to engage in more effective crisis
prevention and recovery programming.
Overall, while the ‘human aspects’ of vulnerability came to be well explored from the social, ethnic, and
political lens through the 1970s/ early 1980s, the exploration remained confined to research within
particular disciplines and did not penetrate the mainstream thinking on disaster management.
Livelihood vulnerabilities – social, economic and gendered perspectives
In the late 1970s but predominantly in the 1980s, a third trend emerged, represented by the social
aspects of the risk discourse becoming more pronounced and moving beyond the conceptual discussion
into the more empirical sphere with research from Latin America and Asia focusing on the livelihoods of
the poor in urban and rural habitats (Maskrey 1989, Wilches-Chaux, 1987; Herzer, Hardoy, Caputo et.al.
1985).
A recognition developed quite early in the 1980s that “social processes generate unequal exposure to risk
by making some people more prone to disaster than others and these inequalities are largely a function
of power relations in every society” (Hilhorst and Bankoff 2004) which was understood in terms of the
vulnerability of an individual, household, community, or society.
Academics like Robert Chambers also explored the changing degree of vulnerability and social impacts on
the poor. In 1989, Robert Chambers examined the concept in the context of ‘coping and poverty’. He
expressed in clear terms that “vulnerability is not the same as poverty. It means not lack or want, but
defenselessness, insecurity and exposure to risk, shocks and stress”. He further elaborated that
‘vulnerability has two sides: an external side of risks, shocks, and stress to which an individual or
household is subject; and an internal side which is defenselessness, meaning a lack of means to cope
without damaging loss’ (Chambers, 1989: 1).
In 1989, Chambers recorded in Alex de Waal’s article on the famine in south Sudan that in parts of the
rural south, trends could be discerned which made poor people more vulnerable. A decline in patron-
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client relations, declining support from the extended family, rising costs of contingencies, weddings, bride
price, and dowry have tended to rise, along with mortgage, sale or loss of tangible assets in order to
obtain food, culminating in loss of means of livelihood and destitution (1989: 4) all contributing to the
socio-economic vulnerability of the rural population.
Recognizing livelihood vulnerabilities as central to addressing poverty and risks has been prevalent in
academic literature for over two decades now (Chambers, 1989 and Chambers and Connway, 1999). In
rural, urban, and increasingly, periurban settlements, livelihoods have been assessed as markers of a
persons’, households’, or communities’ changing degree and nature of vulnerabilities. Simply defined as a
‘means of living’ - livelihoods determine where people live, what kind of work they engage in, and how
they sustain themselves.
Livelihoods’ thinking traditionally emerged from concerns of rural natural resources and food security –
the latter relating in particular to drought induced famine in Africa (de Waal 1987; Sanderson, 2000: 5).
More recently, Ian Christopolis et al observed - “the realization that dealing with risk and insecurity is a
central part of how poor people develop their livelihood strategies has begun to position disaster
mitigation and preparedness within many poverty alleviation agendas (2001:1).”
This exploration of risk-poverty links has been reflected in the current discourse on understanding
differential vulnerabilities, identifying livelihood strategies at the household and community level in riskprone, poor, marginal rural or periurban settlements (Devereux 1993; Brocklesby 1999, 2004; Smucker
and Wisner 2008; Lautze 1997, and others) and in communities coping with risks in urban settlements
(Satherwaite 2002; Moser 1996; Bull-Kamanga et al 2003; Sanderson 2005, and others).
Trends in how households cope with livelihood practices that are particularly conducive to increased
exposure to hazard loss or damage have also been a subject for exploration in urban studies (IIED 2002,
Satterthwaite et al 2007 and others). Many case studies have shown that households may accept
increased hazard exposure as the cost of achieving an urban location that provides access to employment
and services (Lavell, 1994).
For instance, immigrants of poor households seeking to escape poverty in rural areas often arrived into or
form urban informal settlements. This occurred where land values were low and the pressing need to
acquire housing and basic services translated into sub-standard urbanization, characterized by unsafedwellings, precarious or non-existent public infrastructure, and overcrowding. Altogether these factors
created the breeding ground for a hazard (say a storm) to bring disproportionate impacts on such
informal settlement residents.
From the policy perspective, the ‘sustainable livelihoods’ discourse was adopted in the ‘mainstream’ by
the early 1990s. The Brundtland Commission on sustainability and the environment – convened by the
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UN in 1983, first popularized the term ‘sustainable livelihoods’. The concept was to be adopted more than
a decade later in the mainstream policy discourse, by the UK’s Department for International Development,
the United Nations Development Programme, followed by a host of NGOs, civil society actors all
propagating various interpretations of the concept across the regions.
From the late 1980s until the mid 1990s, the economic focus on vulnerability came back into the debate –
and was applied in practical research and supported by policy oriented towards ‘correcting’ the macro
economics in most parts of the developing world. There was a shift from social characterization of risk to
examining economic impacts of disasters on poor and development activities at large. . Disaster loss was
now increasingly measured in terms of mortality and economic loss and attention was almost exclusively
at the macro/ national level statistics.
It is useful to note that through the 1970s and 1980s most ‘development’ in the ‘Third World’ was marked
by macro economic structural reforms undertaken to implement what has been termed the ‘liberalization
of the development discourse’ (Duffield 2001). In many senses this marked the establishment of the neo-
liberal agenda as conceived largely by Northern governments, bi-lateral and donor agencies lending
capital to Third World countries with a view to aid economic development in the politico-economic model
adopted by post-war, predominantly western economies.
The policy focus through the 1980s was transfixed clearly on ‘poverty reduction’ – through economic
reforms, structural adjustments, and institutional alignment in view of the objectives put forth by the
neo-liberal development discourse. In both policy and practice, however, disasters continued to be looked
upon in a largely fatalistic manner, and at best, as ‘interruptions’ to national and international poverty
reduction goals. Policy response to disasters thus remained largely reactive in these decades, through
allocation of efficient rescue and life saving services. Disaster events and their impacts were to be
managed – but the conditions for/ of disaster risk were not necessarily reduced or prevented from
accumulating in a proactive/ anticipatory manner.
The late 1980s were also characterized by a rapid increase in the study of ‘gender’. By the 1990s, the
debate shifted gear from a previously singular focus on conceptualizing ‘women in development’ to
examining wider gender relations (‘gender and development’). This shift in mainstream focus had
implications on how gender came to be examined in disaster scholarship, and in the policy sphere.
While gender as a critical dimension of the social structure has been addressed quite extensively in
poverty literature from the 1990s onwards, it still remains, underdeveloped in disaster scholarship - an
oversight raised by some over a decade ago (Quarantelli 1994, Fothergill 1996), but not acknowledged by
many until recently. Although, some relevant analysis on the gender dimensions of the risk-poverty
interaction can be found from countries across Asia, Africa and the United States (Kabeer 1991, Agarwal
1990, Enarson 2000, and others) over the years.
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Most of the emphasis of such scholarship in South Asian countries has been on examining the gender
dimensions of environmental risks, degradation and the appropriation of natural resources by the state,
and by a minority of individuals, which tend to have adverse implications for the female members of poor
rural households (Agarwal 1995, 2000). This concern also has been evident across Africa – where the
analysis has focused more on the impacts of drought on coping and livelihood strategies employed by
households (Lautze 1997, Smucker and Wisner 2008).
Some of the conclusions from research have been that women face greater vulnerability than men in
developing countries (Noel 1990, IFRC 1994). Care giving responsibilities, a lack of mobility, and social
isolation all contribute to women’s risk exposure and vulnerability across these contexts (Fothergill 1996).
Well being, Human Development and a Safer World Agenda
In the 1990s the concept of ‘well being’ came to replace previous poverty measurement approaches from
a purely economics perspective, marking the development of a fourth trend. The academic literature
began to focus on examining household coping strategies in times of seasonality and calamity, mostly in
the context of food insecurity during periods of drought. Cases across Asia and Africa in particular exhibit
analysis of social and economic vulnerabilities at the household level. These are derived from the
economics focused ‘assets’ and ‘entitlements approach’ put forth by Amartya Sen in the early 1980s and
followed by derivations/ adaptations by Swift (1989), Winchester (1992), Blaikie et al (1994) and others,
with a clear move towards examining ‘human’ poverty as opposed to ‘income-based’ measures of poverty
used thus far.
In 1994 Blaikie and others pointed out that ‘vulnerability is a relative and specific term, always implying a
vulnerability to a specific hazard… it is a combination of characteristics of a person or group, expressed in
relation to hazard exposure which derives from the social and economic condition of the individual, family
or community concerned. High levels of vulnerability imply a grave outcome in hazard events but are a
complex descriptive measure of people’s lack or needs’.
The discourse recognized that risk is configured over time through a complex interaction between
processes that generate conditions of hazard, exposure and vulnerability, together constituting what is
currently termed ‘disaster risk’.
This conceptual framework now informs much of the contemporary thinking on the concept and practice
of ‘disaster risk reduction’ – defined as systematic efforts to analyze and manage the causal factors of
disasters, including through reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property,
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wise management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness for adverse events (UNISDR
2009).
In terms of academic and policy interactions, it is significant that in the early 1990s, regional research
and findings on the risk-poverty interaction began to inform international policy for the first time. The
first major policy influence was exerted through the ‘Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer
World’ in 1994.
Prior to the adoption of the Yokohama Strategy in 1994 by the World Conference on Disaster Reduction,
the United Nations declared 1990-1999 as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction
(IDNDR). The UNDP’s Reducing Disaster Risk Report in 2004 succinctly observed, “Declaration of the
IDNDR helped raise the profile of discussions surrounding the social and economic causes of disaster risk.
In acknowledging this came the realization that mitigating losses through technological and engineering
solutions dealt with the symptoms rather than the causes of the problem and that reducing disaster risk
required a long term engagement with processes of international development” (UNDP 2004: 17).
Further, the Yokohama Strategy in 1994 explicitly acknowledged the disaster-poverty link:
“In all countries the poor and socially disadvantaged groups suffer most from natural disasters and are
least equipped to cope with them. In fact disasters contribute to social, economic, cultural and political
disruption in urban and rural contexts, each in its specific way. Large-scale urban concentrations are
particularly fragile because of their complexity and the accumulation of population and infrastructures in
limited areas”.
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It was equally significant that in 1990, ‘human development’ was given a firmer conceptual, quantitative
and policy focus through the publication of the first global Human Development Report. The “human
development framework is anchored in the idea that while economic prosperity may help people lead
freer and more fulfilling lives, education and health, among other factors, influence the quality of people’s
freedoms” (UNDP, 2007: 35). Over the years, and especially with the climate change debate now in the
forefront of policy emphasis, the Human Development Reports have recognised that “shocks and crises
can have significant implications for human development, especially for households with limited asset
bases… other adverse consequences stem from the failure of markets, environmental changes and the
lack of public risk management strategies” (UNDP 2007: 46).
The World Economic and Social Survey (2008) makes an interesting observation that reflects on the
contemporary ‘realist/ techno’ perspective of the risk-poverty discourse and on what it calls the ‘myth of
self-regulating markets’. According to the Survey “many of the stresses and burdens of unregulated
markets have been unloaded onto individuals and households and with diminished or only limited
offsetting government responses – the ‘great risk shift’ as its referred to in the USA” (2008:vi).
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http://www.unisdr.org/eng/about_isdr/bd-yokohama-strat-eng.htm#yoko1
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Governance and accountability: combating disaster risk, climate change and urbanization
The trend discussed above has been followed by another since the late 1990s – a growing emphasis on
the governance and institutional ‘prerequisites’ to addressing climate change risks (O’Brien et al 2006)
especially for an increasingly urban population (Satherwaite et al 2007). In this regard a key area for
exploration has been associated with the ongoing processes of environmental degradation and
deterioration of people’s habitats. This exploration delves into the structural issues associated with
policies adopted at the national and local levels, the nature of livelihood practices adopted by
communities, and the scale and magnitude of ‘natural’ climate variability impacts on local environments.
Instances of such in depth reviews include the charlands of Bangladesh (Brockelsby 2000), the Chalco
valley in Mexico (Durand 2007) and significant others.
This approach attempts to respond to the emerging trend of rapid urbanization characterised by
increasing inequalities and poor governance; typified by the growth of informal and unplanned
settlements in cities and by the urbanisation of rural areas; stagnating rural economies marked by
vulnerable livelihoods and deepening poverty; and global climate change.
Since the 1990s, there has been an overwhelming recognition at the local, national and international
levels of the need to address risks through improved urban governance and settlement planning within
the context of climate variability and unpredictable local level impacts being witnessed across the world.
With most regions in the world urbanizing rapidly, and climate variability impacts at the local level
causing significant losses among urban dwellers each year, the need to address underlying structural and
non-structural risks in urban settlements has been widely acknowledged (Revi 1990, 2008; IIED 2002,
Pelling 2003; Satherwaite et al 2007). It has been established that good urban governance which is able
to address issues such as urban planning, land use, housing, infrastructure services and environmental
management is of chief importance for reducing urban disaster risks (Lewis and Mioch 2005).
However, one of the main challenges highlighted in reviews of institutional and legislative systems for
disaster risk management at the national level across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean
highlights the difficulty of making disaster risk reduction a high priority in ‘mainstream’ development
agendas. Disaster response, relief and recovery institutions and their related operational structures are
well positioned in most countries across the world to deal with medium to large scale disasters. However,
national reports on progress in adopting disaster risk reduction measures reveal an insufficient integration
of risk reduction concerns into development planning and practice. As such, unplanned development
being witnessed across some rapidly expanding urban centers constantly creates new risks for inhabitants.
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Further, there is a growing concern with the foreseeable effect of geological and climatic hazards on
poverty. This has not yet been translated into a coherent and systematic empirical research agenda that
illustrates their associations, necessary for any substantive policy-oriented action. Major reviews
investigating poverty dynamics have noticed the scant evidence in this respect mainly due to the absence
of hazard information in standard household surveys (Baulch and Hoddinott, 2000; Dercon and Shapiro,
2007). This situation has started to change recently with the inclusion of hazard modules in household
surveys (including questions on natural hazards), some of which are still to be transformed into
longitudinal studies.
III. Contemporary Policy Perspectives and emerging agendas
There was explicit policy recognition of the links between disasters and poverty in 2000, when the World
Bank released its report on ‘Managing disaster risk in emerging economies’ and stated that a major
development imperative was to reduce disasters in order to reduce poverty. It affirmed in categorical
terms that “poverty and vulnerability to disasters are closely linked” (edited by Arnold, M., and Kreimer,
A., 2000: 4).
A further recognition of links between disasters and development came in 2004, when the UK’s
Department for International Development (DFID) first made explicit links between disasters,
development and poverty. A 2004 DFID policy briefing emphasized the long term impacts of high
frequency hazards such as drought – “especially when combined with other pressures such as HIV/ AIDS,
poor governance and conflict”. It concluded that “sustainable poverty reduction is proving to be an
elusive goal, and this is partly because disasters are not being properly factored into development (DFID,
2004: 6).
Also in 2004, UNISDR with UNDP/BCPR and partners in Africa published a review of disaster risk
reduction and poverty reduction strategies for Africa, whereby it succinctly captures the risk-poverty link:
“increased poverty in Africa means increased disaster risk”. (2004:1). Further, it suggests that because
the poor have few options regarding where to live and how to survive, they are most exposed and
vulnerable to disasters. In addition, funds dedicated to poverty reduction are generally diverted to
disaster response and relief work. Poverty reduction strategies should therefore seek to reduce both the
level of risk and poverty in a community.
Later in 2006, DFID prefaced its policy paper on ‘Reducing the Risk of Disasters – Helping to achieve
sustainable poverty reduction in a vulnerable world’ with the statement that “the links between disasters
and poverty are clear. It is the poorest that are worst affected and suffer most. The capacity to cope and
to reduce risk is much more limited in poorer countries. Disasters damage infrastructure and affect
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productivity and growth. Rarely do disasters just happen – they result from failures of development which
increase vulnerability” (2006: 1).
There is an emerging policy paradigm with a focus on sustainable development in a safe environment
which strives to achieve freedom from fear, freedom from hazard impact and freedom from want
(Holzmann and Jorgenson 2000; UNDP 2004; Annan 2005 – c.f. UNU-EHS 2007: 18). This paradigm has
been shaped in part by recognition of the need to achieve greater societal resilience and improved
environmental conditions among the world’s most vulnerable people (UN 2006 cited in, UNU-EHS 2007;
18).
Oliver-Smith states that “the concept of social vulnerability expresses the multi-dimensionality of disasters
by focusing attention on the totality of relationships in a given social situation which constitute a
condition, which in combination with environmental forces, produce a disaster” (Oliver-Smith 2003, cited
in, UNU-EHS 2007: 16). Examples of social vulnerability could be power relationships that exclude certain
groups or individuals from benefiting from disaster risk reduction or recovery efforts. Such power
relationships manifest themselves between individuals or socio-economic groups, within institutional
frameworks, or culturally determined dialogues about stressors. Conditions such as environmental
degradation, water scarcity or civil conflict are factors that can affect spatial concentration of social
vulnerabilities. This is not a problem restricted to developing countries – but is also laid bare in developed
countries, too. The impacts of Hurricane Katrina in the United States are a key instance of this. Examining
social vulnerabilities recommends moving beyond structural measures of risk reduction. It targets root
causes of social inequity and aims to strengthen people and their systemic capacities to respond to and
recover from shocks.
Since the late 1990s academic and policy also has focused on examining the impacts of climate change
on local climate variability; and the emerging coping strategies across rural and urban areas, although
this trend is fairly recent. Where climate change impacts have been dealt with as the confluence between
addressing poverty and disaster risk related vulnerabilities, the subject has been of much concern in
discussions around environment/ habitat induced vulnerabilities and addressing human poverty
dimensions among rural, urban and periurban populations.
For instance, combining disaster risk reduction, natural resource management and climate change
adaptation has been presented as a new approach to the reduction of vulnerability and poverty by
research organizations and policy ‘think tanks’ (IISD, IUCN and SEI 2003). Equally, there is
acknowledgement that each poverty reduction measure does not reduce vulnerability to climate change,
just as each and every adaptation measure does not automatically contribute to poverty reduction.
Existing research that explores the linkages between poverty reduction and hazard risk reduction has
mainly focused on assessing poverty outcomes of large-scale catastrophic hazards. While such events
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have extreme impacts on poor populations, their infrequence makes it very difficult to establish a
relationship with poverty trends over time, except at the macro-level. In contrast, there is a large number
of frequently occurring but highly localized events, such as landslides, flash floods, fires and storms that
may represent a significant and unreported source of losses and disruption to livelihoods for marginal
rural and urban populations. These circumstances may therefore have a crucial interactive relationship
with poverty patterns and trends. There is now a recognition that it will become necessary to focus more
attention on the impacts of highly localized, low intensity hazards on poverty.
Recognition of the linkages between risk and poverty at the international policy level has certainly helped
frame the agenda to address poverty and disaster risk reduction goals in practice. From a review of the
prevailing perspectives and practices on addressing such links however, there is still a considerable way
to go in reducing vulnerabilities of the poor. But eventually, practice will follow concepts and the ‘social
construction of reality’ (Burton, Kates and White 1993).
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