Disasters Without Borders

Citation

by Ilan Kelman, R. (2013), "Disasters Without Borders", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 182-184. https://doi.org/10.1108/09653561311325325

We hear much rhetoric today about the “globalization” of disasters, disaster risk reduction, and disaster response. To explore this phenomenon, John Hannigan invokes Disasters Without Borders, investigating the duality of the physical hazards transcending boundaries alongside “transnational civil society” (p. 1) wishing to support people dealing with disasters or disaster threats.

The nine chapters present an intriguing journey through hazards, vulnerabilities, risks, and disasters crossing, or being forced to cross, borders. Altruism, climate change, game playing, and media are examined through the intersection of disasters, disaster risk reduction, and politics.

Each chapter is balanced among history, theoretical developments, and examples, with the structure of the book and chapters mapped out clearly so that the reader can easily follow the material. The examples comprise a panorama of case studies, including useful boxes plus suggestions for further reading. The overall structure is well embedded in literature across several fields, neatly packaged into more or less a priori categories giving the author's personal touch.

No specific theory is presented. Instead, lending strength to the volume, overviews of several theoretical approaches are presented with each placed in wider contexts. That provides useful comparisons and contrasts of ideas across several chapters. The wide‐ranging theoretical background is then consolidated into the author's framework in Chapter 9 termed SCPQ for securitization, catastrophe scenario building and modeling, privatization, and quantification.

The explanation of this framework leads to the convincing yet frightening concluding message that technocratic approaches in dealing with disasters are likely to dominate in the future. The connection to “without borders” is implicit in terms of the globalization of disaster‐related measures reinforcing the desire for technocratic approaches.

Cogent messages permeate the book. First, the dual meaning of “Without Borders” for disasters is a poignant discussion, as globalization continues to dominate many realms of development and sustainability. Second, and linked, is that “a discourse of disaster risk reduction (DRR) has come to occupy center stage in the global policy field of disaster management” (p. 131). That view comes across as being somewhat naïve given how little global policy for DRR is successfully enacted alongside the continuing disparity in funds between disaster response and DRR.

Nonetheless, as Hannigan persuasively writes, the reality is indeed that disasters are without borders. That does not mean that suitable DRR action is taken to address the “without borders” situation.

As with these overall messages, the book's details display impressive aspects along with potential room for improvement. That applies to both the coverage of history – for instance, it is exciting to read about historical case studies, such as the 1910 Paris flood, being interpreted with contemporary views – and to the contextualization of the material.

With regards to history, on page 7 the author is fair in noting the dearth of work on “The Disaster Politics Nexus”, but could have acknowledged M.H. Glantz’ edited book The Politics of Natural Disaster: The Case of the Sahel Drought (New York, Praeger, 1976) as a pioneering effort. The media chapter is insightful and it is good to see the topic being highlighted – but it lacks reference to the author's compatriot Joe Scanlon who has long been an international leader in the field of disaster and media studies.

Examples of poorly contextualized statements exist as well. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake was not the twentieth century's most lethal natural disaster (p. 116) considering, for instance, pandemics, such as the 1918‐1919 Spanish flu – in addition to death toll estimates from the 1931 China floods, the 1965‐1967 India drought, and several others (while accepting that the “naturalness” of any disaster is debatable). Note 5 on page 165 suggests that politically isolated states are “compelled to invest in disaster prevention and response”, yet North Korea continually needs post‐disaster aid and Cuba's approach is critiqued in the academic literature.

The “nine main categories of organizational actors or players […] in the global policy field of international disaster politics” lists “national states and local governments” (p. 22), but not sub‐national, non‐local governments – such as the author's home province of Ontario. The province's Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services incorporates Emergency Management Ontario while the Ministry of Health and Long‐Term Care has its Emergency Management Branch. Sub‐national, non‐local governments often deal with disasters and sign political and policy agreements to that effect.

Similarly, stating that “Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland […] have relatively low disaster probabilities” (p. 22) is surprising, especially considering the literature on those locations as well as each country's long disaster history and many potential threats. Again considering only Ontario, recent years saw the Ice Storm (1998), the snowstorm that shut down Toronto (1999), SARS (2003), flash flooding (2005), the Goderich Tornado (2011), and Hurricane Sandy (2012) as just some examples. On Canada's west coast, Vancouver lives with the everyday possibility of a devastating earthquake.

Nonetheless, some excellent critique and analysis appear in sections of the book. Climate change is mentioned appropriately, placed in context, and critiqued pragmatically (e.g. pp. 144‐145) including a balanced discussion on climate change and extreme events (pp. 82‐83). Given this important and apposite set‐up, the author could easily have gone further to note how recent climate change paradigms dominate older DRR literature despite saying the same thing.

In other parts, the author could also have taken the next logical step in his argumentation. On page 155 “two bases for evaluating between climate change adaptive choices” are given as “economic costs and human rights”. Many more are proposed and critiqued in the literature including “duties or responsibilities”, “do no harm”, and “utilitarianism”. The impressive level of historical analysis and theoretical overviews in places could have been applied elsewhere, such as critiquing the rhetoric on “transformation” along with the phrases:

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  “natural disaster”: the theoretical criticism is that disasters, by definition include vulnerability (in addition to hazard), but vulnerability is human‐caused, so no disaster is natural;

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  “complex emergency”: the theoretical criticism is that vulnerability is, by definition, complex, so all emergencies are, by definition, complex; and

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  “secondary disaster events”: the theoretical criticism is that sequential “events” are part of the same vulnerability which led to the disaster.

These differences might be mainly disciplinary, highlighting a third dimension for Disasters Without Borders, that of crossing ideas, topics, and disciplines. This book is a needed and appropriate start, being readable, pertinent, deliberately neutral. It provides a solid baseline for more work.

Response from John Hannigan, University of Toronto, Canada

I’m generally delighted with Ilan Kelman's perceptive and detailed review of Disasters Without Borders. Mostly, our disagreements are definitional in nature. Debate has long raged over differences between accidents, catastrophes, natural disasters, hazards, mass emergencies, complex emergencies and crises. As noted in the first chapter of my book (p. 13), these definitional disagreements aren’t merely a matter of semantics but have the capacity to divide the field. One point of difference between Ilan and myself is whether to include ‘pandemics’ (Spanish flu of 1918‐1919: SARS outbreak of 2003) under the rubric of natural disasters. In not so doing, I follow the lead of Ali and Keil (S. Harris Ali and Roger Keil, Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City, Wiley‐Blackwell, 2008), who characterize these phenomena as “networked disease” in a global age.

A second difference concerns how to assess disaster vulnerability. Kelman takes issue with my statement that Canada, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland display relatively low chances of being impacted by a major disaster. He refers to the Canada's “long disaster history and many potential threats,” citing instances of a disaster that actually happened (Ice Storm of 1998); a disaster that was more or less averted (in Canada) (Hurricane Sandy, 2012); and a catastrophic disaster that has yet to occur (a massive earthquake/tsunami in Vancouver). Naturally, these four countries are not entirely free from past disasters or the threat of future disaster. Still, they consistently rank at the bottom of the list in assessments such as Natural Disaster Hotspots that use multi‐hazard risk analysis to identify regions and nations seriously exposed to more than one type of hazard. Even if you have qualms about the reliability of data sets such as EM‐DAT, it still seems pretty obvious where the most dangerous regions in the world are and aren’t located.