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Karen O’Brien, GECHS Project and University of Oslo, Norway, and Michael van Niekerk, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

James Elliot, University of Oregon, USA

Lori Hunter, University of Colorado at Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, Program on Environment and Society

Ilan Kelman,National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA

Understanding Vulnerability to Understand Disasters

Mark Pelling, Dept. of Geography, Kings College, London, UK

Recent natural disasters – including the S.E. Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in N.E. Pakistan, and routine flooding and loss of life in Bangladesh – have highlighted the vulnerability of human populations to natural hazards. Natural hazards come in two basic varieties – weather related hazards (cyclones, flooding, drought, and the ‘moisture’ part of landslides) and geophysical hazards (earthquakes, volcanoes, and the ‘land’ part of landslides). Evidence suggests that climate change is affecting the prevalence or intensity of weather-related hazards, with, for example, both the intensity of tropical cyclones (Santer et al. 2006) and frequency of droughts (Houghton et al. 2001) increasing over the past two decades. But the biggest contributions to rising secular trends in hazard-related morbidity and mortality can be traced to increasing population numbers and associated land transformations in areas vulnerable to hazards (CRED 2005). Thus, the frequency and severity of some natural hazards and the risks associated with them are exacerbated by human activities and growing human populations in hazard-prone regions.

With the growing awareness of climate change, a large field of vulnerability and adaptation research has emerged to investigate the underlying societal vulnerabilities that can make hazard impacts worse than they might otherwise be, and to take steps to reduce the impacts (Makri 2005, Brauch 2005). The research community has also examined the flip side of vulnerability, or resilience and coping capacity, which represent the ability to withstand stresses. While this community has studied population characteristics that may be associated with higher vulnerability (e.g. poverty levels, racial and ethnic composition, and livelihoods), they have not generally approached this research with a specifically demographic lens. Thus, there is an opening for the population research community to contribute to this growing body of research on hazards vulnerability.

This cyberseminar is co-organized with the IHDP Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project and the Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR) of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. GECHS, which had its early roots in the debates surrounding environment and security, is increasingly orienting its work to hazards risks and vulnerability (O’Brien et al. 2005). The CHRR, in collaboration with CIESIN, has undertaken a global study of high-risk disaster hotspots for the World Bank that describes the global distribution of all six hazard types and their mortality risks. In addition, CIESIN has undertaken demographic analyses of the mortality from the 2004 Tsunami and conducted mapping of population variables for New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (2005).

Issues to be addressed in this seminar include:

• population growth, density and characteristics in hazard hotspots
• demographic characteristics of highly vulnerable populations/households
• morbidity and mortality resulting from hazards
• long-term demographic impacts of hazards such as the tsunami, e.g., in terms of fertility, dependency ratios, etc.
• land degradation, pollutant emissions and other environmental changes linked in part to population change that may exacerbate vulnerability
• how the vulnerability/resilience community could benefit from explicit treatment of demography, including in vulnerability frameworks
• mapping of hazards and populations for vulnerability assessments
• refugee flows resulting from natural hazards
• how mitigation and prevention could benefit from experiences in the realm of population, health and the environment (PHE) interventions

This cyberseminar will include a background paper written by an expert in hazard vulnerability of approximately 10 pages, and as with past seminars, approximately six expert panel statements.

References

Brauch, H.G. 2005. Environment and Human Security: Towards Freedom form Hazard Impacts. InterSecTions, No. 2, Publication of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security.

CRED (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters). (2005). “Are natural disasters increasing?” CRED CRUNCH, August 2005.

Houghton, J.T., et al. (eds). 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Summary report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report.

O’Brien, K. et al. 2005. “Hurricane Katrina Reveals Challenges to Human Security.” Aviso Issue No. 14, October 2005.

Makri, A. 2005. Connecting Health and Vulnerability to Environmental Stressors. Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholm Environment Institute.

Santer, B.D., T.M.L. Wigley, P.J. Gleckler, C. Bonfils, M.F. Wehner, K. AchutaRao, T.P. Barnett, J.S. Boyle, W. Brüggemann, M. Fiorino, N. Gillett, J.E. Hansen, P.D. Jones, S.A. Klein, G.A. Meehl, S.C.B. Raper, R.W. Reynolds, K.E. Taylor, and W.M. Washington. (2006) “Forced and unforced ocean temperature changes in Atlantic and Pacific tropical cyclogenesis regions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Vol. 103, 19 Sept. 2006, pp. 13905-13910.