The Disaster Profiteers:how natural disasters make the rich richer and the poor even poorer
Published August 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan through Saint Martin's Press
Television loves a disaster; the stuff of the Nature Channel’s enduring specials with titles like The Savage Earth. We are obsessed by Nature’s power and the inability of modern societies to deal with these ancient and primal forces. But natural disasters are doing far more than causing the Earth to writhe in an earthquake, hurricane winds to howl and drought to parch the landscape. They drive a wedge between rich and poor that will separate us further as we grow in number and a warmer world will become an even riskier place. Climate change is set to further divide an already divided world.
Nature can be destructive but cannot be unjust. The “naturalness” of natural disasters is almost inconsequential to the differential effect they have on people’s lives. Nature provides the proximate cause, the trigger like that of the assassin’s gun that shot Archduke apparent Frederick Ferdinand and gave us a starting date for WWI. The unjust social outcomes originate from deeper underlying causes for which only our own actions are fully responsible. But transfixed by the moment of Nature’s grand performance covered almost voyeuristically if briefly in the media we miss the deeper causes that separate people. Some suffer cruelly, others hardly at all; some even benefit. Why?
The Disaster Profiteers answers that question. One of the earliest reviews is by Kirkus. Disasters occur when Nature meets human nature under extreme duress. They are at once natural and social processes that can only be understood from those dual foci. A staggering suite of disasters have occurred in the early 21st century in vastly diverse settings, from cyclones in Myanmar, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, earthquakes in China, Haiti, Nepal and Chile, droughts in the Horn of Africa to floods in Pakistan and India. Examining these disasters from the dual lens of natural and social process shows how injustices arose.
A new understanding emerges. Natural disasters, in the way they impact people’s lives are seen to be little different from industrial disasters or financial crises and even the disaster of armed conflict. They are all social shocks; episodes of extreme stresses caused by loss of productive capital assets whether it’s crops lost to drought, factories lost to an earthquake, currency lost to devaluation, businesses and homes lost in the current US financial crisis or the many consequences of armed conflict on people and economies. An amplifying natural-social feedback is at work in all forms of disasters –existing social inequalities amplify the stress that disasters bring and at the same time disasters increase underlying social stresses and inequalities. The wounds of the social shock don’t heal. Cause and consequence cannot be disentangled.
We too often view Nature as a blind agent bringing social disruption from outside, something we can do little about. If some suffer more than others we can blame it on Nature. In diverting the blame away from our own actions and inactions we have permitted injustices to prosper. The purpose of The Disaster Profiteer is to understand how that has happened and show how to put it right.
The book is used as a text for the course Disasters and Development taught at Columbia to undergraduates and graduate students. .
Click here to explore Why Disasters Matter and the accompanying Blog which explores any of the ideas outlined in the book. .
Science Fundamentals for Sustainable Development
The project, Science Fundamentals for Sustainable Development (or SFSD) is being undertaken with Ruth DeFries this is a text to support the undergraduate course we co-teach EESC2330 “Science for Sustainable Development.” SFSD is currently in its developmental stages.
Published August 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan through Saint Martin's Press
Television loves a disaster; the stuff of the Nature Channel’s enduring specials with titles like The Savage Earth. We are obsessed by Nature’s power and the inability of modern societies to deal with these ancient and primal forces. But natural disasters are doing far more than causing the Earth to writhe in an earthquake, hurricane winds to howl and drought to parch the landscape. They drive a wedge between rich and poor that will separate us further as we grow in number and a warmer world will become an even riskier place. Climate change is set to further divide an already divided world.
Nature can be destructive but cannot be unjust. The “naturalness” of natural disasters is almost inconsequential to the differential effect they have on people’s lives. Nature provides the proximate cause, the trigger like that of the assassin’s gun that shot Archduke apparent Frederick Ferdinand and gave us a starting date for WWI. The unjust social outcomes originate from deeper underlying causes for which only our own actions are fully responsible. But transfixed by the moment of Nature’s grand performance covered almost voyeuristically if briefly in the media we miss the deeper causes that separate people. Some suffer cruelly, others hardly at all; some even benefit. Why?
The Disaster Profiteers answers that question. One of the earliest reviews is by Kirkus. Disasters occur when Nature meets human nature under extreme duress. They are at once natural and social processes that can only be understood from those dual foci. A staggering suite of disasters have occurred in the early 21st century in vastly diverse settings, from cyclones in Myanmar, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, earthquakes in China, Haiti, Nepal and Chile, droughts in the Horn of Africa to floods in Pakistan and India. Examining these disasters from the dual lens of natural and social process shows how injustices arose.
A new understanding emerges. Natural disasters, in the way they impact people’s lives are seen to be little different from industrial disasters or financial crises and even the disaster of armed conflict. They are all social shocks; episodes of extreme stresses caused by loss of productive capital assets whether it’s crops lost to drought, factories lost to an earthquake, currency lost to devaluation, businesses and homes lost in the current US financial crisis or the many consequences of armed conflict on people and economies. An amplifying natural-social feedback is at work in all forms of disasters –existing social inequalities amplify the stress that disasters bring and at the same time disasters increase underlying social stresses and inequalities. The wounds of the social shock don’t heal. Cause and consequence cannot be disentangled.
We too often view Nature as a blind agent bringing social disruption from outside, something we can do little about. If some suffer more than others we can blame it on Nature. In diverting the blame away from our own actions and inactions we have permitted injustices to prosper. The purpose of The Disaster Profiteer is to understand how that has happened and show how to put it right.
The book is used as a text for the course Disasters and Development taught at Columbia to undergraduates and graduate students. .
Click here to explore Why Disasters Matter and the accompanying Blog which explores any of the ideas outlined in the book. .
Science Fundamentals for Sustainable Development
The project, Science Fundamentals for Sustainable Development (or SFSD) is being undertaken with Ruth DeFries this is a text to support the undergraduate course we co-teach EESC2330 “Science for Sustainable Development.” SFSD is currently in its developmental stages.