• Home
  • About RSIS
    • Introduction
    • Building the Foundations
    • Welcome Message
    • Board of Governors
    • Staff Profiles
      • Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
      • Dean’s Office
      • Management
      • Distinguished Fellows
      • Faculty and Research
      • Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
      • Visiting Fellows
      • Adjunct Fellows
      • Administrative Staff
    • Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
    • RSIS Endowment Fund
    • Endowed Professorships
    • Career Opportunities
    • Getting to RSIS
  • Research
    • Research Centres
      • Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
      • Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
      • Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS)
      • Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
      • International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
    • Research Programmes
      • National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
      • Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
    • [email protected] Newsletter
    • Other Research
      • Future Issues And Technology (FIT)
      • Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
  • Graduate Education
    • Graduate Programmes Office
    • Overview
    • MSc (Asian Studies)
    • MSc (International Political Economy)
    • MSc (International Relations)
    • MSc (Strategic Studies)
    • NTU-Warwick Double Masters Programme
    • PhD Programme
    • Exchange Partners and Programmes
    • How to Apply
    • Financial Assistance
    • Meet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other events
    • RSIS Alumni
  • Alumni & Networks
    • Alumni
    • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
    • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
    • SRP Executive Programme
    • Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
  • Publications
    • RSIS Publications
      • Annual Reviews
      • Books
      • Bulletins and Newsletters
      • Commentaries
      • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
      • Commemorative / Event Reports
      • IDSS Paper
      • Interreligious Relations
      • Monographs
      • NTS Insight
      • Policy Reports
      • Working Papers
      • RSIS Publications for the Year
    • Glossary of Abbreviations
    • External Publications
      • Authored Books
      • Journal Articles
      • Edited Books
      • Chapters in Edited Books
      • Policy Reports
      • Working Papers
      • Op-Eds
      • External Publications for the Year
    • Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
  • Media
    • Cohesive Societies
    • Great Powers
    • Sustainable Security
    • COVID-19 Resources
    • Other Resource Pages
    • Media Highlights
    • News Releases
    • Speeches
    • Vidcast Channel
    • Audio/Video Forums
  • Events
  • Giving
  • Contact Us
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
RSISVideoCast RSISVideoCast rsis.sg
Linkedin
instagram instagram rsis.sg
RSS
  • Home
  • About RSIS
      • Introduction
      • Building the Foundations
      • Welcome Message
      • Board of Governors
      • Staff Profiles
        • Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
        • Dean’s Office
        • Management
        • Distinguished Fellows
        • Faculty and Research
        • Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
        • Visiting Fellows
        • Adjunct Fellows
        • Administrative Staff
      • Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
      • RSIS Endowment Fund
      • Endowed Professorships
      • Career Opportunities
      • Getting to RSIS
  • Research
      • Research Centres
        • Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
        • Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
        • Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS)
        • Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
        • International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
      • Research Programmes
        • National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
        • Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
      • [email protected] Newsletter
      • Other Research
        • Future Issues And Technology (FIT)
        • Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
  • Graduate Education
      • Graduate Programmes Office
      • Overview
      • MSc (Asian Studies)
      • MSc (International Political Economy)
      • MSc (International Relations)
      • MSc (Strategic Studies)
      • NTU-Warwick Double Masters Programme
      • PhD Programme
      • Exchange Partners and Programmes
      • How to Apply
      • Financial Assistance
      • Meet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other events
      • RSIS Alumni
  • Alumni & Networks
      • Alumni
      • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
      • Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
      • SRP Executive Programme
      • Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
  • Publications
      • RSIS Publications
        • Annual Reviews
        • Books
        • Bulletins and Newsletters
        • Commentaries
        • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
        • Commemorative / Event Reports
        • IDSS Paper
        • Interreligious Relations
        • Monographs
        • NTS Insight
        • Policy Reports
        • Working Papers
        • RSIS Publications for the Year
      • Glossary of Abbreviations
      • External Publications
        • Authored Books
        • Journal Articles
        • Edited Books
        • Chapters in Edited Books
        • Policy Reports
        • Working Papers
        • Op-Eds
        • External Publications for the Year
      • Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
  • Media
      • Cohesive Societies
      • Great Powers
      • Sustainable Security
      • COVID-19 Resources
      • Other Resource Pages
      • Media Highlights
      • News Releases
      • Speeches
      • Vidcast Channel
      • Audio/Video Forums
  • Events
  • Giving
  • Contact Us
  • instagram instagram rsis.sg
Connect

Getting to RSIS

Map

Address

Nanyang Technological University
Block S4, Level B3,
50 Nanyang Avenue,
Singapore 639798

View location on Google maps Click here for directions to RSIS

Get in Touch

    Connect with Us

      rsis.ntu
      rsis_ntu
      rsisntu
    RSISVideoCast RSISVideoCast rsisvideocast
      school/rsis-ntu
    instagram instagram rsis.sg
      RSS
    Subscribe to RSIS Publications
    Subscribe to RSIS Events

    RSIS Intranet

    S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Think Tank and Graduate School Ponder The Improbable Since 1966
    Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University

    Skip to content

     
    • RSIS
    • Publication
    • RSIS Publications
    • CO16279 | Is There Such a Thing as a “Natural” Disaster?
    • Annual Reviews
    • Books
    • Bulletins and Newsletters
    • Commentaries
    • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
    • Commemorative / Event Reports
    • IDSS Paper
    • Interreligious Relations
    • Monographs
    • NTS Insight
    • Policy Reports
    • Working Papers
    • RSIS Publications for the Year

    CO16279 | Is There Such a Thing as a “Natural” Disaster?
    Jonatan A. Lassa

    10 November 2016

    download pdf
    RSIS Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical and contemporary issues. The authors’ views are their own and do not represent the official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced with prior permission from RSIS and due credit to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email to Editor RSIS Commentary at [email protected].

    Synopsis

    Being vulnerable to the forces of nature is entirely social and political economic decisions. This article provides an overview of 40 years of critical disaster studies and why critical approach to understanding disasters can save lives.

    Commentary

    AMIDST GROWING calamities globally, it may be time to ask a fundamental question: Is there anything natural about natural disasters? Vulnerable housing and buildings that collapsed in recently in Italy and Haiti this year and in Nepal last year are examples of public policy failures to ensure resilience of new and old buildings to earthquakes in places around the world. Critical disaster studies have long argued that natural disasters do not exist. The overemphasis on the naturalness of the natural events such as earthquakes and storms as the root cause of disasters have been long contested for many good reasons at least in the last 260 years.

    So let’s be critical. Most planets experience quakes. On earth such quakes are called earthquakes. On Mars, there are marsquakes. On the moon, there are moonquakes. In a year, here on earth, we have at least 1.44 million earthquakes each year as documented consistently by the United States Geological Survey. And remember, the earth is a moving spaceship. It moves like a giant airplane orbiting the sun and in that process its stresses and strains get released to the surface. People just do not see it this way.

    Critical Disaster Studies

    Therefore, earthquakes are normal planetary phenomenon. Every year, our planet shakes at least one earthquake with 8 or higher magnitude; about 17 earthquakes with 7-7.9 magnitude and 140 earthquakes with 6-6.9 magnitude and 1600 with 5-5.9 magnitude. Data suggests that in the last 100 years, every day we have at about 36 recorded earthquakes with 4-4.9 magnitude and 3917 earthquakes with 2.0-3.9 magnitude. Many go undetected because they either hit remote areas or have very small magnitudes.

    This year is the 40th year anniversary of an article published in Nature 1976 entitled “Taking the naturalness out of natural disasters”, written by Phil O’Keefe and his colleagues (based at Bradford University in the United Kingdom at that time). Using empirical global economic loss data, they showed that social-economic and not natural factors should be responsible for both the loss of many lives and the loss/damages of the assets in developing world. And fortunately, they are not the only group that has been viewing this way.

    After years of consistent research and advocacy within critical disaster research communities to convince the policy makers at the global stage, finally, the United Nations, especially the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), adopted the critical approach to disasters by suggesting that “There is no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster, only natural hazards.”

    UNISDR now maintains that natural hazards are natural processes and/or events that may cause the loss of life, assets, livelihoods and services and so on depending on their degree of vulnerabilities and exposures. UNISDR further explains that the degree of severity of a disaster depends on our “choices (and) relate to how we grow our food, where and how we build our homes, what kind of government we have, how our financial system works and even what we teach in schools. Each decision and action makes us more vulnerable to disasters — or more resilient to them”.

    Insights from Lisbon

    One famous story on the event that later became a revolutionary shift in thinking about disasters among social science scholars – at least from the context of continental Europe of the late 18th century – is both the story from the Lisbon Earthquakes on 1 November 1755. It was not an ordinary Saturday morning.

    Suddenly at about 9.30 am estimated earthquakes of 8.5-9.0 magnitude hit the city and trigger large-scale tsunamis. According to some estimates, about 17,000 out of 20,000 buildings collapsed and caused about 70,000 deaths. Half could have probably died because of the collapse of the buildings; while the rest died due to both post-earthquake fire and lack of post-disaster response as the wounded outnumbered the number of first responders and rescuers.

    Portugal was one of the great nations then, and Lisbon was the symbol of progress of human civilisation. One of the great French philosophers of the time, Voltaire, wrote deep emotional poems that might encourage the suffering Christians to be repentant and resilient in their faith in God as the event was seen as how God showed His power, glory and might. But the young French philosopher of the time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau with very fresh eyes challenged Voltaire in a letter by simply mentioning the obvious, noting that nature did not construct thousands of buildings and houses of six to seven stories that collapsed in the earthquakes.

    In the context of Western philosophical thinking, we can accept the claim from some academics that Rousseau’s letter to Voltaire symbolised the beginning of the first shift in thinking leading to the new interpretation of disaster events.

    Debate Moving in Right Direction

    Some primitive responses to misfortunes and calamities from natural events often automatically activate certain interpretations that lead to strengthening certain norms, values and beliefs. Even religions often seek well-suited theological interpretations that justify certain natural events as divine interventions to correct the behaviour of the sinners. In Southeast Asia, I have seen similar narratives often repeated in Aceh after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004 and Padang earthquakes in 2009.

    Today scholars of different disciplines have lesser disagreements on the issues surrounding the need to adopt more proper terms and definitions to provide adequate mental energy for paradigm change towards proactive disaster reduction. However, the debate on the term continues for good reasons.

    Counting the amount of scholarly work on natural hazards, one might argue that overall we are moving in the right direction. Understanding the reality is one important thing. However, translating that learned reality and ideas into the reality of policy making and practices is another.

    About the Author

    Jonatan A. Lassa PhD is a Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Emergency and Disaster Management Studies Programme at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia. He is an adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

    Categories: Commentaries / Country and Region Studies / Non-Traditional Security / East Asia and Asia Pacific / Europe / Global / Southeast Asia and ASEAN

    Last updated on 11/11/2016

    RSIS Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical and contemporary issues. The authors’ views are their own and do not represent the official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced with prior permission from RSIS and due credit to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email to Editor RSIS Commentary at [email protected].

    Synopsis

    Being vulnerable to the forces of nature is entirely social and political economic decisions. This article provides an overview of 40 years of critical disaster studies and why critical approach to understanding disasters can save lives.

    Commentary

    AMIDST GROWING calamities globally, it may be time to ask a fundamental question: Is there anything natural about natural disasters? Vulnerable housing and buildings that collapsed in recently in Italy and Haiti this year and in Nepal last year are examples of public policy failures to ensure resilience of new and old buildings to earthquakes in places around the world. Critical disaster studies have long argued that natural disasters do not exist. The overemphasis on the naturalness of the natural events such as earthquakes and storms as the root cause of disasters have been long contested for many good reasons at least in the last 260 years.

    So let’s be critical. Most planets experience quakes. On earth such quakes are called earthquakes. On Mars, there are marsquakes. On the moon, there are moonquakes. In a year, here on earth, we have at least 1.44 million earthquakes each year as documented consistently by the United States Geological Survey. And remember, the earth is a moving spaceship. It moves like a giant airplane orbiting the sun and in that process its stresses and strains get released to the surface. People just do not see it this way.

    Critical Disaster Studies

    Therefore, earthquakes are normal planetary phenomenon. Every year, our planet shakes at least one earthquake with 8 or higher magnitude; about 17 earthquakes with 7-7.9 magnitude and 140 earthquakes with 6-6.9 magnitude and 1600 with 5-5.9 magnitude. Data suggests that in the last 100 years, every day we have at about 36 recorded earthquakes with 4-4.9 magnitude and 3917 earthquakes with 2.0-3.9 magnitude. Many go undetected because they either hit remote areas or have very small magnitudes.

    This year is the 40th year anniversary of an article published in Nature 1976 entitled “Taking the naturalness out of natural disasters”, written by Phil O’Keefe and his colleagues (based at Bradford University in the United Kingdom at that time). Using empirical global economic loss data, they showed that social-economic and not natural factors should be responsible for both the loss of many lives and the loss/damages of the assets in developing world. And fortunately, they are not the only group that has been viewing this way.

    After years of consistent research and advocacy within critical disaster research communities to convince the policy makers at the global stage, finally, the United Nations, especially the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), adopted the critical approach to disasters by suggesting that “There is no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster, only natural hazards.”

    UNISDR now maintains that natural hazards are natural processes and/or events that may cause the loss of life, assets, livelihoods and services and so on depending on their degree of vulnerabilities and exposures. UNISDR further explains that the degree of severity of a disaster depends on our “choices (and) relate to how we grow our food, where and how we build our homes, what kind of government we have, how our financial system works and even what we teach in schools. Each decision and action makes us more vulnerable to disasters — or more resilient to them”.

    Insights from Lisbon

    One famous story on the event that later became a revolutionary shift in thinking about disasters among social science scholars – at least from the context of continental Europe of the late 18th century – is both the story from the Lisbon Earthquakes on 1 November 1755. It was not an ordinary Saturday morning.

    Suddenly at about 9.30 am estimated earthquakes of 8.5-9.0 magnitude hit the city and trigger large-scale tsunamis. According to some estimates, about 17,000 out of 20,000 buildings collapsed and caused about 70,000 deaths. Half could have probably died because of the collapse of the buildings; while the rest died due to both post-earthquake fire and lack of post-disaster response as the wounded outnumbered the number of first responders and rescuers.

    Portugal was one of the great nations then, and Lisbon was the symbol of progress of human civilisation. One of the great French philosophers of the time, Voltaire, wrote deep emotional poems that might encourage the suffering Christians to be repentant and resilient in their faith in God as the event was seen as how God showed His power, glory and might. But the young French philosopher of the time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau with very fresh eyes challenged Voltaire in a letter by simply mentioning the obvious, noting that nature did not construct thousands of buildings and houses of six to seven stories that collapsed in the earthquakes.

    In the context of Western philosophical thinking, we can accept the claim from some academics that Rousseau’s letter to Voltaire symbolised the beginning of the first shift in thinking leading to the new interpretation of disaster events.

    Debate Moving in Right Direction

    Some primitive responses to misfortunes and calamities from natural events often automatically activate certain interpretations that lead to strengthening certain norms, values and beliefs. Even religions often seek well-suited theological interpretations that justify certain natural events as divine interventions to correct the behaviour of the sinners. In Southeast Asia, I have seen similar narratives often repeated in Aceh after the Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004 and Padang earthquakes in 2009.

    Today scholars of different disciplines have lesser disagreements on the issues surrounding the need to adopt more proper terms and definitions to provide adequate mental energy for paradigm change towards proactive disaster reduction. However, the debate on the term continues for good reasons.

    Counting the amount of scholarly work on natural hazards, one might argue that overall we are moving in the right direction. Understanding the reality is one important thing. However, translating that learned reality and ideas into the reality of policy making and practices is another.

    About the Author

    Jonatan A. Lassa PhD is a Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Emergency and Disaster Management Studies Programme at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia. He is an adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

    Categories: Commentaries / Country and Region Studies / Non-Traditional Security

    Last updated on 11/11/2016

    Back to top

    Terms of Use | Privacy Statement
    Copyright © S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. All rights reserved.
    This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing, you are agreeing to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy. Learn more
    OK
    Latest Book
    CO16279 | Is There Such a Thing as a “Natural” Disaster?

    Synopsis

    Being vulnerable to the forces of nature is entirely social and political economic decisions. This article provides an overview of 40 years of critical ...
    more info