The document discusses the social, cultural, and political aspects of earthquake disaster mitigation. It argues that understanding natural hazards alone is not enough - the full context must be considered, including issues of power, wealth imbalances, definitions of rationality, and legitimacy. Vulnerability is maintained when lessons from past events are ignored, while risk can be reduced when lessons are utilized, adopted and learned. Three key points are made: 1) There is not one single reality but many context-dependent realities; 2) Disasters are often explained by reference to underlying power structures; 3) Aiding realism, transparency, and policies to reduce inequality can help address disaster risk in a positive way.

1. Social, Cultural and Political
Aspects of Earthquake
Disaster Mitigation
David Alexander
University College London

2. Theorem: A better knowledge of natural
hazards will contribute almost nothing
to resolving the disasters problem...
...unless context is taken fully into account.

3. The Problem

4. Gertrude Stein,
1913 [adapted]
A disaster is
a disaster is
a disaster...
Its "disastrousness" is not
defined by its causal agent.

5. Lesson to be learned:
We will never even understand
the problem, let alone solve it,
unless we start being realistic
about the world in which we live.

6. Analysis
• registered
• archived
• forgotten
• ignored
Vulnerability
maintained
-
• utilised
• adopted
• learned
Disaster
risk
reduced
+
Lessons
Past
events
The process of
disaster risk
reduction
(DRR)

7. • colossal imbalances in power and wealth
• immense but eminently solvable problems
that are not solved because there is
powerful opposition to attempts to do so
• huge differences in the
definition of what is rational
• many key activities are not
legitimate by any standards.
What is the world actually like?

8. • community-level DRR: communities are
not homogeneous or harmonious units
• communities are not
particularly interested in DRR
• neither are governments
• disasters can be explained with
reference to power structures
Terry Cannon's observations on
Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)
• people, governments & communities seldom
act on the basis of evidence and research
• rationality can only be defined in context.

9. • corruption
• political decision-making
• shoddy building (often wilful)
• ignorance (sometimes wilful)
• seismicity.
What causes earthquake disasters?
- in probable order of importance -

10. Serious conclusion: there is not one
reality, but there are many of them.

11. Compared to the
original plans,
this hospital lacked
more than 500
concrete beams.
In the earthquake,
there was mass
mortality in the
maternity wing.

12. NB: Correlation does not
prove causation, but....

13. • difficult to define
• virtually impossible to measure
• extremely pervasive, endogenous
• moral and ethical frameworks vary
• links with other ills (black economy).
Corruption

15. www.bbc.co.uk/news

17. Justice system
Rights Responsibilities
Moral
Ethical
Legal
Constitution
Disaster
Context of
disaster

18. DISASTER
Destructiondamage casualties
Capital Labour
(fast) reformation (slower) repopulation
temporary boom
in employmentReconstruction
Recoverycapital displaces labour
unemployment and
social consequences
Slump

19. EVENT
(impact)
Participation
Governance
Unclear
objectives
Clear
objectives
SOLID
RECOVERY
PERMANENT
PRECARIOUSNESS
Repeated
impacts

20. Organisational
systems:
management
Social
systems:
behaviour
Natural
systems:
function
Technical
systems:
malfunction
VulnerabilityHazard
Resilience
Political
systems:
decisions

21. What is
resilience?

22. Risk
amplification
factors
Risk
mitigation
factors
Total
vulnerability
Risk perception
factors- +positivenegative
DIALECTIC

23. Vulnerability
Total: life is
generally precarious
Economic: people lack
adequate occupation
Technological/technocratic: due
to the riskiness of technology
Delinquent: caused by
corruption, negligence, etc.
Residual: caused by
lack of modernisation
Newly generated: caused by
changes in circumstances

24. The "cradle"
of resilience:
Canonbury Tower
London N1.
Built in 1509
to survive the
Universal Deluge:
inhabited in 1625
by Francis Bacon.

25. Francis Bacon
Sylva Sylvarum, 1625
[Are we to criticise him for using
the "greengrocer's apostrophe"?]

26. RESILIENCE:
as a material has brittle
strength and ductility:
society must have an optimum
combination of resistance to
hazard impacts and ability
to adapt to them.

27. ResilienceResistance
Risk Susceptibility
Physical
(including natural,
built, technological)
Social
(including cultural,
political, economic)
Environment
Attributes
Source: McEntire 2001
LiabilitiesCapabilities
VULNERABILITY

28. Diagnosis

29. • effect of heroin addiction on
the reconstruction of Bam, Iran
• introduction of repressive Shia and
blasphemy laws in Aceh and Padang
• colossal waste of public money on
transitional shelter in L'Aquila, Italy
• government insensitivity to cultural
heritage protection in Christchurch.
Reality check:

30. • widening wealth gap since 1970
• failure to divert resources from
response to prevention and mitigation
• half of world trade goes
through 78 tax havens
• one fifth of world trade is illicit
(drugs, armaments, people, species)
• relationship of proxy wars to aid.
More reality check:

31. • resources that debilitate
local coping capacity
• munitions, military hardware, soldier
training and some humanitarian stuff
• an instrument of political influence
• a means of lining
certain people's pockets.
What is aid?

32. • BIG concrete on poor people's land
• of direct benefit to the donor countries
• aid is in DEEP CRISIS.
What is aid?

33. " Experts talk of "building back better", of
concepts like "resilience" and "sustainability",
of crisis being opportunity in the way that it
was for the devastated cities of Germany
and Japan in 1945. ... The practice …
can be very different; piecemeal,
dilatory, bureaucratic, venal even.
Urban planners, it seems, never miss
an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
But occasionally, just occasionally, they
surprise on the upside too, and reimagine
the city in ways that might have been
impossible had disaster not struck."
www.theguardian.com/cities/series/cities-back-from-the-brink

34. The catastrophic earthquakes that have
occurred since 1999, in Turkey, Taiwan,
Sumatra, Kashmir and Sichuan,
demonstrate that elementary engineering
guidelines for earthquake resistance in
crucial civil structures (schools, hospitals
and fire stations,) have been alien
concepts to local authorities, or have
been ignored.
Roger Bilham, Nature

35. From 1703 until 2014, earthquake
disasters in L'Aquila have been
determined by political decisions

36. Without corruption, the impact of
this earthquake would have been
about 10% of what it actually was.

38. "Our research shows that the success
of early warning is largely determined
by politics, not science."
- Chatham House, London

39. • consolidate power structures
• augment profits
• allow introduction of conveniently
repressive measures
• permit gratuitous social engineering.
The economic and social
VALUE of disasters

40. BENIGN (healthy)
at the service of the people
MALIGN (corrupt)
at the service of vested interests
interplay dialectic
Justification Development
[spiritual, cultural, political, economic]
IDEOLOGY CULTURE

43. In disasters and disaster risk,
how important is gender?

44. Kobe 1995 earthquake deaths
by gender and age
― males ― females

45. Gender and Disasters Network
www.gdnonline.org

46. Towards
a cure

47. • advances in knowledge
have had a positive impact
• the whole problem is better
known than ever before
• interdisciplinary research and problem-
solving have made some progress
• but the balance is still weighted heavily
in favour of a worsening situation.
Correcting a one-sided picture:-

48. • science must not be allowed to be the
justification for political malpractice
• if you supply data, methods or
results you have some responsibility
for how they are used
• accept that the primary effect of
hazards is determined by vulnerability.
Some precepts

49. Earthquake disaster
as a negative window
of opportunity
But at the bottom
there was hope....
"Pandora's box"
theory of disasters

50. • realism helps
• transparency is necessary
• gross inequality is in no one's interest
• national policies are needed and can work
• cultivate a flexible attitude.
The positive messages

51. Thank you for
your attention!
david.alexander@ucl.ac.uk
emergency-planning.blogspot.com
www.slideshare.net/dealexander