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Beyond natural disasters
By Santi Serrat
Advancing in the knowledge of the social and economic factors that configure human risks is essential to reduce the damage of natural disasters. Distinguishing between exposure and vulnerability is a communication challenge to empower civil society and demand effective and fair governance. The climate crisis places us before an urgent management challenge.
"Climate change will amplify existing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems. The risks are unevenly distributed and generally greater for disadvantaged individuals and communities in countries at all levels of development." This was one of the forecasts that Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele, former president of the (IPCC) (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) communicated in his speech during World Water Day 2015.
Understand risk factors
The importance of understanding the meaning of risk and the factors that generate it is present in the AR5 and takes special relevance in the current work of the IPCC for its sixth report, AR6, in which the vision of the climate crisis from the social sciences and its importance to improve adaptation and reduce vulnerability.
The IPCC defines risk as the probability that a community will suffer serious disturbances in its normal functioning and human, economic or environmental damage due to dangerous physical events. The equation that translates this definition, and that is traditionally used in geography as the basis of all studies, is:
Risk = Dangerous situation x Exposure x Vulnerability
In the case of flood risk, the dangerous situation can be a cyclone, a DANA or an accelerated thaw that causes an excessive hydrological flood. Data from recent years, especially from the first eight months of 2019, confirm an increase in these dangerous phenomena.
Exposure is defined as the presence of people, homes, buildings, service facilities or any economic, social or cultural asset in areas where violent phenomena can be triggered. In the case of a floodplain due to a flood, its inhabitants and their personal or community property are exposed to damage.
Vulnerability is the predisposition for people and their property to be damaged. For example, a house in the Philippines is exposed to a typhoon, but is vulnerable if it is poorly built. The same is true of a faulty or poorly calculated sanitation system that contaminates water in a flood: it is a vulnerable facility that makes people who depend on that safe drinking water vulnerable. Poverty is directly related to vulnerability: poor facilities, shacks and overcrowded slums are factors that increase vulnerability to floods.
Risk therefore includes these three factors with a directly proportional relationship: the greater the intensity of the phenomenon and the greater the number of inhabitants and exposed assets, the greater the risk.
Risk management is complex as it largely depends on the place on the planet where the phenomena occur, their degree of exposure and their vulnerability. Mismanagement of the territory leads, for example, to urbanize floodplains and replace crops that hinder runoff, such as terraces and fruit trees, with others with less water-holding power.