No Such Thing as Natural Disasters

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has a campaign about the idea that there is “no such thing as natural disasters”, there was a request for thoughts and insight.

There are several ways in which this concept is viewed and it is actually more complicated than one might initially assume. Much of this also happens to be fairly esoteric or ‘inside baseball’.

Due to how this is viewed from multiple angles, it is easier to go over these one at a time.

First angle: The technical definition of the word ‘disaster’.

The word disaster will mean different things to different people depending on how experienced they are in disaster risk reduction or associated professions like emergency management.

Its technical definition is also varied but generally involves some form of hazard or threat that impacts some form of vulnerability, this relationship creates a disaster. This is often expressed in a mathematical formula like Hazard x Vulnerability = Risk. Sometimes this is further explored in things like the PAR (pressure and release) model.

The vulnerability portion of this equation requires a human element for it to be experienced as a disaster to humans. To simplify, the idea would be that if one’s house floods then the disaster cannot be natural as the house is not natural. The impact to humans requires something human-made and thus the disaster cannot be natural by definition.

There is a flaw in this, but we will get there. For context it is important to view how different people view this in general, as it helps provide context for why the UNDRR would care about the semantic difference.

In general, to a layperson a disaster is basically synonymous with a hazard. A windstorm in the desert that impacts no one is not relevant. When a hurricane (hazard) is discussed by laypeople, it is generally discussed within the context of its impacts as a disaster.

It is generally understood that laypeople are the target demographic for most risk control campaigns. The goal would be that if people better understand the difference between hazard and disaster, they are more likely to identify hazards and vulnerabilities in their lives. This ideally leads to more effective risk controls (prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery) and less disasters.

The initial professional in industries like this will often agree with this semantic difference. The UNDRR includes a call-to-action requesting professionals to correct other individuals at conferences when this ‘incorrect’ association is made.

To quote the UNDRR: Next time you hear that phrase – “natural disaster” – step up to the mark and correct the speaker: “There is no such thing as a natural disaster.”

An established professional understands the term ‘natural disaster’ and knows that the word natural is a descriptor which refers to the initial primary hazard in the given disaster. Why does this matter and what does this mean?

As the word disaster implicitly means there was a relationship between hazard and vulnerability, any other word being added to it simply provides context to what it going on. If there are no such things as natural disasters, then calling a disaster non-natural, or human-caused would be pointless. The word disaster would automatically imply it definitionally.

Instead it would make much more sense (as it has to most professionals with extensive experience in this area) that the descriptive word before ‘disaster’ is being used to imply context around the hazard.

If hurricane Katrina (1) creates a large amount of water (storm surge) (2) that impacts New Orleans causing the levees to break (3), flooding the city (4), which combined with social economic conditions (5), results in significant financial loss, injury and death (6). Then even though the disaster (6) is how it interacts with humans the initial hazard which overwhelmed the system (1) is categorized as a ‘natural hazard’. Hence, for the sake of brevity and needing to categorize things, this is referred to as a ‘natural disaster’.

By following this particular call-to-action in this particular UNDRR campaign: The beginning professional risks alienating themselves towards an established professional by treating them like a layperson while simultaneously demonstrating that they do not fully understand the terms that are being used.

Second angle: Humans have agency over hazards.

Some believe that no disasters are natural because no hazards are natural. This is an entirely different argument.

The idea would be that, hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, meteors, etc. are at least partially human-caused, and thus they are not ‘natural’ phenomena. This is generally viewed as a fairly extreme interpretation of the broad risk implications of climate change.

‘If the industrial revolution didn’t happen, then hurricanes would not happen as often or be as severe, thus hurricanes are human caused.’ This is the sort of argument.

While potentially thought provoking, this is a stretch for most laypeople and likely adds too much unnecessary confusion for insufficient risk benefit. The initial guess would be that public reaction to this sort of argument would likely be to ‘tune-out’ or disassociate from the message, which is counterproductive.

Third angle: Humans have a lot of agency over hazards (conspiracy theories).

Others believe that there are weather control devices, space lasers controlled exclusively by specific groups of people, mole people living inside the Earth’s crust and aliens. From their perspective these hazards are entirely controlled and human-caused. Several arguments have been made that virtually all hazards are actually part of a significant global effort at selectively culling the population (population control).

In lieu of emboldening the mole people who fear the space lasers from the crust of the flat-earth, it may be prudent just to stick with there being such a thing as natural disasters. 

Learn more and watch the full video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.