From exogenous disasters to endogenous risks: why the Hyogo Framework for Action failed to protect development from itself.

Maskrey, Andrew (2019) From exogenous disasters to endogenous risks: why the Hyogo Framework for Action failed to protect development from itself. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

The aim of this Commentary is to demonstrate that, while there is a growing evidence base that disaster risk is socially constructed, the political and economic incentive for disaster risk reduction remains weak and elusive. The methodology used to develop this meta-narrative is a transversal analysis of the quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered for the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) between 2009 and 2015, integrating information on emerging global patterns and trends of intensive disaster risk, underlying risk drivers and disaster impacts and consequences, insights into hitherto hidden layers of extensive risk and the results of four biennium of government selfassessments of progress towards the achievement of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) into a coherent meta-narrative. The Commentary shows that during the HFA there was an apparent increase in political commitment to disaster risk reduction. However, globally disaster risk was not significantly reduced. While there was significant investment by governments in new legislative and instrumental systems, policies, budgetary allocations, information systems, early warning mechanisms and disaster preparedness, governments found themselves challenged to address the underlying risk drivers or to integrate risk considerations into economic development and urban planning. In fact, most countries continued to interpret disaster risk reduction as the protection of social and economic development from disasters: an approach that reflects a longstanding conceptualization and interpretation of disasters as exogenous threats and shocks. The Commentary concludes that this approach encapsulates a fundamental contradiction. Exposure and vulnerability as well as hazard itself are socially constructed through underlying risk drivers including globalized economic development, poverty and inequality, badly planned and managed urban development, environmental degradation and climate change. As development cannot be protected from itself, until it is transformed, new risks will continue to be generated and accumulated faster than existing risks are being reduced. If disaster risk is an endogenous indicator of a flawed development paradigm, then progress towards the policy objective of disaster risk reduction will depend on the transformation of that paradigm.

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