Читать книгу Risks and the Anthropocene - Julien Rebotier - Страница 19

Ben Wisner defines “disaster studies” as:

A broad interdisciplinary attempt to understand the causes and consequences of events that cause sufficient harm and loss that assistance is required from people and/or institutions unaffected, whatever size of the group and area affected. (Wisner 2019, p. 48)

This very open definition of a composite field leaves unresolved the questions that concern “the causes and effects of events that lead to damage”. Since the second half of the 20th century, a growing part of research has been devoted to the denaturalization of so-called natural hazards (O’Keefe et al. 1976). But the social processes put forward are based on different, sometimes antagonistic, visions of the social world and relationships with the environment. It is sometimes a question of being attentive to the behavior of individuals, sometimes to the response capacities of communities, sometimes to the effects of framing social structures, among many other approaches. Alongside this polyphony of social sciences around disaster risks, the understanding and treatment of hazards continue to be a major focus of attention, effort (and resources) of research and social demand:

Four decades of academic literature on disasters (e.g. Baird et al. 1975; Maskrey, 1989; Oliver-Smith, 1994), backed up by a profusion of practitioners’ reports from the field (e.g. Anderson and Woodrow 1989; Heijmans and Victoria 2001), have shown that disasters deeply reflect failed or skewed development. Considering vulnerability to natural hazards through the sole lens of potential damage created by rare and extreme natural phenomena is a remnant of a paradigm that has been completely up-ended. (Wisner et al. 2012, p. 11)

In a literature that purports to be intermediate between academia and action, despite an observation that is now half a century old, the challenge remains:

If disaster risk is an endogenous indicator of a flawed development model, then progress toward the policy goal of disaster risk reduction will depend on a transformation of that model. If the world is to survive beyond the middle of the 21st century... it will be necessary to make conclusive progress on the path that has been least followed under the Hyogo Framework for Action and to develop a new approach to disaster risk management. (GAR 2015, p. 39)

However, the GAR (Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction) does not engage in the programmatic field. Yet the Sendai Framework for Action (2015–2030), which postdates the Hyogo Framework, does not meet the need to turn the correction of misguided development into the key driver of risk management either (Wisner 2016, p. 32). In theory, the relevance of social science input is no longer in dispute. In practice, misunderstandings and confusions persist about their place, scope and impact in research and management (Ribot 2019). This discrepancy should be seen in the light of the apparent contrast between the many efforts made to understand risks, on the one hand, and the observation of a simultaneous increase in damage, on the other hand (White et al. 2001).