key: cord-0815728-t5jw2xbk
authors: O'Keefe, Phil; O'Brien, Geoff; Jayawickrama, Janaka
title: Disastrous Disasters: A Polemic on Capitalism, Climate Change, and Humanitarianism
date: 2014-11-28
journal: Hazards, Risks and Disasters in Society
DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-396451-9.00003-2
sha: 85c4f6130ec3106a1a44d6b2345ade7e1d31d7b2
doc_id: 815728
cord_uid: t5jw2xbk

The way people have thought about disasters has changed in almost immeasurable ways. They are no longer considered as “Acts of God” but caused either by natural hazards or by human actions. This shift in thinking has led to different ways of dealing with disasters. What is becoming apparent is that more and more disasters are being produced by human actions. We cause them but seem unable to find the political will to stop doing so. Further, the role of humanitarian agencies has changed. At one time bodies such as the Red Cross would be associated with helping the injured in the battlefield. The nature of present-day warfare or complex emergencies and terrorism means that humanitarian bodies are dealing with many vulnerable refugees and internally displaced people. The following polemic reflects on these changes.

Geoff O'Brien came to a similar conclusion but by a different route. After graduating as an electrical engineer, he led global environmental oversight for a number of multinational oil companies around the world. Changing his focus midcareer, he focused on greening small and medium-sized enterprises. Initially focused on energy and environment, these studies broadened to risk in developed economies. Producing a comparative analysis of the United States' and the United Kingdom's risk response systems, he argued that what had been made resilient were the emergency services, the "First Responders", not the communities at risk (O'Brien, 2008) .

Janaka Jayawickrama came to academia as a practitioner of disaster management and humanitarian aid delivery. He was acutely concerned that, at best, Western interventions were couched in terms of "Do No Harm" when the reality was that many interventions were inappropriate and culturally insensitive. For him, the delivery of psychosocial interventions, based on individual diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder was far from the services disaster-hit communities required (Jayawickrama et al., 2014) . He continues to build new models, and ethics, for disaster intervention.

Not surprisingly, given these varied but converging backgrounds, our shared view of disasters and humanitarian assistance is somewhat radical. It is braced in a critique of the geographical paradigm of natural hazards research (Kates, 1997) . It emerges from an understanding of peopleeland relationships within a tradition of political economy of nature (Cline-Cole and O'Keefe, 2006) . This leads to a number of theses that are now discussed.

Under globalized capitalism, nature is produced (Smith and O'Keefe, 1980) . In the production of nature, people change their relationship to nature from that of husbandry, an organic relationship with the environment, to one of mastery, even if that mastery is never fully achieved. People also change their relationship to each other as individuals, communities, and classes. Importantly, these changes also change the nature of risk and thus disaster type (Beck, 1992 (Beck, , 2009 .

It is relatively easy to illustrate these arguments. Fracking increases earthquake risk; flooding is increased by land-use change; climate change heralds increasing extremes of temperature and precipitation beyond what people accept as "normal" weather. It is not simply the physical world but the biological one where fundamental changes are occurring, for example, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemics, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy outbreaks. Technology itself generates new risks, not least with nuclear engineering and biotechnologies.

Science can only bring a limited solution to these problems not least because the modern positivist science project comes encumbered with a dual vision of nature. This dual vision holds that nature is "external" to humans, while simultaneously nature is "universalist" incorporating humans. But a global capitalism necessarily produces a humanly nature in the realm of exchange, or market, values. Talk of a postnormal science to address complex problems simply reinforces the contradictory duality of the scientific approach to nature .

Under globalized capitalism, new risk is produced that science cannot control.

Accelerated climate change and increasing variability is the greatest universal environmental threat we face. This threat can be viewed in two ways. First, the immediate threat exists from increasingly severe weather events and second, the long-term threat to global ecosystems occurs as the planet warms. The international community has recognized this threat and through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has tried to develop solutions. Progress, however, has been agonizingly slow. Initially the main thrust of the work of the Convention was to deal with the long-term threat by focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the vehicle devised to reduce emission rates, the Kyoto Protocol, has failed due, in part, to its architecture and effective campaigning and lobbying by climate skeptics funded through the energy sector. It is hoped that a new agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be ready for implementation in 2020. Whether the negotiators can really address the scale of change needed in the global energy system is an open question (O'Keefe et al., 2010) . In the meantime, we are emitting our way into an unknown future. No indication exists as to what greenhouse gas concentration and what timetable will be agreed upon. Little chance seems to exist of us keeping the average global temperature rise below 2 C. We are producing a dangerous and unknown future.

Interestingly, dealing with the consequences was given a low priority in the early days of the Convention. Adjusting to consequences, or adaptation, was thought only to be an issue for the Less Economically Developed Countries, such as Small Island Developing States. However, the litany of extreme weather events across the globe has rapidly raised adaptation up the agenda. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014) paints a very bleak picture of what the world we are creating could look like: increased floods and droughts and more severe weather events that will threaten food security. Adaptation is now an issue for all nations. The problem is that if we do exceed the 2 C temperature rise, then we enter an era that is termed dangerous climate change. Stay below that temperature rise and we should be able to adapt. Go above that temperature, and we could be exposed to irreversible changes and the collapse of ecosystems to which we would be unable to adapt .

In short, we need to move to a low-carbon energy economy as soon as possible in order to avoid a future catastrophe. In the interim, we need to use our ingenuity to adapt to the consequences. The UNFCCC has been in place for some 30 years. To date, little real progress has been made and this does not augur well for the negotiations up to 2020. Reducing greenhouse gas emission appears, on the face of it, relatively straightforward. Much of the technology needed to both use energy efficiently and produce it cleanly is available. The problem lies in the lack of political will to opt for solutions rather than being market based. In many cases, we are "locked into" a number of technologies, for example, the United States seems to have opted strongly for fracking. Though gas is cleaner than coal, the investment decisions made today are likely to be in place for 40e50 years. We are getting to grips with renewable technologies and their use, in the main, of lowdensity, variable primary energy sources, such as wind and solar. But a gargantuan effort on production and deployment will be needed in order to produce significant energy from renewable resources (O'Keefe et al., 2010) . Ultimately, it is up to our political leaders to agree to a stabilization target and timetable. Energy planners can then get to work on planning the replacement of high carbon-emitting technologies with low ones. This may mean scrapping some systems before their due date. We must be brave enough to do that! Adapting to the changes locked into the climate system is also a massive challenge. But, as Stern (2007) pointed out, it is more cost-effective to address the problems now rather than deal with the consequences in the future. Progress on adaptation is being made and despite the huge uncertainties it is possible that we can develop sustainable approaches to this multifaceted challenge . Recognition has been occurring between the climate and disaster management communities of the overlap of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation techniques. This does raise the question of whether or not we have the right institutional arrangements. Adaptation is about people and their livelihoods and protecting them from climate risks. This is the role of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Reducing risk is the role of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Promoting ecological well-being is the role of the United Nations Environment Programme. We could frame all of this with a Convention on Climate Adaptation that could still be linked with the IPCC. We could then streamline the institutional structures and have lines directly to the national, subnational, and local levels. This new body would have sovereign institutional responsibility for developing adaptation within a framework of human and ecological wellbeing .

The final issue to address is funding. Changing the energy system and developing adaptation measures will not come cheap. The UNFCCC has agreed a Green Climate Fund that will have funding of US$ 100 billion per year from 2020 for both mitigation and adaptation. But as O'Brien and O'Keefe (2014) have pointed out, the International Energy Agency estimate that moving to low-carbon energy could require some US$ 10.5 trillion by 2030 and that adaptation costs by various organizations such as the World Bank, UNFCCC, Oxfam, and UNDP range between US$50 billion and US$171 billion per year. The Green Climate Fund is unlikely to meet all needs. Many of the wealthier nations will need to dig deeper. Perhaps we could put some of the US$1.7 trillion per year we spend on the military to better use. All funding mechanisms involve privatizing the commons and commodifying the global atmospheric system through trading emission levels. Is that really the way to go?

Sadako Ogata, a former High Commissioner for Refugees, argued that "There are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian crises (since) mass displacement, hunger disease et cetera, are the humanitarian fallout of political failures" (Weir, 2006, p. 4) . Humanitarian assistance includes local, national, and international efforts provided by individuals, communities, and national and international organizations addressing people in need where the prime motivation is to prevent and alleviate human suffering. The four fundamental principles underlying humanitarian interventions are humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence of the humanitarian actors (United Nations, 1991) . These principles are not usually observed in humanitarian interventions, not least in those tied to military intervention such as Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 1 Humanitarian aid addresses the needs of a population after natural disasters or complex emergencies. Natural disasters are dominated by meteorological phenomena (drought, flood, and hurricane) and, to a much lesser extent, geological ones (earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis). Intervention in the aftermath of natural disaster is dwarfed by intervention in complex emergencies. Complex emergencies, characterized by high levels of civilian casualties, deliberate destruction of livelihoods, and the collapse of the rule of law, have increased the number of displaced people either as refugees or internally displaced people (IDP), particularly since the end of the Cold War (Middleton and O'Keefe, 1997) . The current crisis in Syria has generated 2.6 million refugees and 6.5 million IDP. In general, the humanitarian system was not designed to deal with such massive problems.

The adoption of the four "Geneva Conventions" underpinned what has been called the "Dunantist" position, named after the founder of the Red Cross, where the delivery of humanitarian aid was seen as independent and long term. This contrasts sharply with the "Wilsonian" position where humanitarian actors are used as an extension of state, often military, intervention. A third type of organization is the religion-based one, which frequently seeks to use humanitarian action to proselytize (Macrae and Harmer, 2003) . As of 2014, reviewing humanitarian action in 2013, a total of US$ 17.9 billion was in international response, of which US$ 12.9 billion came from governments, specifically US $ 11.6 billion from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (GHA, 2013). Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and the West Bank dominated these actions accounting for more than US$ 5 billion.

O'Dempsey and Munslow (2009) highlighted the extent to which humanitarianism has been instrumentalized. "Objective humanitarian need, on the basis of human suffering, is never the criteria used to determine whether or not the international community will act. Power and money determine the working of international politics, tempered to a variable degree, by the humanitarian impulse, which is influenced by the media and electoral sentiment" (O'Dempsey and Munslow, 2009, p. 446 ) .

Humanitarian aid is predominantly delivered in Muslim countries, in situations frequently overseen by Western military forces in wars they themselves have started or condoned. Not neutral, impartial, or independent but as an extension of Western foreign policy. Do you sincerely wish to be a humanitarian worker?

Since 1989, when humanitarian aid on a global scale was US$ 0.5 billion, it has grown by a factor of 40 to some US$ 20 billion a year. This significant rise, largely fueled by an increase in public expenditure under neoliberal regimes that were generally committed to the withering of state expenditures, is unparalleled in any other sector.

Some 50 percent of the expenditures are through the UN system (chiefly the World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), although much of the final distribution of UN resources is delivered by international non-governmental organizations (iNGOs). iNGOs themselves deliver 25 percent of all humanitarian aid, with government contributions dominating individual iNGO budgets. The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) family is an exception to this statement. Figure 3 .1 shows the broad routings on humanitarian monies. The important routes on the diagram are from donor governments to the UN system and iNGOs and from the UN system to iNGOs. Those routes command the most flow. What the affected population makes of all the players on the ground, frequently with different rules of engagement, remains largely unanswered. The iNGOs essentially form an oligopoly. This oligopoly is distinguished by its members signing "Heads of Agreement" with the major UN agencies, especially UN WFP, to act as distributors in UN programs of humanitarian aid. In addition, they form joint fund-raising appeals where membership is restricted, excluding smaller iNGOs. Perhaps the best example of this is the operation of the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) in the United Kingdom currently. The DEC brings 13 leading UK aid charities together in times of crisis: Action Aid, Age International, British Red Cross, Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD), Care International, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Islamic Relief, Oxfam, Plan UK, Save the Children, Tearfund, and World Vision. Most are global families, frequently headquartering those institutions in London or Washington. They are essentially businesses with high corporate remuneration and high rates of growth.

This growth largely came after 1990, financed usually through development-aid budgets. As development aid itself was increasingly evaluated from the 1970s onward, a demand occurred from major donors for similar evaluations of humanitarian spending, not least because humanitarian expenditure was, in most cases, more than 5 percent of the overall development budgets. Humanitarians widely resisted such invasion and questioning of purpose. After all, they were doing "good" (Borton et al., 2005) .

Although it is true that the number of natural disasters is rising, the growth of humanitarianism has been dominated by the response to local wars. The euphemism for local war is "complex emergencies," implying more than a single cause but associated with violence. But it is people who count.

The Guardian, 20th of June, 2014, reported that official figures for refugees, including IDPs, had risen to over 50 million people making a population base of "the 24th largest country in the world." In the accompanying graphic of places that receive refugees, it is obvious that most refugees, i.e., those crossing international borders, go to neighboring states, namely, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Kenya, Egypt, and Jordan. The United Kingdom is noticeable by its absence, although France, Germany, and the United States each take in over 200,000 refugees (Sherwood, 2014) .

A body of international law exists that governs refugees, although it is rarely justiciable. No such thing exists for IDPs. An attempt was made to codify practice for improved delivery to IDPs but it exists only as exhortation (Borton et al., 2005) . Instead of "Do No Harm," the humanitarian equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, a tendency occurs to do nothing about IDPs.

Essentially this is a foreign policy of disdain frequently in wars generated by Western interests. As MSF noted in a speech to North Atlantic Treaty Organization:

"This lack of trust is all the stronger when UN and/or western militaries claim to use military force in furtherance of "humanitarian" goals, thereby unilaterally pronouncing a unity of purpose between humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and intervention/occupation forces. In 2001 no less than Colin Powell proclaimed 'NGOs are such a force multiplier for us, such an important part of our combat team.' Even more unhelpful, humanitarians have been labeled as sources of information. It should be obvious to you in the military that if we are part of your team, if we are on your side, if we are providing you with information, if we are advancing towards the same goals as you, then we fall directly into the crosshairs of the other side. It's nothing personal, but we can't afford this sort of unity." 2 While there may be a market for universities in training the military in humanitarian action, is it really where humanitarian experts wish to go?

The UN system, or the Red Cross and Red Crescent in some cases, is the framework for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. On the ground, however, much of the delivery is undertaken by iNGOs. Leading NGOs usually have "Heads of Agreement" with UN agencies, i.e., contracts to deliver to targeted beneficiaries. Each iNGO has its own mission and thus coordination, a buzzword for leadership, becomes difficult. From observation, the less money there is for a disaster, the more there is likely to be coordination: competition for funds seems to generate control of humanitarian action.

The best overview of who makes it to the oligopoly is probably provided by the United Kingdom's DEC. This self-selected membership raises monies in unified appeals after large-scale global disasters accessing free media and banking services. Monies are divided between the INGOs largely based on a formula of how much they had in previous disasters. By 2014, the DEC had launched some 64 appeals, which raised more than UK£ 1.1 billion.

The DEC, like the iNGOs themselves, is largely self-policing using evaluation for learning purposes, although selling those evaluations to donors as proof of accountability. Most iNGOs now have internal evaluation personnel directly linked to institutional policy making. The beneficiary voice is quite weak in evaluation production. This self-selection of membership and self-policing of performance is not surprising because charities are essentially multimillion, multimarket businesses in competition with each other. The oligopoly preserves market share.

In any disastrous situation, the first responders are those that are alive and able to function. Many examples occur of people helping others. Many instances occur of people who have worked together as they realized that it would be many days before any form of official help would arrive (Ferdinand et al., 2012) . It is the resilience of people that is an important factor in their ability to respond to disasters and contributes to them being first responders. We do not in any way decry the efforts made by emergency responders or humanitarian agencies but argue that they are mission focused and do not necessarily have the wider community well-being agenda in mind. Successful predisaster planning must focus on building both personal and community resilience and enhancing social capital. Reich (2006) discussed three social organizing principles for resilience to disasters. These are control, coherence, and connectedness. In the case of control, external help can create a state of dependency. Short-term help is often needed but as soon as possible people should be given resources to rebuild their lives. In terms of coherence people need to understand what has happened. For connectedness people need to part of any recovery processdcommunities that recover together will stay together.

Many responder agencies may address perhaps one or two of these social organizing factors, but it is unlikely that they will address all three. An integrated approach does need to occur that recognizes the majority of people are inherently resilient, and by being sensitive to this, agencies can work with affected communities in ways that enhances the recovery process.

None of what we have written above essentially questions the need for humanitarian assistance or that most humanitarian workers have good intentions. What we ask for is recognition that response to disasters comes first and foremost from the community affected by disaster. What we also are arguing is that the nature of disaster itself will change, to be dominated by greater extremes in climate events, although, at the moment, wars dominate humanitarian intervention. We need to recognize that cities themselves will be a locus for disasters as populations become urbanized and subject to new hazards. The institutions that deliver in disaster, especially the INGOs, need to question their own industry practices and standards and above all reconsider whether a nineteenth-century model of charity under benevolent capitalism is appropriate for humanitarian action in the twenty-first century. Above all, there must be recognition that risk is socially produced in the production of nature.

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