Climate-Induced Disasters in the Asia-Pacific Region

Response, Recovery, Adaptation

Andreas Neef, Natasha Pauli, Andreas Neef, Natasha Pauli

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839099885
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Climate-induced disasters constitute a major risk to peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on case studies from Cambodia, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Samoa, the contributions in this volume examine local response, recovery and adaptation strategies, incorporating the perspectives and knowledge of affected individuals and communities. Asia-Pacific is the world's most disaster-prone region, accounting for about half of the climate-related displacements of 19 million people globally in 2017. Climate-related, fast-onset hazards, such as floods, cyclones and typhoons, have claimed many lives, displaced a high number of people and caused widespread damage over the past twenty years. The cost of short-term response to and medium- to long-term recovery from climate-induced disasters falls disproportionately on the poorest and most marginalised communities within Asia-Pacific countries. This book presents richly-detailed qualitative research from diverse contexts across the Asia-Pacific region, and adds to scholarship on the trajectory of community resilience and adaptation to climate-related hazards.

CHAPTER 1

CLIMATE-INDUCED DISASTERS IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION – FROM RESPONSE AND RECOVERY TO ADAPTATION

Andreas Neef and Natasha Pauli

ABSTRACT

Multi-risk environments pose challenges for rural and coastal communities in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly with regard to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation strategies. While much research has been published on disaster response and recovery for specific climate-related hazards in the region, such as cyclones, floods and droughts, there is a growing need for insight into how communities respond, recover and adapt to the multiple, intersecting risks posed by environmental, societal and economic change. This chapter frames the body of new research presented in this book from the perspective of multi-risk environments, paying particular attention to concepts central to the disaster response and recovery cycle, and rejecting the notion of a distinct boundary between climate and society. Further, this introductory chapter foregrounds the importance of cultural values, power relations, Indigenous knowledge systems, local networks and community-based adaptive capacities when considering resilience, recovery and adaptation to climate-induced disasters at the community and household level. Overviews of the research presented in this book demonstrate a diverse range of responses and adaptive strategies at the local level in case studies from Solomon Islands, Fiji, Cambodia and Samoa, as well as implications for policy, planning and management.

Keywords: Disaster; hazard; climate change adaptation; resilience; Southeast Asia; Pacific Islands

INTRODUCTION: THE MAKING OF ASIA-PACIFIC AS A RISK-PRONE REGION

The Asia-Pacific region is arguably one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world. According to the latest World Risk Report, six Pacific Island nations and four Asian countries are among the 20 countries facing the highest disaster risk globally (Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft & IFHV, 2019). Climate-related, fast-onset hazards, such as floods, cyclones and typhoons, have claimed more lives and caused more damage over the past 20 years in countries of the Asia-Pacific than in any other world region. In addition, these countries are extremely prone to slow-onset climate-induced processes, such as sea level rise and extended droughts, as global atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise. Among these countries are several low-income nations, with persistent poverty in rural and coastal areas, which carries significant socio-economic risks. Yet, the devastation wrought by bushfires in southeastern Australia that burned a globally unprecedented percentage of forest biome between September 2019 and February 2020 (Boer, Resco de Dios, & Bradstock, 2020) is a stark reminder that the so-called developed countries are also becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate-related disaster risks.¹ This seems to challenge the views of mainstream disaster risk scholars who have argued that adaptive capacities of countries

largely depend on their economic status. Generally, developed countries have higher adaptive capacities while developing and least developed countries, which are most vulnerable to climate change, need external support to build theirs. (Francisco, 2008, p. 8)

This simplistic view which also implies a dependency of ‘underdeveloped’ countries on support from rich, ‘developed’ countries has been challenged by such authors as Bankoff (2019, p. 234) who argues that Western discourses of disaster risk management accept disaster, disturbance and crisis as ‘an endemic condition’ of the Global South and McDonnell (2019, p. 2) who criticises ‘disaster responses that see the “community” as a space to be acted upon by outsiders’. Common to these Western discourses and outsider-driven interventions in response, recovery and adaptation is a dismissal of Indigenous knowledge systems, local resilience networks and community-based adaptive capacities that exist in many ‘at-risk’ countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Partially in response to such Western-centric discourses, there has been a resurgence of studies emphasising the critical role that cultural values, power relations, social norms and local knowledge play in determining resilience, recovery and adaptation at the community and household level (e.g. Fletcher et al., 2013; McDonnell, 2019; Naess & Twena, 2019; O’Brien, 2009; O’Brien & Wolf, 2010; Woroniecki et al., 2019). Numerous studies have been conducted on disaster response and recovery in the context of a specific climatic hazard event in Asia-Pacific countries (e.g. Johnston, 2014, for cyclones in Fiji; Akbar & Aldrich, 2018, for floods in Pakistan; Nguyen & Shaw, 2015, for droughts in Cambodia). Yet, to date, few studies have acknowledged the particular challenges that multi-risk environments pose for disaster risk management and climate adaptation strategies in rural and coastal communities of the Asia-Pacific region (Neef et al., 2018; Warrick, Aalbersberg, Dumaru, McNaught, & Teperman, 2017). Rural communities along the Mekong River in Cambodia, for example, have adapted very well to seasonal floods over the past decades, but – more recently – have been forced to also adjust to increasingly frequent heatwaves, droughts and storm events (Henningsen, Pauli, & Chhom, 2020 – Chapter 7, this volume; Williams, Pauli, & Boruff, 2020 – Chapter 6, this volume; Yamamauchi, 2014). In Cambodia, additional risks are posed by non-climatic factors, such as logging, land grabbing and upstream hydropower dam construction (e.g. Grumbine, Dore, & Jianchu, 2012; Neef, Touch, & Chiengthong, 2013). Numerous coastal communities in Fiji, a South Pacific Island nation, have experienced a series of rapid-onset climatic hazards, such as floods and cyclones, while also having been subjected to slow-onset climate-associated processes, such as extended droughts and sea level rise, as well as upstream deforestation and mining over the past decade (Bennett, Neef, & Varea, 2020 – Chapter 5, this volume; Irvine, Pauli, Varea, & Boruff, 2020 – Chapter 4, this volume; Neef et al., 2018). These are only a few examples of how rural and coastal communities in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly exposed to a multitude of climatic and non-climatic risks, which require diverse adaptation strategies and may complicate disaster recovery cycles.

DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS

For the purpose of this book, we adopt Aldrich’s (2012, p. 3) definition of disaster as ‘an event that suspends normal activities and threatens or causes severe, communitywide damage’. Climate-induced disasters encompass hydrological (e.g. floods, landslides), meteorological (e.g. storms, heatwaves) and climatological (e.g. droughts, wildfires) events (CRED & UNISDR, 2018). In line with Taylor (2015, p. 11), we object to the ‘ontological division between climate and society’ and the imposition of artificial ‘boundaries between the assumed “natural” and “social” worlds’ which represents ‘climate change as an exogenous force that manifests itself in the form of external shocks to an otherwise independent society’. Hence, we acknowledge that climate and society are co-produced and mutually constitutive.

Disaster response refers to the immediate post-disaster relief efforts, which includes – for instance – search and rescue operations, mutual assistance at the community level, evacuation of affected populations to temporary shelters and provision of food and water rations. Disaster recovery commences when the immediate threats to human security and property have been resolved, and individuals, households and communities can start to re-establish their livelihoods and return to their pre-disaster conditions and routines (Akbar & Aldrich, 2018). The notion of disaster recovery does not simply refer to physical, infrastructural and economic recovery but also includes social, cultural and psychological recovery of affected individuals and communities (Aldrich, 2012; Nakagawa & Shaw, 2004; Neef & Shaw, 2013). As some of the chapters in this book will demonstrate, the speed and depth of recovery are highly uneven within and across communities and depend on a myriad of factors. These factors may include – but are not limited to – the amount of disaster damage, socio-economic conditions, demographics, the quality of governance, social capital and the amount of external aid (Aldrich, 2012; Yila, Weber, & Neef, 2013). Yet, as several studies have shown, distribution of aid does not always lead to a faster and more equitable recovery process but may engender a particular ‘politics of distribution’ (Ferguson, 2015, p. 10, cited by McDonnell, 2019, p. 10; see also Adams & Neef, 2019).

Resilience is a concept that has been linked closely to recovery and often described as the ability of a system (e.g. a community or a household) to absorb shocks and disturbances and to ‘bounce back’ and regain stability (Béné, Newsham, Davies, Ulrichs, & Godfrey-Wood, 2014; Brown, 2016). Vulnerability is sometimes used as an antonym of resilience, yet is more commonly described as a function of exposure, sensitivity and (lack of) adaptive capacity (e.g. Callo-Concha & Ewert, 2014; Smit & Wandel, 2006). Yet, among social scientists, there is an increasing consensus that vulnerability is not so much an endemic condition or innate property of a social-ecological system but rather a consequence of global and local power differentials, marginalisation of certain groups based on race, caste, class or gender, and entrenched institutional, political and material inequalities (e.g. Taylor, 2015). As Adger (2006, p. 270) puts it, ‘vulnerability is driven by inadvertent or deliberate human action that reinforces self-interest and the distribution of power in addition to interacting with physical and ecological systems’.

Climate change adaptation has been defined by Smit, Burton, Klein, and Street (1999, p. 200) as ‘adjustments in ecological-socio-economic systems in response to actual or expected climate stimuli, their effects or impacts’. In a similar vein – and with an added positive spin – the IPCC (2007, p. 809) defines adaptation as ‘adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities’. Recently, scholars have drawn attention to community adaptation processes as the locus of power contestations and micropolitics, which challenges apolitical and technocratic discourses and practices (e.g. Tschakert et al., 2016; for an overview of the body of literature, see Woroniecki et al., 2019). Of particular relevance for the contributions to this volume and the concept of multi-risk environments is Pelling’s (2011, p. 60) notion of ‘transformative adaptation’ which entails social learning processes and creative integration of local and scientific knowledge which ‘can respond to the multiple scale[s] and sectors through which risk is felt and adaptations [are] undertaken’.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The remaining eight chapters of this volume explore responses to, recovery from and adaptation to climate-induced disasters in various multi-risk environments in the Asia-Pacific region. The authors of these chapters are critical of external interventions into complex social and cultural fields and call for a greater acknowledgement of local knowledge, preferences and practices in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. They are also committed to research methodologies that are not only ethically sound but also culturally appropriate. This includes participatory methods used in the two Cambodian case studies and Pacific research methodologies (e.g. talanoa – a form of casual conversation and sharing stories) employed in the case studies from Solomon Islands, Fiji and Samoa.

Through an analysis of three consecutive United Nations disaster risk reduction frameworks, Chapter 2 – written by Lucy Benge and Andreas Neef – examines how disasters have been increasingly constructed as opportunities for development. The authors raise the question whether the p...