The disaster trap: Cyclones, tourism, colonial legacies, and the systemic feedbacks exacerbating disaster risk
The disaster trap: Cyclones, tourism, colonial legacies, and the systemic feedbacks exacerbating disaster risk
The long, open-ended period of recovery from a disaster event is the phase of a disaster that the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies struggles to understand. In the process of rebuilding, places do not simply reset – they transform, often in ways that confound any reduction of disaster risk, instead making people and settings more vulnerable to future hazard events. Reducing disaster risk is regarded as a global priority, but policies intended to reduce disaster risk have been largely ineffective. This obduracy represents a grand challenge in disaster studies. Here, I propose that the correlated trends of runaway economic costs of disaster events, growing social inequity, environmental degradation, and resistance to policy intervention in disaster settings are hallmark indicators of a system trap – a dynamic in which self-reinforcing feedbacks drive a system toward an undesirable and seemingly inescapable state, with negative consequences that tend to amplify each other over time. I offer that these trends in disaster settings are the collective expression of an especially powerful and distinct kind of system trap, which here I term the “disaster trap” – a new theoretical concept to help explain and address runaway disaster risk. I suggest that disaster traps are likely strongest in tourism- dominated coastal settings with high exposure to tropical cyclones and colonial histories of racial capitalism, which I explore with an empirical illustration from Antigua & Barbuda. Formalising a linkage between gilded and safe-development traps matters because their effects likely compound each other nonlinearly, such that disaster risk only increases and disaster risk reduction becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. Addressing traps requires understanding them as dynamic systems, described as fundamentally and completely as possible – their components, mechanisms, drivers, and structure – in order to reveal when and where interventions might be most effective at reducing disaster risk.
coupled systems, disasters, longitudinal analysis, risk reduction, social traps, tourism
577-588
Lazarus, Eli D.
642a3cdb-0d25-48b1-8ab8-8d1d72daca6e
June 2022
Lazarus, Eli D.
642a3cdb-0d25-48b1-8ab8-8d1d72daca6e
Lazarus, Eli D.
(2022)
The disaster trap: Cyclones, tourism, colonial legacies, and the systemic feedbacks exacerbating disaster risk.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47 (2), .
(doi:10.1111/tran.12516).
Abstract
The long, open-ended period of recovery from a disaster event is the phase of a disaster that the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies struggles to understand. In the process of rebuilding, places do not simply reset – they transform, often in ways that confound any reduction of disaster risk, instead making people and settings more vulnerable to future hazard events. Reducing disaster risk is regarded as a global priority, but policies intended to reduce disaster risk have been largely ineffective. This obduracy represents a grand challenge in disaster studies. Here, I propose that the correlated trends of runaway economic costs of disaster events, growing social inequity, environmental degradation, and resistance to policy intervention in disaster settings are hallmark indicators of a system trap – a dynamic in which self-reinforcing feedbacks drive a system toward an undesirable and seemingly inescapable state, with negative consequences that tend to amplify each other over time. I offer that these trends in disaster settings are the collective expression of an especially powerful and distinct kind of system trap, which here I term the “disaster trap” – a new theoretical concept to help explain and address runaway disaster risk. I suggest that disaster traps are likely strongest in tourism- dominated coastal settings with high exposure to tropical cyclones and colonial histories of racial capitalism, which I explore with an empirical illustration from Antigua & Barbuda. Formalising a linkage between gilded and safe-development traps matters because their effects likely compound each other nonlinearly, such that disaster risk only increases and disaster risk reduction becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. Addressing traps requires understanding them as dynamic systems, described as fundamentally and completely as possible – their components, mechanisms, drivers, and structure – in order to reveal when and where interventions might be most effective at reducing disaster risk.
Text
The disaster trap Cyclones, tourism, colonial legacies (1)
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 22 November 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 27 November 2021
Published date: June 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
I am grateful for discussions with Alida Payson, Evan Goldstein, Dylan McNamara, Danielle Zoë Rivera, Gemma Sou, Tomaso Ferrando, Adom Philogene Heron, Suzanne Reimer, Emma Tompkins, Stephen Darby, Felix Eigenbrod, BT Werner, and those I had the pleasure of interviewing for the podcast ( https://envidynxlab.org/portfolio/geographies‐of‐risk‐podcast/ ). This work was supported in part by funding from the Leverhulme Trust (RPG‐2018‐282). My thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and useful comments, and to Patricia Noxolo for her editorial stewardship. Geographies of Risk
Publisher Copyright:
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2021 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).
Keywords:
coupled systems, disasters, longitudinal analysis, risk reduction, social traps, tourism
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 454209
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/454209
ISSN: 0020-2754
PURE UUID: 9565d456-4fd0-4aca-a7b6-177a3d5dbf78
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Date deposited: 02 Feb 2022 17:48
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 07:04
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