S HO R T CO MM UN IC AT IO N

Progressive climate change and disasters:connections and metrics

Shabana Khan • Ilan Kelman

Received: 24 August 2011 / Accepted: 25 August 2011 / Published online: 22 September 2011� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

While scientists continue to make projections regarding disasters under climate change and

other (often more important) drivers, we are also bombarded with apocalyptic images of

‘‘the world is about to end soon’’—from the Hollywood flicks 2012 and Knowing to news

reports of cults (Harris May 22, 2011; Lubin May 14, 2011; BBC December 22, 2010). Are

images of catastrophe coupled with the doom and gloom of a world under climate change

projections making people lose hope and feel apathetic about taking action? Evidence is

mixed, suggesting that outcomes are frequently contextual. However, proposing links

between progressive climate change and disasters without details or suggestions on how to

act may contribute to increasing fatalism or apathy.

The gap between scientists’ knowledge and public perception has many explanations,

from moneymaking to the media’s over-exuberance with exaggerating reality through to

insufficient understandable information given by, or accepted from, scientists when

communicating with the public. For example, much scientific discourse, including some

from IPCC (2007), points to a positive relationship between climate change and disasters.

However, intricacies of this relationship are not always fully explored, despite the science

being available and long-established in history. In particular, vulnerability tends to cause

disasters much more than hazard, yet it is rarely emphasised that although climate change

will affect climate-related hazards (exacerbating some and reducing others), human

decisions are the principal influencers on human vulnerability.

As such, while the metrics are clear for climate change impacts on some specific

hazards (e.g. Knutson et al. 2010), they are frequently unclear for establishing or refuting

links between climate change and disasters (not just hazards). A good number of studies

S. Khan (&)New Delhi, Indiae-mail: shabana.khan@hotmail.co.nz

I. KelmanCenter for International Climate and Environmental Research—Oslo (CICERO), Oslo, Norwaye-mail: ilan_kelman@hotmail.com; ilan_kelman@yahoo.comURL: http://www.ilankelman.org

I. KelmanRisk Reduction Education for Disasters (Risk RED), Geneva, Switzerland

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Nat Hazards (2012) 61:1477–1481DOI 10.1007/s11069-011-9971-9

fail to find either a strong link in past data (e.g. Crompton et al. 2010) or a compelling

reason to focus on climate change policies for achieving future disaster risk reduction (e.g.

Pielke 2007). The reason is straightforward: climate change influences hazards, whereas

humanity can control vulnerability. As both are needed for a disaster, disasters can be

reduced by tackling vulnerability irrespective of changes in hazards—climate change

related or otherwise. This fundamental aspect of the connections between climate change

and disasters is often not well articulated in the rush to blame climate change for any

disaster-related ills witnessed.

Part of the challenge could be the amount and quality of current data on extreme events

and disasters. The data tend to be scattered, inconsistent, and incomplete in many ways.

Organisations collecting data on disasters are growing, with each database legitimately

having its own focus and purpose. Examples are the Centre for Research on the Epide-

miology of Disasters (CRED), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent

Societies, American government agencies such as USGS and NOAA, Google Crisis

Response, and the World News Atlas. Some focus on quantitative hazard parameters;

others detail aspects of quantitative and qualitative vulnerability, risk, and damage,

casualties, or other impacts.

Apart from these formal sources, informal information sources are also growing, such as

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs where individuals and organisations share their

perceptions, experiences, impacts, and responses, mixing qualitative and quantitative data.

An increasing number of conferences, workshops, and proceeding are other data sources,

but usually uncoordinated, not always catalogued, and rarely available to all. Overall,

disaster data varies in scale, definition, and significance, often lacking a coherent vision for

focusing the material on reducing disasters.

The year 2011 added more disasters in the expanding spirals of events and changes

linked and not linked to climate change. Various data challenges make it difficult to present

accurate and precise depictions of what is happening, even for a recent six-month period.

According to CRED’s disaster database EM-DAT, in the first 6 months of CRED, 13 July ,

2011a, 59 disaster events occurred, mostly flood disasters (24) and earthquake disasters (9)

(CRED July 13, 2011c). For the same time period, weekly reports from CRED record 74

events with 25 flood disasters and 7 earthquake disasters (CRED July 13, 2011b).

The numbers tend to vary more for disaster casualties. In Japan, on 11 March, an

earthquake and tsunami disaster is reported to have killed over 28,000 people, while in

Christchurch’s earthquake disaster, 363 people were reported killed on 22 February (CRED

2011c). For the same disasters, local data sources show different scenarios. In Japan, the

toll is given as 15,676 killed, and in Christchurch, 181 people were officially confirmed as

dead (NPAJ 2011; NZP 2011). A large part of the differences can be attributed to estimated

and confirmed death tolls, as information understandably fluctuates after a disaster, but a

gap in updating information is also evident.

Both these disasters received rapid response teams from researchers. Articles are

already being written, even submitted, to journals for peer review. Other fatal earthquakes

during this time period, in places such as Central Asia and Myanmar, had not only lower

death tolls but also much less attention. How does this relate to climate change? Some

disasters continue to gain significant attention to their legitimate conceptual and policy

relevance, while others (despite their legitimate conceptual and policy relevance) do not

appear in the literaturescape of hazards, vulnerability, and disasters (including climate

change).

Events influencing wider areas and issues of broad scientific and development concerns

are addressed across various disciplines, while those having limited time–space context are

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missed from many accounts. Although the minor influence of events, or lower lists of

casualties, can be used to justify their absence in research, their occurrences can be

attributed to interconnected vulnerability across space and time scales (Wisner et al. 2011;

Lewis 1999). They yield significant lessons for all forms of disaster research yet perpet-

ually fall into categories such as:

• ‘‘Silent disasters,’’ meaning that some of the worst impacts overall occur with little

fanfare or publicity (IFRC 2000; Zaman 1991).

• ‘‘Forgotten emergencies,’’ meaning ongoing crises perpetually neglected in reporting

and research (Jakobsen 2000).

• ‘‘Invisible disasters,’’ meaning that most disasters are local as the everyday

construction of vulnerabilities, remaining unseen beyond the communities affected

(La-Red et al. 2002; Lewis 1984).

Further, some disasters such as earthquakes or tropical cyclones can be clearly pinpointed

to specific places at a specific time. However, many climate-influenced disasters—such as

slow-rise floods and droughts—can be harder to pin down as ‘‘events.’’ They can be hard to

delineate for quantitative analysis, further adding to the data complications.

Often, lack of data availability means that the topic is just not addressed. Many issues

and aspects of disasters are missed out due to a predefined focus of studies, such as trying

to seek a correlation with climate change. Rising impacts of climate change and regular

connections with disasters can be assumed, or simplistically assessed, for general global

trends rather than specific, local reasons for witnessing certain vulnerability, and hence

disaster, manifestations. However, disasters, just as ripples on an ocean, have similarities

and differences. Despite having the similar origins rooted in hazards and vulnerabilities,

disaster impacts vary depending on the scale, intensity, and frequency. Although it may not

be needed to assess all ripples to understand their processes and origins, studying their

frequency, intensity, and linkages across scales is essential to assess their contribution to

overall turbulence witnessed or likely to occur in future.

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change [IPCC] assesses both physical and

social aspects of climate change covering impacts, vulnerability, response, and adaptation.

It tries to bring out relationships among climate change, extreme weather events, and

disasters. Since it tries to base itself on current research and literature, often past work on

vulnerability and disasters is not covered. It also faces challenges in presenting local

perspectives, local knowledge, and local details.

Other initiatives provide some balance. The Global Assessment Reports for Disaster

Risk Reduction from 2009 to 2011 (see UNISDR 2011) present an overview of disasters

around the world, including but not limited to the hazard of climate change. Such reports

are valuable, but still might not fully tap into what is happening and known at the local

level. Local details are compromised to yield overall trends, an important part of infor-

mation to be reported, but details are nonetheless essential for local disaster risk reduction

and public participation.

The Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction, which also

issued reports in 2009 and 2011 (see GNDR 2011), redresses this gap, giving a ground-up

perspective of how effective global disaster risk reduction efforts, incorporating climate

change adaptation, have been. The IPCC could seek a similar balance, drawing on

global programmes that promote local voices for climate change such as Many Strong

Voices (http://www.manystrongvoices.org) and Climate Frontlines (http://www.climate

frontlines.org).

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These are observations, not judgements. They are the reality to be dealt with, recogn-

ising that all data sources will have advantages and disadvantages. It does mean that, when

studying the connections between climate change and disasters, metrics and data sources

for those metrics must be selected carefully. It also means, rather than considering only

statistical analyses, tapping into the wealth of qualitative data, such as local knowledge of

weather changes that could indicate disasters—even without extreme hazard parameters—

for the people relying on their own knowledge (Gearheard et al. 2009).

This is not suggesting that the top-down, big-picture views and overall trends should be

replaced. They are needed and useful, as long as their limitations and advantages are

explicitly acknowledged. A balance is needed, also explicitly acknowledging the limita-

tions and advantages of bottom-up perspectives. Variations in vulnerability at different

scales need to be addressed for community-based adaptation to hazards and climate

change—which includes understanding the long-term process of vulnerability at all scales

(Lewis 1999). Drawing on baseline vulnerability data has been repeatedly suggested by

scholars as being part of this task, though such basic data are often not available or can be

hard to gather over a wide scale, such as gender, caste, religion, and class. Not all locations

have regular and credible censuses. Yet it is important to draw efforts towards local

experiences and to highlight what is happening away from international power centres—

without neglecting the big pictures.

In fact, Burton (2001) proposed an Intergovernmental Panel on Natural Disasters (IPND)

in the lines of IPCC which (with the term ‘‘natural’’ deleted) could be an important step in

this regard (see also Lewis 1991; Wisner 2000). At the same time, it is also important to note

that IPCC’s good points are preserved while its mistakes and limitations are not repeated in

the IPND. Apart from the regular assessments and reports, there is also a need for valid and

updated data at the local level. In this case, an international treaty may encourage various

countries to record such data in an international platform. A disaster inventory at various

scales could be useful for assessing not only the impacts of various actions, but also the

positive and negative feedbacks to hazards associated with climate change.

Given the enormity of the task, global assessments tend to bring similar trends and

patterns that can miss local variability. Local people—even when seeing the linkages

between their activities and disasters (including from the climate change hazard)—might

have limited choices for or control over averting catastrophic impacts. The picture taken

from a bird’s-eye view therefore needs to have the details of an ant’s point of view as well.

This applies not only in the form of data gathering and scenario presentations, but also in

terms of data distribution and access and suggesting actions at all scales. A holistic

overview with local authentication can help to find and implement progressive solutions

for disasters, including connections to climate change.

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