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Disaster Recovery Through the Lens of Justice pp 1–25Cite as

Introduction: Recovery, Resilience, Vulnerability, and Justice

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Abstract

Disparate outcomes from disaster, including the permanent displacement and essentially forced internal migration of lower-income and minority residents, occurred following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and continue to occur following large disasters as well as chronic events. The introduction uses examples such as Hurricane Katrina to describe the nexus between justice and disaster recovery outcomes, arguing for the application of a capacities justice framework and a human rights approach in disaster recovery. The chapter provides some background on the existing literature and policy frameworks, including the concepts of resilience and vulnerability, along with the role of historic practices and systemic racism in the creation of the modern hazard landscape.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This internal migration could reasonably be considered to have been a forced migration, driven by recovery policies that substantially limited the abilities of some residents, such as those in public housing, to return to their original homes or even to their community.

  2. 2.

    It should be noted that no disaster is fully natural, as socio-cultural processes create and exacerbate vulnerability leading to disaster impacts that would not occur solely as a result of the hazard itself. This book will avoid the use of the term natural disaster, in recognition of this fact.

  3. 3.

    It is important to consider intersectionality in any discussion of identity, as individuals have a range of identities and experiences that combine in different ways.

  4. 4.

    Although forced migration is a strong term, and one that brings to mind human rights violations, it can be argued that policies and programs which leave no alternatives to leaving by limiting access to adaptation, do in fact force migration.

  5. 5.

    The term natural disasters is used here, as it is the terminology utilized for the analysis and denotes the limitations in the types of hazards considered for the statistic.

  6. 6.

    The term Just Recovery is capitalized in order to distinguish a justice-based framing of recovery from one which merely references justice among various parameters.

  7. 7.

    Uneven distribution or unjust/unfair distribution.

  8. 8.

    Zakour and Swager (2018, pp. 63–64):

    1. 1.

      “The vulnerability of social systems is the reduced capacity to adapt to environmental circumstances;

    2. 2.

      Vulnerability is not evenly distributed among people or communities;

    3. 3.

      The concept of disaster vulnerability is multidimensional;

    4. 4.

      The availability and equitable distribution of resources in a community decreases disaster vulnerability and facilitates resilience;

    5. 5.

      Vulnerability is largely the result of environmental capabilities and liabilities;

    6. 6.

      Social and demographic attributes of people are associated with, but do not cause, disaster vulnerability;

    7. 7.

      Unsafe conditions in which people live and work are the most proximate and immediate societal causes of disaster;

    8. 8.

      Root causes, the socio-cultural characteristics of a community or society, historically and in the present, are the ultimate causes of disasters;

    9. 9.

      Disasters occur because of a chain of causality in which root causes interact with structural pressures to produce unsafe conditions. Hazards then interact with unsafe conditions to trigger a disaster;

    10. 10.

      Culture, ideology, and shared meaning are of central importance to the progression of disaster vulnerability;

    11. 11.

      Environmental capabilities and liabilities, and disaster susceptibility, are related in complex ways to produce the level of community vulnerability; and,

    12. 12.

      The environments of communities are growing in complexity and are increasingly global in scale.”

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  1. Jacksonville State University, Metairie, LA, USA

    Alessandra Jerolleman

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  1. Alessandra Jerolleman
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Correspondence to Alessandra Jerolleman .

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Jerolleman, A. (2019). Introduction: Recovery, Resilience, Vulnerability, and Justice. In: Disaster Recovery Through the Lens of Justice. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04795-5_1

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