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Making Disasters International

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Disasterland

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Abstract

Unlike pandemics or climate change, which are global by definition, so-called natural disasters are territorialized events. Their effects rarely extend beyond a country’s borders, and even though their causes are sometimes related to wider global phenomena such as global warming or development issues, the link is not often clearly visible. Furthermore, countries are sovereign in deciding to solicit international aid after disaster has struck and remain the central actors of emergency operations. The international scope of disasters (even transnational, when action beyond the state level is required) is therefore not self-evident. It must be constructed, bringing into play discourses, practices, and mechanisms that link people, tools, and language.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Confronting Natural Disasters. An International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction, National Research Council. U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Advisory Committee on the International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction, National Academy Press, 1987, pp. 1–2.

  2. 2.

    This increase is difficult to prove. What is certain is that better information has improved knowledge of the events and the many counting instruments available at the international level make it easier to compile the occurrence of such disasters on a global scale.

  3. 3.

    Villacís, Carlos. “Latin American Cases. Hurricane Mitch (1998), Flash Floods and Landslides in Venezuela (2000), El Salvador Earthquakes (2001).” Asian Disaster Recovery Platform. On line: http://www.adrc.asia/publications/recovery_reports/pdf/Mitch.pdf (accessed July 10, 2018): 26.

  4. 4.

    Sometimes also referred to as “planetary risks.” Some researchers call for a “global commons” approach through which “it is possible to imagine that all human beings are connected in some way, in similar conditions and having a common vulnerability” (Badie and Smouts 1992: 218).

  5. 5.

    Definition given by the Institut national des hautes études de sécurité (INHES). My emphasis.

  6. 6.

    For a history of the human security doctrine, see Gros (2008).

  7. 7.

    Human Security Now. Commission on Human Security Report, New York, 2003, p. 17 (my emphasis).

  8. 8.

    The UNISDR report is entitled Living with Risk. A Global Review of Disaster Reduction Initiatives (2004).

  9. 9.

    Carlos Cruz, member of UNDAC Panama, film INSARAG las Américas: https://www.insarag.org/index.php/regional-groups/americas (accessed May 14, 2018).

  10. 10.

    Field notes, Mexico City, Mexico, October 8, 2012.

  11. 11.

    Field notes, Mexico City, Mexico, October 9, 2012.

  12. 12.

    This hierarchy of knowledge is not specific to the disaster world. Séverine Autesserre also mentions it in discussing peacebuilding skills (Autesserre 2014) and anthropologists of international aid and development have also pointed out this tendency (e.g., see Apthorpe 2011).

  13. 13.

    Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS): https://huairou.org/network/member-networks/groots/ (accessed April 9, 2018)

  14. 14.

    http://huairou.org/ (accessed April 9, 2018).

  15. 15.

    Interview, Geneva, Switzerland, June 17, 2009.

  16. 16.

    See Chap. 3.

  17. 17.

    Interview, Geneva, Switzerland, May 11, 2011.

  18. 18.

    Interview, Caraballeda, Venezuela, September 26, 2008.

  19. 19.

    Development anthropology has emphasized the role of these people who circulate easily between government institutions and international institutions, sharing the same trajectories, lifestyles, and networks. See Mosse (2005: 17).

  20. 20.

    Interview, Mexico City, Mexico, October 10, 2012.

  21. 21.

    Interview, Lima, Peru, November 26, 2010.

  22. 22.

    Id.

  23. 23.

    https://www.preventionweb.net/english/policies/v.php?id=44067&cid=185 (accessed May 14, 2018).

  24. 24.

    Personal correspondence, February 28, 2009.

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    Sandrine Revet

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Revet, S. (2020). Making Disasters International. In: Disasterland. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41582-2_4

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