 |
 |
Dear Victor,
I mentioned the dam collapse as an example in my post to another list servers, 'Information and Knowledge for DRR' (IK4DRR) on 11 November. For the sake to stimulating more discussion about this on RADIX, I paste those comments here and also add some more thoughts in bold italic. It would be great if anyone with the time and linguistic skills could share with RADIX what people are writing about this outrage in Brazil and in Spanish-speaking Americas (La Red, etc.). I would like to do that but am recoverying from pneumonia and a weeks behind other deadlines I had to meet.
Abrazos,
BEN
I find three things missing in the way UNISDR defines 'vulnerability': treatment of power, institutional failure and intentionality.
POWER. The time has come to complement the phrase ‘disaster risk reduction’ with its stronger, militant, athletic big sister, ‘disaster risk creation’. The UNISDR’s own GAR 2013 and GAR 2015 reports make this recommendation. The use of financial power in a starkly divided world means that many investment decisions increase the disaster risk of ordinary people while reaping profits for a few. Read, for example, Saskia Sassen’s book, Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Not only do specific developments displace urban and rural people, who often must find a way to live in more hazardous land and cityscapes, but financial power is also destroying the web of life. The poor depend on biological resources in a more direct way, and a recent World Bank study demonstrates yet again that consequences of climate change will fall heaviest on the poor (Shock Waves, World Bank, 2016). Consider the fires that are consuming much of Indonesia and the illegal logging and burning that lies behind (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media). Read Jason W. Moore’s book, Capitalism and the Web of Life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital to unpick the pathways and processes involved in risk creation (London: Verso, 2015).
Power takes many forms -- violent & coercive, financial & economic, political & bio-political, administrative & regulatory, communicative & socio-cultural and more. Scale is an important dimension of the use of and response to power in all cases. I'd hypothesize that as the scale of power in any one of these domains increases, the more likely it is that power in another will reflect that increase to some degree. There well may be a 'leakage' or 'spill over' effect at work. The sheer scale of financial power wielded by Billington means that its political and economic power, ability to influence regulatory power of the state and its ability to wield communicative and socio-cultural power (projecting a positive, caring image) are likely to be great.
At present there are investigations in Brazil concerning how regulatory measures were implemented. There apparently was a report by state engineers a year or two ago that warned against enlarging the holding lakes. I believe the first proposal from Billington to conduct enlargement was rejected but then accepted on appeal.
INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE. ‘Capacity building’ is another of the comforting phrases often invoked in DRR circles. In reality, when it comes to corruption and the misuse of power, subversion of regulatory regimes, decision-makers and political leaders all over the world are quite ‘capable’; they have networks and power to work the institutional system to their advantage and to the advantage of clients and friends. One only needs to look at the root causes of the destruction of a whole town in Brazil when a dam collapsed and the iron ore mining slurry surged out (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/brazil-dam-burst-mining-rules). Or one can refer again to the fires in Indonesia. However, institutional failure and malfunction is universal. The problems lie deep and cannot simply be solved by capacity building workshops for administrators. For example, have a look at the book by Arjen Boin and his co-authors, The Politics of Crisis Management: Public leadership under pressure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
As I just suggested, forms of power overlap and can reinforce each other. So it is artificial to separate ot 'institutional failure' from 'power'. Nevertheless, as an heuristic or intermediate tool of analysis, a focus on institutions is useful. What both the Pressure and Release (PAR) framework and IRDR's guidelines for Forensic analysis of disaster (Forin) focus on as an analytical fulcrum are 'dynamic pressures' that link root causes with unsafe conditions and fragile livelihoods. These dynamic pressures are processes that work at a national or large sub-national scale on a temporal scale of years or even decades. In this case, one would consider world wide mineral commodity price decline as a dynamic pressure that affects Brazil and the state of Mato Grosso heavily. I have read that trends in improved mine safety have been reversed in recent years as companies, including Billington, have cut costs. Economic stress on the government of Brazil and on the state government, another dynamic pressure, would increase their desire to maximise income from Billington's activities. The past few years of political chaos in Brazil due to a variety of scandals has probably distracted parliamentarians' and senior govenment officials' attention.
Topography and settlement patterns define the exposure of the vulnerable population to slurry innundation. What's more, most of these people are very poor semi-subsistence farmers, whose livelihoods are fragile. With livestock dead and fields covered in many meters of waste, they have no reserves. In this context one has to wonder whether these farmers were ever touched by Lula's much touted 'fome zero' (zero hunger) social protection scheme.
PAR and Forin also guides a researcher to ask about the root causes explain the impact that dynamic pressures have on institutional and individual behaviour. Here one needs to look at the history of government in Brazil and it history of extractive industries. From the sugar and rubber barons onwards, Brazil has had a history of crude, even brutal, exploitation of land and labour. As the continuing intermittent murder of forest activists shows, the extractors of hard woods and other commodities are not above use of violent power. Brazil has been described as an 'India with a Belgium attached'. The industrial South has developed some democratic traditions and labour militancy, and the inspiring example of land occupation by the Movement of the Landless. The rest of the country lags behind.
INTENTIONALITY. People know things. They have intentions. They improvise and innovate, cooperate and compete. This is true at the micro as well as the macro scale. In localities, people perceive and prioritize risk from the quotidian point of view. Larger hazards may be on their radar, but mixed with ‘everyday risks’ that include social and economic threats. See Frontline (http://www.gndr.org/programmes/frontline-programme.html) a methodology designed to capture these perceptions and to work with them together with partners at various scales. At the macro scale, governments attempt to control people with fear and may end up creating apathy, dependency and passive resistance. James Scott’s classic, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press) is a must-read for workers in DRR, as is his more recent, The Art of Not Being Governed (Yale, 2010). A good study of the ‘biopolitics’ of risk and fear is by Isabell Lorey, State of Insecurity: Government of the precarious (London: Verso, 2015).
Early reports say that there was no warning system in place to alert downsteam hamlets, villages and towns. Some were overwhelmed up to 24 hours after the dam break with no warning. Cell phone reception is said to be poor or non-existent. The company said that it placed calls, but it seems on an ad hoc basis. There was no early warning system. In addition, for poor farmers, there are many other concerns and everyday hazards that occupy their minds.-----Original Message-----
From: Victor Marchezini
Sent: Nov 14, 2015 7:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Framing disaster - Dam collapse in BrazilDear colleagues,
Have you heard about the dam collapse that occurred in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil?
Thanks,
VictorDr. Ben Wisner Aon-Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London, UK & Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania & Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."