Disasters

With an ever-increasing population, combined with more industrialization and urbanization, the likelihood of disasters occurring appears to be on the increase. There is a pressing need for studying the causes and effects of disasters, their non-parochial nature, and the staggering impact they have, especially on developing nations.

Most disasters are no accident. They are made by misgovernment. Far more Africans have died in Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique and elsewhere by the hunger that follows avoidable civil war than by that which follows drought. In Zambia and Peru it is feckless misrule that causes needless deaths. Decades of it drove the people into cities without providing clean water there, so the cholera came. Floods and earthquakes are disasters for which it seems that only nature is to blame. Yet competent governments, given foresight and funds, can build defences against them. In June 1990 an earthquake struck the sparse villages of northern Iran killing more than 40,000 people. The previous year an equally fierce tremor, striking the packed city of San Francisco, killed fewer than 100 people.

Disasters produce many therapeutic effects on social systems. The sharing of a common threat to survival and the widespread suffering produced by disaster usually result in a dramatic increase in social solidarity and a temporary breakdown of social and economic distinctions. This resolves pre-existing trauma, and loss or privation motivates people to devote their energies to constructive purposes. It may also provide an opportunity for new innovative solutions to chronic problems of underdevelopment.