Journal of Natural Disaster Science, Volume 26, Number 2, 2004, pp63-72

Swords, Plowshares, Earthquakes, Floods, and Storms
in an Unstable, Globalizing World1
Ben WISNER2(Received for 10 Jun., 2004 and in revised from 7 Jan., 2005)

ABSTRACT
Researchers and practitioners concerned with humanitarian disasters such as war and violent conflict do notcommunicate sufficiently with their counterparts who work on the prevention and management of the disastrous
impacts of natural hazards, and vice versa. Violent conflict and disaster management have many important interactions and they have to be addressed in a comprehensive and integrated manner. This paper provides a systematic introduction to that kind of needed framework.

I.

VIOLENT CONFLICT AND NATURAL HAZARDS:INTRODUCTION, DEFINITIONS, APPROACHES

There are a wide variety of ways violent conflict complicates,
confuses, and obstructs the efforts of planners, engineers, and others to assist people in protecting themselves, their livelihoods, andtheir built environments from natural hazards.
For example, civil war and the so-called ‘war on drugs’ in the
Latin American country of Colombia have displaced more than amillion rural people, who have sought a more secure existence on
the edges of large cities such as Bogota.3 This influx of unemployed, poor people into highly dangerous locations where theysquat in self-built houses in steep ravines, adds a great deal to thechallenge faced by emergency management planners in that country. Although some very important innovations in earthquake andlandslide preparedness and mitigation have come out of Colombia
in the past decade,4 the sheer numbers of people displaced by violence threatens to overwhelm efforts to implement such innovative
designs and programs.
Beginning in the 1990s one more and more frequently saw
application of knowledge that could prevent loss from natural hazards blocked, deflected, diluted by violent conflict and its aftermath. More than six months after the tragic tsunami that affected
Sri Lanka and ten other countries, the Tamil Tigers and the Sri
Lanka government have still not concluded an arrangement forsharing relief and recovery assistance.5 Thus, as ambitious as it
might seem, a dialogue needs to be fostered between the disciplines of peace research and disaster research for the benefit ofboth sides.6
Peace research and disaster research have similar and, at sometimes, overlapping histories. Briefly, peace research began as adiscipline in the 1970s in part out of dissatisfaction with ‘realist’
approaches to international relations that take the necessity of war
or the threat of war for granted in international relations. Instead,peace research drew on a venerable, centuries-long tradition ofconcerns with social justice and non-violent conflict mediation to
KEY WORDS: humanitarian disaster,violent conflict, disaster management

produce a positive notion of peace.7 It sought the root causes of
war and other forms of violent conflict in what are conventionallyconsidered ‘normal’ economic and political power relations.
Peace research approached a definition of violence and conflict from a broad perspective. Drawing from this research tradition, the analysis that follows treats several manifestations of violence:・Organized activity intended to kill or harm others. Only
one-to-one, interpersonal violence is excluded from the analysis that follows, although strictly speaking even domestic violence has been shown to be correlated with natural disasteroccurrences.8 Organized violence takes the form not only ofstate vs. state war but increasingly as the activity of war lords,
urban gangs, and mobs.
・Use of the threat of violence to displace or coerce others.
In situations where rural or urban people live in fear of organized violence, they may be forced to forfeit their assets andleave their homes. Even when they remain, their behavior
may be constrained and coerced.
・In addition, peace research introduced the concept of“structural violence.” This describes entire economic,
social, and political systems whose normal functioning produces and reproduces hunger, ill health, and premature death
primarily via the structural maintenance of inequalities andinequities. This is a powerful concept, and its invocation by
peace researchers has had much the same motive as attempts
within disaster research to develop “integrated” frameworks
of understanding.
・Finally, even when the actual use of violence or threat of violence has subsided, historical memory of violence and its
post-traumatic consequences may affect the ability ofgroups of people to generate the trust required to implement
disaster reduction measures. One should understand the term
‘post-traumatic consequences’ in a broad sense that includes
the individual mind and body, domestic and social relations(including trust), as well as the longer term impacts on liveli-

B. WISNER

64

hoods, the natural environment and resources, and on the built
environment. Thus in numerous ways recovery from violent
conflict may face similar challenges on a similar time scale asrecovery from catastrophic disaster.9
This broad definition of violent conflict is in keeping with theway in which the United Nations and its specialized agencies andothers have guided the evolution of the concept of ‘security.’ Anarrow preoccupation with ‘national security’ from a politico-military point of view characterized this concept when the U.N. wasfounded in 1945. Whereas today the U.N. Development Program,among others, recognizes many interrelated aspects of ‘human’security: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, andpolitical security.10
Disaster research shares peace research’s impatience withexcessively narrow definitions. Current thinking about integrated
disaster management grew out of dissatisfaction with a narrowapproach that focused primarily on the hazard and not on vulnerability of the people and systems affected by a hazard. In addition,
this earlier ‘hazard’ −as opposed to ‘vulnerability’ −approachtended to be inspired by the ‘top down’, ‘command and control’
style of cold war civilian defense.11 By contrast, the vulnerability
approach to integrated disaster management tries to balance participatory, or ‘bottom up’ use of local knowledge and capacity forrisk reduction with ‘top down’ technical expertise.
Digging deeper, one can also see that the emphasis on social
justice and the root causes of conflict one finds in peace research
are also there in the search for root causes of disaster
vulnerability.12 In this way, Tony Oliver-Smith called the 1970
earthquake that destroyed the town of Yungay, Peru, a ‘500 year
earthquake’.13 What he meant is that the vulnerability of the people of Yungay can be traced back many years to the destruction by
Spanish conquest of the ancient Inca system of architecture andland use, which was risk-adverse and exposed the Inca population
to less risk from natural hazards. Likewise in Guatemala City people referred to the 1976 earthquake as a ‘class quake,’ demonstrating that people on the street were aware that the majority of thehomes destroyed were those of the poor Mayan squatters who hadbuilt on the steep waste land in the city. In this manner, integrated
disaster risk management seeks out root causes for vulnerability
just as peace research probes the root causes of violent conflict.
At the beginning of the 21st Century there is a growing consensus that human beings have a right to security and development
as an extension of their right to life. A rights-driven approach toboth development work and the practice of integrated disastermanagement must see violent conflict as a major obstacle toachievement of those rights.14
II. VIOLENT CONFLICT AND DISASTER:
THE SCIENTIFIC, MORAL, AND POLICYCHALLENGES
It is important to note the scale and human cost of violent conflict in relation to the human loss from natural hazards. Disasters,
especially those that seem to be principally caused by natural hazards, are not the greatest threat to humanity. Despite the lethal reputation of earthquakes, epidemics, and famine, a much greater proportion of the world’s population has had its lifespan shortened byevents that are often unnoticed: violent conflict, endemic disease,and hunger – conditions that pass for normal existence in many
parts of the world, especially (but not only) less developed countries (LDCs). Occasionally earthquakes have killed hundreds ofthousands, and very occasionally floods, famines, or epidemics
have taken millions of lives at a time. But to focus on these alone(in the understandably humanitarian way that outsiders respond tosuch tragedies) is to ignore the millions who are not killed in such
events, but who also face grave risks. Many more lives are lost inviolent conflict and to the preventable outcome of disease andhunger.
If one totals deaths during the 20th Century (1900-1999) fromviolent conflict, disasters triggered by a natural event, epidemics,
and accidents (road, rail, air, industrial), it is violent conflict that
accounts for 62% of these 424 million deaths. By contrast, rapidonset disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions accountfor only 2 %; whilst epidemics take 12% as their share.15
U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, put these multiple
threats to human security into perspective in 2001 when he wrote:16“We know that we cannot be secure amidst starvation, that wecannot build peace without alleviating poverty, and that wecannot build freedom on foundations of injustice. These pillars of what we now understand as the people-centred conceptof ‘human security’ are inter-related and mutually reinforcing.”
Violent conflict poses challenges to scientists and planners
who attempt to anticipate ‘surprises’ and other kinds of complications and uncertainties that can accompany natural and technological hazard events. War and other kinds of violent conflict pose,
therefore, serious addition difficulties in applying an integrated
approach to disaster management. These violent conflict-induced
complications can be seen in all phases of the disaster management
cycle. Efforts at integrated mitigation, prevention, and preparedness are made more difficult by past, present, and possible future
violent conflict. For example, early warning may be impossible
under conditions of violent conflict. Goma, a city of 500,000 ineastern Republic of Congo, had no public warning of a perilous
volcanic eruption in 2002.17 There was at the time simply nomunicipal government since the city was under the control of arebel army contesting the authority of the central state in Kinshasa.
Response capacity may also be reduced under conditions of violent
conflict. Fire fighters were stoned and shot at when they responded to fire during the uprising in Los Angeles in 1991. Relief,
reconstruction and recovery are all subject to additional requirements and possible limitations when they confront pervasive violent conflict or its aftermath in addition to the effects of the naturalor technological hazard event (e.g. drought, flood, epidemic,
explosion, or chemical release). For example, a refinery burned
for many days uncontrollably during the bombing of Belgrade
which was part of NATOs intervention in the Serbian/ Bosnian
conflict.
During the 1990s many violent conflicts have broken out invarious parts of the world, and many civilians have been killed,maimed (especially by land mines), injured, deliberately mutilated,
starved, occasionally enslaved, and displaced by the belligerent
parties. So great has been the need for humanitarian relief in theseconflict and post-conflict situations that some normal development
assistance has been diverted, and opportunities for self-generated

SWORDS, PLOWSHARES, EARTHQUAKES, FLOODS, AND STORMS IN AN UNSTABLE, GLOBALIZING WORLDdevelopment delayed or destroyed, further worsening the positionof marginal and vulnerable populations in the long term.
Furthermore, there has been confusion among development agencies, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) about how
to act in regard to:18
・Civilian/military relations in ‘complex’ emergencies;
・Relations with war lords, local elites, and the ‘legitimate’
national army;
・Ways to move from relief to recovery, and to development;19・Internationally acceptable standards of assistance;20
・Mobilization of international support for relief.
Conflicts have continued to exacerbate natural extreme events
such as flooding in the Malagasy Republic (2002) and Sri Lanka(2002), drought in Afghanistan (2002), and the volcanic eruptionin eastern Congo (2002) mentioned above. In 2005, the way conflict has complicated recovery from the tsunami in Sri Lanka is a
vivid example.21 At the same time, in Zimbabwe resilience todrought has been undermined by chaotic years of farm nationalizations and famine relief denied to opponents of the ruling party.22
III. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF INTERACTION
OF VIOLENT CONFLICT WITH NATURALAND TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS AND
MANAGEMENT EFFORTS
Violent conflict interacts with natural hazards and technological hazards in a wide variety of ways.
・Violent conflict is often one of the root causes of social vulnerability. In violent conflict situations today 90% of thecasualties are suffered by civilians. This contrasts witharound 50% during the Second World War and only 5% during the First World War.23 In addition to death and injury, thecivilian population often finds its normal livelihoods disrupted, leading many into more hazardous means of obtaining thenecessities of life. Women and children are particularly
affected by these stresses. Prostitution as a desperate meansof livelihood combined with rape and sexual slavery has contributed to the explosion of HIV/AIDS in some parts ofAfrica.24 In extreme cases famine25 may be the result as in
Bengal in 1943, Biafra (the Igbo-speaking breakaway territory of southeastern Nigeria) in 1969, Cambodia in the mid1970s, Angola and southern Sudan in the 1980s and 1990s,
and Darfur, Sudan in the early 2000s.
・Institutional weaknesses due to past violent conflict may
combine with natural hazards to produce a downward
spiral. This is evident in the case of Central America where
Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and El Salvador all havesocieties shaped by violent conflict. In the case of El
Salvador, few of the elements of the 1992 peace accords had
been implemented when hurricane Mitch hit the region in
1998. Contentious issues concerning land tenure and reformof the police and judiciary bear directly on social welfare andeconomic development. These issues were still not settled
when two earthquakes struck in January and February 2001,
killing more than one thousand people, injuring more thaneight thousand and causing damages valued at $2.3 billion.
Forty per cent of the country’s health centers were destroyed
and one-third of the schools. 150,000 homes were destroyed

65

another 185,000 damaged.26 Because of institutional weaknesses, El Salvador was unable to make effective use of theinternational assistance for multi-hazard mitigation madeavailable by the Stockholm group of donors to the whole
region affected by hurricane Mitch. Had it done so, damage
and loss from the 2001 earthquake might have been less. 27
Since then the poorest rural population have suffered hail anddrought, both devastating food crops, as well as the collapseof the world price for coffee. Small farmers and landlesslaborers have suffered most. Caught up in a similar vicious
spiral, half a million poor rural Nicaraguans have crossed theborder into Costa Rica seeking work. These immigrants arelikely to live in places and in conditions that expose them torisks such as flooding, landslides, and disease.
Such mass movement of poor people may be interpreted as
motivated by a ‘pull factor’, namely economic opportunity, and notthe ‘push factor’ exerted by violent conflict.28 To some extent, thatis true; however, one has to place the economic and institutional
weaknesses of Nicaragua and other countries in the context of long
histories of civil war.
・Displacement of large numbers of people in war and otherviolent conflicts can lead to new risks. There were 9.2 million refugees in the world in 2005, down from roughly 10
million official refugees in the world in 2003 and 12 million
in 2002.29 These numbers exclude ‘internally displaced’ people who have not crossed a national border while seeking
refuge. Most of these refugees are fleeing violence. In manycases they face new risks that include exposure to disease andunfamiliar hazards in new rural or urban environments.
Deadly outbreaks of cholera and other communicable diseases have affect displaced persons who fled the genocide in
Rwanda and, earlier, the civil war that led to the creation of
Bangladesh. 30 In Alexandra Township in Johannesburg,
South Africa, refugees from the civil war in Mozambiquewere among the poorest residents who lived in locations mosthighly exposed to flash flooding.31 In addition, when international refugees are finally repatriated to their home countries,
they often end up in new locations – not their original homes.
And these locations are sometimes hazardous. In all these situation, women, children, and the elderly are among the mostvulnerable people.32
・Violent conflict can interfere with the provision of relief
and recovery assistance. The civil wars and instances ofviolent conflict in Africa during the 1980s and 1990s often
challenged the ability of humanitarian agencies to provide
essential relief to the civilian population. In Sudan UNICEF
was able to negotiate ‘corridors of tranquility’ during its socalled ‘Operation Lifeline Sudan.’33 However, more commonly arrangements for relief and recovery assistance havebeen ad hoc, unreliable, and rapidly changing, as they havebeen more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur inWestern Sudan. Worse than this, there is some evidence fromcase studies, mostly in Africa so far, that middlemen and war
lords actually profit from and wish to perpetuate a ‘relief
economy’ in which they are able to trade relief goods theysteal or divert for guns or use relief aid they come to acquireto ‘buy’ support among civilians.34
・Participatory methods meant to empower and engage

66

B. WISNER

socially vulnerable groups may be difficult or impossible
during violent conflicts. This effect of violent conflict is aparticularly important challenge to ‘integrated disaster management’. An integrated approach to disaster management
has much in common with what the UNDP calls a ‘developmental’ approach to humanitarian assistance.35 In both cases
the goal is not only to address the specific crisis at hand – anearthquake, flood, factory explosion, or a violent conflict –but to do so in a way that builds capacity to mitigate or to prevent a future occurrence. In both cases, the role of local
knowledge and capabilities is important, hence participatory
methods based on trust are vital tools.36 But in violent conflict situations people are less inclined or able to take part insuch ‘bottom up’ efforts – be they directed toward preventing
damage from future natural hazards or toward peace-making.
In the case of the work by the Red Crescent Society with
Palestinian refugees, there has been some success in empowering ordinary people in the assessment of their own vulnerabilities, capacities, and resources in a systematic way.
However, this is likely to be an exception that proves the rulethat under intensely violent conditions participatory anddevelopmental approaches are very difficult.37
It is important in this context to make a clear distinction
between ‘conflict’ and ‘violent conflict.’ The author’s position –shared by many who work in the field of development studies andpeace research – is that the process of sustainable human development is necessarily conflictual.38 That is, human beings have different objective material interests as well as subjective understandings of their needs. However, the vast majority of these conflicts
are resolved directly by local mechanisms of negotiation and mediation.39 Such conflicts are normally non-violent. These are verbal
disputes-based conflicts whose resolution logical reasoning-based
arguments, persuasion and debate as well as negotiation and bargaining work to a large extent. By contrast, violent conflict tends
to by-pass or even to shut down local mechanisms for conflict resolution.
・Application of existing knowledge for mitigation of risk
from extreme natural events is often difficult or impossible during violent conflict. Over the past three decades avery large knowledge bank has grown as regards preparedness, mitigation, warning, and response to natural and technological hazards. Flood and cyclone warning systems have
improved.40 So also have early warning systems of foodemergencies based partly on satellite surveillance of pastureand croplands and partly on field data routinely reporting
market prices and the nutritional status of children. 41
However, violent conflicts disrupt the communication necessary to make application of this knowledge effective.
Advances in hydrological modeling and the use of current
information and communication technologies (ICTs) makemanagement of large river basins feasible. But tensions
among the 12 nations within the basin of the Nile make common management difficult, even in the absence of overt warfare. The same could be said of other large river basins suchas those of the Mekong, or the Euphrates.42 It is not only current violent conflicts that complicate the practice of integrated
disaster management. A long history of conflicts, as forexample in southern Africa, leaves behind weak infrastructure

and institutional arrangements. Such a history may haveplayed a role in the breakdown in communications between
authorities in Zimbabwe and Zambia who released waterfrom dams on the Zambezi River that took Mozambicans
downstream by surprise during the floods in 2000.43
・Violent conflict often diverts national and international
financial and human resources that could be used for mitigation of disaster risk. On the national scale a good example is Ethiopia. During its state vs. state war with Eritrea during the 1990s, Ethiopia let its national famine early warning
system deteriorate. Resources were used for war and not forsuch social investments as maintenance of the food monitoring system that had been put in place following the famines of
the 1980s. In 2003 the Ethiopian government was ‘surprised’
by a widespread food emergency that it should have been able
to detect much earlier.44 On the international scale, donor
attention was so fixated on post-war Afghanistan and Iraq thatlittle attention was given to a fulminating combination of
HIV/AIDS, flood, and drought in southern Africa, among
other ‘under-reported’ humanitarian emergencies,45 a distortion of course compounded by donor fixation by the Asiantsunami in 2004. It was only in 2005 with the G8 meeting in
Gleneagles, Scotland and the massive, international ‘Make
Poverty History’ citizen movement that donors began toredress this distorted focus.
・Violent conflict often destroys infrastructure which may
intensify natural hazards such as flooding, the effects ofdrought, or epidemic disease. Among the infrastructure targets in recent conflicts have been irrigation systems, dams,
levees, roads, bridges, water treatment plants, refineries,
pipelines, and electricity systems. Such destruction may
rapidly erode public health and also throw large numbers ofpeople into unemployment. Both these effects increase a
population’s vulnerability to future hazards. In the case of
Iraq, the destruction of water treatment and distribution systems, drainage and sanitation facilities, and electricity supplies during the first and second wars in that country contributed to health hazards that cost the lives of more than halfa million children. During the first Gulf War, the U.S.
destroyed electricity supplies, shutting off power to hospitals
and water treatment facilities. This began a series of disastrous events that undermined public health. Transportation
networks were also targeted, so that distribution of food andother essential items to Iraq’s primarily urban civilian population was disrupted. As a result, there were 47,000 avoidable
child deaths within eight months of the 1991 war.46 The
effect of sanctions during the years following the first Gulf
war added to these initial stresses on the most vulnerable
groups of civilians. Iraq’s rank in the UNDP’s Human
Development Index fell from 96 to 127. That fall set an
unenviable record as the most rapid decline in human welfare
in recent history. Between 1990 and 1999, Iraq’s under-five
mortality rate increased by more than 150% to 131 per 1000
live births.47 By 2005, occupied Iraq has still not been able torestore its basic infrastructure due to frequent terror attacks
and instability. Twenty per cent of the cost of contracted
reconstruction work goes for private security for the workforce and consulting engineers.

SWORDS, PLOWSHARES, EARTHQUAKES, FLOODS, AND STORMS IN AN UNSTABLE, GLOBALIZING WORLD・Violent confrontations often wreaks havoc on vegetation,
land, and water, and undermines sustainable development. The use of depleted uranium as shell casings by U.S.
and British forces during the two wars with Iraq have contaminated large areas of northern Kuwait and southern Iraq withradioactive dust. In 2005, the date crop in Iraq was at risk
from insect infestation because insecticide dusters had been
destroyed in the wars. Chemical defoliants were used by the
U.S. in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In suchcases there may be been long-lasting health and economic
effects. Unexploded explosives and land mines make some
agricultural land unusable in post-war regions, where there
are on-going efforts to remove land mines in 90 countries.48
Water has also been contaminated by acts as diverse as sabotage of oil terminals by Saddam Hussein in 1991 and the aerial spraying of coca fields by the U.S. during its so-called ‘war
on drugs.’49 In addition, the presence of large numbers of displaced persons and refugees in dense concentrations cancause local de-vegetation and soil erosion.50
IV. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS AND THE WAY
FORWARDA series of international conferences have defined ‘integrated
disaster management’ as a set of risk reduction efforts that proceedby “integrating risk policy making with infrastructure development, communication, social networks and economic/ financial
planning.”51 In an urban context this implies “integrating disaster/risk policy making with urban development, land use, communication networks, economic/ financial planning, human security, cultural heritage preservation and institutional realities.”52 Above all,an ‘integrated’ approach to disaster management is “a multidisciplinary approach … involving not only scholars … but also practitioners in …public policy making at the national and community
level, and community and NGO representatives.”53
What should be clear from the previous section is that violent
conflict affects in very specific ways each and every element inthese definitions of integrated disaster management. So, in theface of such systematic blockage of such efforts in times of war,other situations of violent conflict, and often in post-war conditions, what can be done?
An analysis of these practical implications can be divided into
two parts – those regarding humanitarian practice and those concerning professions whose practice is prevention and mitigation of
hazards.
The first group of professionals face a task of coordination,negotiating the complex issue of civil-military relations mentioned
earlier as well as the challenge of providing assistance in ways that
contribute toward local capacity in the future. The United Nations
has laid out the basic requirements for effective humanitarianassistance. These are a set of ‘core protection principles’ adopted
by the U.N. Security Council in 2002:54
・Access to Vulnerable Populations: Facilitate safe and unimpeded access to vulnerable populations as the fundamental
prerequisite for humanitarian assistance and protection.
・Separation of Civilians and Armed Elements: Maintain thehumanitarian and civilian character of camps for refugees andinternally displaced persons.

67

・Justice and Reconciliation: (1) Put an end to impunity for
those responsible for serious violations of international
humanitarian, human rights and criminal law. (2) Build confidence and enhance stability within the host State by promoting truth and reconciliation.
・Security, Law and Order: Strengthen the capacity of local
police and judicial systems to enforce law and order.
・ Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration andRehabilitation: Facilitate the stabilization and rehabilitationof communities.
・Small Arms and Mine Action: Facilitate a secure environment for vulnerable populations and humanitarian personnel.
・Training of Security and Peacekeeping Forces: Ensure
adequate sensitization of multinational forces to issues pertaining to the protection of civilians.
・Effects on Women: Address the specific needs of women forassistance and protection.
・Effects on Children: Address the specific needs of children
for assistance and protection.
・Safety and Security of Humanitarian and Associated
Personnel: Ensure the safety and security of humanitarian,
United Nations and associated personnel.
・Media and Information: (1) Counter occurrences of speechused to incite violence. (2) Promote and support accurate
management of information on the conflict.
・Natural Resources and Armed Conflict: Address theimpact of natural resource exploitation on the protection ofcivilians.
・Humanitarian Impact of Sanctions: Minimize unintended
adverse side effects of sanctions on the civilian population.
Those professionals whose prime concern is integrated disaster risk management−and not management of conflict and protection of civilians in conflict situations−may also draw some other
implications from the foregoing analysis.
・First, they should design early warning systems and otherprograms for risk reduction in ways that are robust evenunder the stresses of violent conflict. Joanna Macrae, coordinator of the Humanitarian Network run by the Overseas
Development Institute in Britain, has noted that in many
countries the challenge is not this or that crisis, but more orless continuous ‘chronic political emergencies’.55 She denies
that in most cases there is a clear-cut ‘post-war reconstruction’ phase during which development-as-usual can be practiced. She sees a much more chaotic situation. Therefore, if
the application of knowledge from engineering, earth science,hydrology, meteorology, public health and other disciplines is
to be long-lasting and effective, contingency plans for the
resilience of systems in the face of political instability andeven violent conflict have got to be built in from the beginning. A corollary is that early warning systems and other risk
reduction ‘technologies’ cannot simply be add-ons and provided from the top-down by specialist expatriates or centersof excellence. Technologies, systems, and designs for a safe
society must be developed in partnership with end users who
know the demands and stresses of the real environment inwhich these innovations will have to be implemented.
Among those stresses is violent conflict.
・Thus a second implication is that capacity needs to be

B. WISNER

68

built deeply among the end users and stakeholders. An
example of such an approach is the flood early warning system set up with assistance of Swedish SIDA in one river basinin Guatemala. It does not rely on warning messages from thecapital city or an academic institution. Trained villagers takestream flow measurements and monitor rainfall with simple
instruments and send their observations to the local town
using solar powered radios. In the town, other trained volunteers use software on a lap top computer to model the flood
hazard and give the warning. During hurricane Mitch in 1998
no one was killed in this part of Guatemala, despite flash
flooding that killed hundreds elsewhere in the country andthousands in Honduras and Nicaragua.56 A very similar system also saved lives in northern Honduras during Mitch.57
The effects of violent conflict and its long-term consequences
also must also be faced by practitioners in more developed countries (MDCs). People fleeing violent conflict such as illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers, who find themselves in large cities in
Europe, North America and elsewhere, may be highly vulnerable
to natural hazards, but they are very difficult for professionals tocontact. This is because of language difficulties as well as a lackof trust. In the case of the World Trade Center, possibly as manyas 500 illegal immigrants, many of them from war-torn areas of
Latin America, were killed. 58 In the aftermath of the 1994
Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, illegal immigrants avoided
hospitals and recovery services for fear of deportation.59
・The third implication is that efforts should be made to
implement and institutionalize risk reduction and disastermanagement systems in ways that address disparities andgrievances that may lead to violent conflict. This point
may be considered more controversial than the first two. One
might ask if this is where specialist engineers and the likeshould not cross the line into ‘political’ activity. In answer tothis doubt, one should consider the fact that the cycle ofpoverty and marginalization is often perpetuated by drought,
flood, crop pests, human and livestock disease. If one is in
the situation of a consulting engineer, for example, giving
advice about a large city’s water supply, is this not the perfectopportunity to suggest an extension of the system into the
low-income squatter settlement adjacent to the city center? If
one begins to look for opportunities to use risk reduction to
reduce or eliminate disparities that are among the root causesof violent conflict, it is surprising how many opportunities
there are. Among these opportunities are the occasions where
similarity in human suffering faced by two hostile countries
provides a window of opportunity for diplomatic breakthroughs or at least humane contact. A Cambridge-based
researcher, Dr. Ilan Kelman, has begun to collect such examples as the exchange of relief aid between Turkey and Greece– erstwhile enemies – on the occasion when they both suffered earthquakes within a brief period. Kelman refers tothese openings as ‘disaster diplomacy’.60
V. CONCLUSION
War and violent conflict certainly complicate the challenges
of integrated disaster management in a number of ways. However,professionals can take these complications into account in order toincrease the chance that policy advice, programming, project planning, design, and training activities will be robust enough to survive the chaos of violent conflict situations. More ambitiously, it
is also possible that integrated disaster management can help toreduce the social and economic disparities – especially the differential exposure to disaster risk – that divides people in fragile societies and can lead to violent conflict. Finally, the common humanity that unites people, no matter what their professional disciplines
or national origins, call them to support the United Nations and towork for peace at a time when unilateralism and so-called preemptive war threaten to tear up the fabric of world order.
Even such a possibly woolly-sounding moral or philosophicalexortation can be broken down in some surprisingly practicalways. In 1988 – those heady days when governments were beginning to talk about a ‘peace dividend’ and what could be done withmoney saved from national budgets if the military expenditure wascut – the World Watch Institute published an alternative security
budget.61 In this budget the project team produced rough estimatesof additional expenditures from national budgets between 19902000 needed to achieve ‘sustainable development’ by the end of
the year 2000. They calculated what investments would have to bemade to achieve goals worldwide in six problem areas. One striking thing about these problem areas is that they are all closely tied
to the question of reducing risk from natural hazards. In the lead
up to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable
Development, the Secretariat for the International Strategy for
Disaster Reduction and many other institutions and scholars
demonstrated the close connection between sustainable development and risk reduction.62 This connection was developed evenmore clearly and recapitulated during the World Conference on
Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan in January 2005.63
Over the eleven years from 1990-2000, the World Watch
Institute proposed spending between $46 billion and $150 billion
per year on:
・Protecting Topsoil on Cropland・Reforesting the Earth・Slowing population growth・Raising Energy Efficiency
・Developing Renewable Energy
・Reducing Third World Debt.
These sums would come from reduced military expenditure
worldwide. At the time of publication that annual global expenditure on the military was around $900 billion. Thus in each year,
they subtracted what was needed to ramp up investment in ‘security’ defined in sustainable development terms from a total global
military security budget of $900 billion. The remainder would beleft for the generals.
Today one might quibble about the amounts – but not byorders of magnitude – or one might want to include investments in
the health of the world’s oceans, conserving fresh water, andhuman health. Nevertheless, as a thought experiment this exercise
was breathtaking in its scope. The specific risk reduction goals
that motivate work on flood control, food security, reversing global
warming and instability, the mitigation of coastal storms, and thebuilding of municipal and regional capacity for integrated disastermanagement require investments of roughly these magnitudes inprecisely these problem areas. Indeed the amount of increased
development assistance pledged by the G8 at its Gleneagles,

SWORDS, PLOWSHARES, EARTHQUAKES, FLOODS, AND STORMS IN AN UNSTABLE, GLOBALIZING WORLD

Scotland meeting was $48 billion over five years, with $25 billion
for Africa. These amounts falls below the magnitude of investment suggested by the World Watch Institute in 1988, but they areroughly within the same range.64
Disaster reduction work in the 21st Century should not lose its
ability to be inspired by such large visions, nor should practitioners
lose the courage to speak truth to power in pursuit of the vision ofa peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

7

VI. ENDNOTES
1

2

3

4

5

6

Based upon Invited Keynote Address at the DPRI – IIASA 3 rdInternational Symposium on Integrated Disaster Risk Management(IDRM-2003), Kyoto International Conference Hall , Kyoto, Japan,
3-5 July, 2003.
Visiting professor at the Research Center for Disaster Reduction
Systems (DRS), Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto
University, 2005. His more permanent affiliations are Research
Fellow, Crisis States Development Research Centre, Development
Studies Institute, London School of Economics & Benfield Greig
Hazard Research Centre,University College London & Visiting
Professor of Environmental Studies, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio,
U.S.A; bwisner@igc.org .
Two million people have become internally displaced in Colombia
since 1985; 300,000 alone in 2000. Rural health services have been
destroyed. In urban areas these displaced persons live in very dangerous places. This is a recipe for increasing exposure to flood, landslide, earthquake, and epidemic disease. See: Médecins Sans
Frontières 2001. The Top Ten Under Reported Humanitarian Crisesof 2001 www.msf.org/content/page.cfm?articleid=7B5D6023-75EA415A-80CC71C8E6B90DCF . In addition, the majority of the displaced in Colombia are children, Afro-Colombians, and poor women.
Only 20 per cent of these internally displaced persons have received
any aid from the Colombian state, and even that has been ‘minimaland short term’ (A. Lopez. 2001. Talking Sense on Colombia.
Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, September, 12
pp. http://www.afsc.org , p. 7.
Wilches-Chaux, G. and Wilches-Chaux, S., 2001. ¡Ni de Riesgos!
Bogotá, Colombia: Fondo Para la Reconstucción y Desarrollo de Eje
Cafetero, http://www.ejecafetero.gov.co ; Omar Dario Cardona, Low
cost, locally based repair and retrofitting of non-engineered, rural
structures [in Spanish] http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_
research/radix/knowingvsdoing2.htm#From Dr. Omar D. Cardona,
University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia: .
BBC News, “Sri Lanka suspends tsunami deal,” 15 July 2005;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4685291.stm .
Other specialists are also taking up the daunting subject of war andpeace, for example, in the context of public health: Etienne G. Krug,
Linda L Dahlberg, James A. Mercy, Anthony B. Zwi and Rafael
Lozano (eds) 2002. World Report on Violenence and Health. Geneva:
WHO; C.J.L. Murray et al., ‘Armed conflict as a public health problem’. British Medical Journal 324 (9 February 2002), pp. 346-349;
Kevin M. Cahill, ed., A Framework for Survival: Health, Human
Rights and Humanitarian Assistance in Conflicts and Disasters. New
York: Routledge, 1999; Ben Wisner and John Adams, op. cit., 2003;
and in the field of food security (Frederick C. Cuny with Richard B.
Hill, Famine, Conflict and Response: A Basic Guide. West Hartford,
Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 1999; Joanna Macrae and Anthony

8

9

10

11

69

Zwi, eds., War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses toComplex Emergencies. London: Save the Children (UK) and Zed
Press, 1994).
See the discussion of the sub-fields of peace studies and their origins
in the Guide to Graduate Programs produced by the Peace and World
Security Studies Program (PAWSS) at Hampshire College
http://pawss.hampshire.edu/students/grad/#2 . There the earliest rootsof peace studies are traced to various religious views of non-violence
and concerns with social justice. The field is also subdivided into
these focal areas: Conflict Resolution and Negotiation, Citizen
Participation in Socioeconomic Development, Arms Control andInternational Security, and Law.
Walter Gillis Peacock, Betty Hearn Morrow, & Hugh Gladwin, eds.
Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters.
London and New York: Routledge, 1997; Fran H. Norris, “Disasters
and Domestic Violence,” U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs,
National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Fact Sheet
http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/disasters/fs_domestic.html (no date;web site updated 4 July 2005).
The time dimension of recovery in both these circumstances is poorly
understood and little researched. Certainly the well-known overlapping bell-shaped curves that Haas et al. found to fit recovery from the1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1972 earthquake in Managua,
Nicaragua cannot be generalized (see E. Haas, R. Kates, and M.
Bowden, Reconstruction Following Disaster. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1977 and one critique of the later use of this model in B.
Wisner et al., At Risk, 2nd ed., op. cit., pp. 353-363). Generally thelength of time required for full psycho-social, economic, and environmental recovery from catastrophic events has been underestimated.
This may be because of a desire on the part of the donor community
and recipient governments to “move on” and to re-establish minimum
conditions for international trade and ‘business as usual’ as soon as
possible. However, consider the continuing low level violence (social
banditry) in post-war situations such as Cambodia, Guatemala, andSomalia long after peace agreements. In a similar way, donors andaffected nations are reluctant to admit that in certain respects recovery
may simply not occur. Some households never regained rural livelihoods following the Sahel drought and famine in the last 1960s or in
the wake of hurricane Mitch (1998) in Honduras and Nicaragua. It is
likely that some large proportion of those who survived the Asiantsunami may never again engage in fishing or farming (see B. Wisnerand P. Walker, ‘Getting Tsunami Recovery and Early Warning
Right.’ Open House International, in press, 2005).
Hans Günter Brauch, “Environment and Human Security: Towards
Freedom from Hazard Impacts.” InterSecTions; ‘Interdisciplinary
Security ConnecTions, ’Publication Series of UNU-EHS No. 2/2005.
Bonn: United Nations Institute for Environment and Human Security(UNU-EHS), 2005 http://www.ehs.unu.edu/PDF/Intersection_2_content.pdf .
One of the earliest authors to call attention to the distinction between‘hazard’ and ‘vulnerability’ paradigms in disaster research was
Kenneth Hewitt in his essay, ‘The Idea of Calamity in a Technocratic
Age’. In: K. Hewitt (ed.), Interpretations of Calamity, pp. 3–32.
Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983. See also: Kenneth Hewitt.
‘Sustainable Disasters? Perspectives and Powers in the Discourse of
Calamity’. In: J. Crush (ed.), Power of Development, pp. 115–28.
London: Routledge, 1995; Kenneth Hewitt. Excluded Perspectives in
the Social Conception of Disaster. In: E. Quarantelli (ed.), What is a

70

12

13

14

15

B. WISNER
Disaster, pp. 75–91. London: Routledge, 1998; Phil O’Keefe,
Kenneth Westgate, and Ben Wisner,‘Taking the “Naturalness” out of“Natural Disaster”. Nature (London) 260 (15 April 1976), pp. 566–7.
On the history, and possible resurgence, of the command and control
paradigm in the U.S., see: David Alexander, ‘Do you want to be commanded and controlled? Reflections on modern emergency management’. RADIX website, go to: Latest Additions 6.2.03: http://online.
northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/radix/ .
Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, and Ian Davis, At Risk:
Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, and Disasters. 2nd edition.
London: Routledge, 2003 [1st edition 1994]; Ben Wisner. ‘Disaster
Vulnerability: Scale, Power and Daily Life’. Geojournal 30, 2 (1993),
pp. 127–40; Ben Wisner. ‘The Communities Do Science! Proactive
and Contextual Assessment of Capability and Vulnerability in theFace of Hazards’. In: G. Bankoff, G. Frerks and T. Hilhorst (eds),
Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People, pp. 183-193.
London: Earthscan, 2003.
Anthony Oliver-Smith. ‘The Five Hundred Year Earthquake: Naturaland Social Hazards in the Third World (Peru)’. In: A. Varley ed.,Disasters Development and the Environment London, Belhaven Press,
1994.
James K. Boyce, ‘Let them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights, and Disaster
Vulnerability’. Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) Working
Paper 4, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2000 http://www.
umass.edu/peri/pdfs/WP4.pdf .
The source is Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, and Ian
Davis, At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, andDisasters. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 2003, Chapter 1, Table 1.2.
We used diverse sources in estimating these numbers, which, especially for the earlier part of the century and for specific kinds of conflicts, must be considered only the roughest approximations. For estimates of deaths due to war and political violence we are most grateful to Professor Kenneth Hewitt, Wilfred Laurier University, Canada,
for time spent in personal communication and consultation on thesematters during July, 2002. Hewitt’s book, Regions of Risk (Harlow,
UK: Longman, 1997) and an earlier article (‘When the Great Planes
Came and Made Ashes of our City…: Towards an Oral Geography of
the Disasters of War’. Antipode 26, 1 (1994), pp. 1–34) were also
helpful sources as well as R. Sivard (Sivard,. World Military andSocial Expenditures. Warford: World Priorities, 2001) and M. White(Wars, Massacres and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century Wars, 1999
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm). Drought/ famine
death statistics are based on the authors’ approximate calculations
that expand on the official reports that are regarded as a gross underestimates, since entire famines, such as the “Great Leap Forward
Famine” in China (1959-1961, which may have killed 30 million people – D. Yang, Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society
and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1996; J. Becker, J. Hungry Ghosts:
China’s Secret Famine. London: John Murray, 1996; G. Heilig, G.
Can China Feed Itself? A System for Evaluation of Policy Options.
Laxenburg, Austria: International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis (IIASA), 1999 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/
ChinaFood/index_m.htm) are omitted from official data bases. For
other disaster mortality statistics we relied on the data base maintained by CRED & OFDA called EM-DAT, available atwww.cred.be/emdat , which we accessed for this purpose on 11 July
2002. Traffic accident statistics came from the World Disaster Report

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23
24
25
26

27
28

29

1998, chapter 2, pp. 20-31 (IFRC, Geneva, ‘Must Millions More Die
from Traffic Accidents?). Estimates of deaths due to HIV-AIDS
came from A. Barnett and A. Whiteside. AIDS in the Twenty-First
Century: Disease and Globalization. Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave/Macmillan, 2001.
Kofi Annan, “Foreword, “ in: R. McRae and D. Hubert (eds.), Human
Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting
Peace, p. xix. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2001.
Ben Wisner. ‘Goma, Congo: City Air Makes Men Free?’ RADIX web
site, 2002
http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/radix/nyiragongo.htm .
Joanna Macrae, ed., Aiding Recovery? The Crisis of Aid in Chronic
Political Emergencies. London: Overseas Development Institute(ODI) and Zed Press, 2001; Overseas Development Institute (ODI),
Humanitarian Practice Network http://www.odihpn.org/ ; M.
Anderson. Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War.
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999; C. Pirotte, B. Husson, and F.
Grunewald, eds. Responding to Emergencies and Fostering
Development: The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid. London: Zed
Books, 1999.
Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, and Ian Davis, At Risk:
Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, and Disasters. 2nd edition.
London: Routledge, 2003 (chapter 9).
Sphere Project, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards. 2ndedition http://www.sphereproject.org/ ; also see material by Ben
Wisner and others in the section of RADIX dedicated to international
standards, Standards for Preparedness and Response http://online.
northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/radix/standards.htm , and Ben
Wisner ‘Disasters: What the United Nations and its World Can Do.’
United Nations Chronicle http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2000/
issue4/0400p6p.htm .
See endnote number 5. By contrast, the tsunami seems to have provided an opening for mediation by Finland in the decades’ long violent conflict between the Free Aceh Movement and the government ofIndonesia, and a peace agreement was announced in July, 2005 (Japan
Times, ‘Indonesia, Aceh Rebels Reach Deal.’ Japan Times, 18 July
2005, p. 1).
BBC News, ‘WFP Warns of Zimbabwe Food Crisis,’ 1 July 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4639909.stm , in which World
Food Programme director, James Morris, is quoted: “the greatest
humanitarian crisis we face today [is] not in Darfur, Afghanistan orNorth Korea, but in southern Africa… [where, as in Zimbabwe] alethal mix of Aids, recurring drought and failing governance is eroding social and political stability.”
B. Wisner et al., At Risk, 2nd ed., op. cit., pp. 3-5.
B. Wisner et al., At Risk, 2nd ed., op. cit., chapter 5, pp. 185-192.
B. Wisner et al., At Risk, 2nd ed., op. cit., chapter 4.
Ben Wisner, ‘Risk and the Neo-liberal State: Why Post-Mitch
Lessons Didn’t Reduce El Salvador’s Earthquake Losses.’ Disasters
25, 3 (2001), pp. 251-268.
Ibid.
Gil Loescher, Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the
Global Refugee Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993,
pp. 16-17.
United Nations, ‘Global number of refugees dropped 14 per cent in
2002’. 20 June 2003 http://www.hrea.org/lists/refugee-rights/markup/

SWORDS, PLOWSHARES, EARTHQUAKES, FLOODS, AND STORMS IN AN UNSTABLE, GLOBALIZING WORLD

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

msg00346.html ; UNHCR, 2004 Global Refugee Trends, Geneva:
UNHCR, 17 June 2005 http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/events/
opendoc.pdf?tbl=STATISTICS&id=42b283744 .
B. Wisner et al., At Risk, 2nd ed., op. cit., chapter 5, pp. 176-177; B.
Wisner and J. Adams, eds., Environment Health in Emergencies andDisasters. Geneva: WHO (for WHO/ IFRC/ UNHCR), 2003
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/emergencies/en/.
Ben Wisner, ‘Bridging “Expert” and “Local” Knowledge for CounterDisaster Planning in Urban South Africa.’ GeoJournal 37, 3 (1995),
pp. 335-348.
Mary F. Diaz, ‘Refugee Women: Overcoming the Odds’. In: K.
Cahill, ed., op. cit., pp. 49-59; Raymond E. Wiest, Jane S.P. Mocellin,
and D. Thandiwe Motsisi, The Needs of Women in Disasters andEmergencies. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: Disaster ResearchInstitute, University of Manitoba, 20 June 1994 http://online.
northumbria.ac.uk/geography_research/gdn/resources/women-in-disaster-emergency.pdf; Meredeth Turshen and Clotilde Twagiramariya,ed., What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa.
London: Zed Press, 1998; B. Walker. Women and Emergencies.
Oxford: Oxfam, 1994; Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, eds.,
Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed conflict and Political
Violence. London: Zed Books, 2001.
Larry Minear. Operation Lifeline Sudan. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea
Press, 1991.
David Keen. The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine
and Relief in Southwestern Sudan 1983–1989. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994; Mark Duffield. Reprising Durable
Disorder: Network War and the Securitisation of Aid. In: B. Hettne
and B. Oden, eds., Global Governance in the 21st Century:
Alternative Perspectives on World Order, pp. 75-105. Stockholm:
Expert Group on Development Initiatives (EGDI), Swedish Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, 2002.
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Building Bridges
Between Relief and Development. New York: UNDP, n.d.
http://www.undp.org/erd/archives/bridges.htm .
B. Wisner. ‘Bridging “Expert” and “Local” Knowledge …’, op. cit.;
Ben Wisner, ‘The Communities Do Science! Proactive andContextual Assessment of Capability and Vulnerability in the Face ofHazards’. In: G. Bankoff, G. Frerks and T. Hilhorst (eds), op. cit.; B.
Wisner et al., At Risk, 2nd ed., op. cit., chapter 9, pp. 333-342.
IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red CrescentSocieties). Assessing Vulnerabilities and Capacities – During Peaceand War. World Disasters Report: Focus on Reducing Risk. Geneva:
IFRC, 2002 http://www.ifrc.org/PUBLICAT/wdr2002/chapter6.asp .
Ben Wisner, Power and Need in Africa: Basic Human Needs andDevelopment Policies. London: Earthscan, 1988, chapters 1-2.
On the existence and efficacy of local conflict resolution in Africa,
see the lessons reviewed at a 2001 workshop sponsored by West
African Network for Peacebuilding http://www.wanep.org/
lessons_learned.htm .
J. Zschau and A. Kueppers, eds. Early Warning Systems for Natural
Disaster Reduction. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2002.
USAID. Famine Early Warning System http://www.fews.org/ ;Margaret Buchanan-Smith. What is a Famine Early Warning System?
Can it Prevent Famine? http://www.esig.ucar.edu/ijas/ijasno2/smith.
html .
Arun Alhance. Hydropolitics in the Third World Conflict andCooperation in International River Basins. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53
54

55

56

71

Institute for Peace Press, 1999; A.R. Turton. ‘Southern African
Hydropolitics: Development Trajectories of Zambezi Basin States andSouth Africa’. Paper presented to the 2nd Southern Africa Water andWastewater Conference “Water Africa”, 15-19 September 1997.
Harare, Zimbabwe and MEWREW Occasional Paper No. 7
http://www.gtz.de/gwpgtz/Africa/occ07.pdf .
Frances Christie and Joe Hanlon. Mozambique and the Great Floodof 2000. London, Oxford and Bloomington: The International African
Institute, James Currey and Indiana University Press, 2001.
The same diversion of resources because of investments in the military also has been observed in Ethiopia’s opponent, Eritrea, by Arthur
H. Westing, ‘Conflict Versus Cooperation in a Regional Setting:Lessons from Eritrea’. M. Suliman, ed., Ecology, Politics & Violent
Conflicts, pp. 286-290. London: Development and Peace Foundation/
Institute for African Alternatives/ Zed Books, 1999.
Rory Carroll, ‘40 million starving “as world watches Iraq”’. Guardian
Unlimited, 9 April 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,
4644012,00.html .
Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), The Human Costs of
War in Iraq. Cambridge, UK: CESR, 2003 http://www.cesr.org ; Jane
Savage, Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of
War on Iraq. London: Medact, 2002 http://www.mapw.org.au/iraq/
2002/ippnwiraq/Medact_Iraq_report_final3.pdf .
Jane Savage. Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental
Costs of War in Iraq. London: Medact, 2002, p. 4.
The Land Mine Monitor Report 2002 documents some progress in demining and in destruction of land mines, but it also indicates that there
are still 230 million land mines in the arsenals of 94 countries
http://www.icbl.org/lm/2002/findings.html .
Documentation of the environmental and health consequences of the
Indo-China wars and first Gulf War are available in excellent volume,
Jay E. Austin and Carl E. Bruch, eds., The Environmental
Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientific Perspectives.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A longer-term perspective of the role of chemical weapons is available in Edmund
Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with
Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
R. Black. Refugees, Environment and Development. Harlow, Essex:
Longman, 1998.
IIASA-DPRI 2001, ‘Purpose and Topics’
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/RMS/dpri2001/topics.html?sb=1 .
Second Annual IIASA-DPRI Meeting 2002, ‘Purpose and Topics’
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/RMS/dpri2002/topics.html?sb=1 .
ibid.
U.N. Security Council. 2003. ‘Plight of civilians in armed conflictremains considerable, grave problem, USG for Humanitarian Affairs
tells Security Council’. 20 June http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/Rwb.
nsf/s/C0BB61CED9D0B67885256D4B00722621 ; also see Kofi A.
Annan, Prevention of Armed Conflict: Report of the SecretaryGeneral. New York: United Nations, 2002.
Joanna Macrae, ‘Conclusion’. In: J. Macrae, ed., Aiding Recovery?
The Crisis of Aid in Chronic Political Emergencies. London: ODI &Zed Press, 2001, p. 156.
The Guatemala examples is documented in IFRC, World Disaster
Report 2002, Geneva: IFRC, pp. 52. The author is grateful to John
Twigg, Benfield Greig Centre for Hazard Research, University
College London for reminding me of this case study. For more on the

72

57

58
59

60

61

62

B. WISNER
potential of the ICTs, and their robustness (due, in large part, to theirdecentralized use), see Ben Wisner, ‘Disaster Preparedness andResponse: Why is the Phone Off the Hook?’, Invited paper for theEuropean Telecommunications Resilience & Recovery Association
Inaugural Conference (ETR2A), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 11-13
June 2003.
Ben Wisner, Victor Ruiz, Allan Lavell, and Lourdes Meyreles, ‘Run,
tell your neighbour! Hurricane warning in the Caribbean,’ in: J.
Walters, ed., World Disaster Report 2005. Geneva: International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2005 (in press).
Associacion Tepeyac, New York City http://www.tepeyac.org/ .
Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford. ‘The Northridge Earthquake,
Community-based Approaches to Unmet Recovery Ne(eds)’.
Disasters 22, 1 (1998), pp. 21–38; Robert Bolin and Lois Stanford.
The Northridge Earthquake, Vulnerability and Disaster. London and
New York: Routledge, 1998.
See Disaster Diplomacy, the website at Cambridge University maintained by Ilan Kelman since 2001: http://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/disasterdiplomacy/ .
Lester Brown et al., State of the World 1988. Norton: New York,
1988, pp. 170-188.
ISDR (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction).

63

64

Disaster Risk and Sustainable Development: Understanding the Links
between Development, Environment and Natural Hazards Leading toDisasters. Background document for the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD). Geneva: ISDR, 2002
http://www.unisdr.org/ .
See UNEP overview of the WCDR in Kobe:
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentI
D=392&ArticleID=4707&l=en .
Charles Abugre, “The G8 Africa Brouhaha: Hot air and little substance,” Pambazuka 14 July, 2005 http://www.pambazuka.org/index.
php?id=28871 . Abugre states: “The G8 promised to boost aid by
US$48 billion for all developing countries in five years of which$25bn will go to Africa. This seems to satisfy the recommendation of
the AfC. The Africa Commission report called for the boosting of aid
to Africa by US$25 billion per year by 2010. Thereafter, to raise aid
by an additional $25bn by 2015. In contrast, the Millennium Project
Report of Jeffrey Sachs called for raising aid by at least $85bn in2006, and by a further $60bn by 2015.” While the vision embracedby the G8 in Scotland falls short of that expressed by the ‘alternative
security budget,’ the goal recommended by the Millennium Project
Report ($85 billion in 2006 and a further $60 billion by 2015) is definitely of a similar scale.