Part III
On 26 July 2005, Mumbai was brought to a halt by severe flooding. Water supply, drainage and sewerage, all forms of public transport, power and telecommunications collapsed across wide areas (Revi, 2005). Some 1,150 people died (Car-penter, 2006), trains were derailed and parts of the city were submerged under the heavi-est rainfall recorded in Mumbai’s history (Hal-legatte et al., 2010; Ranger et al., 2011; Dossal, 2005).
Mumbai’s 150-year-old municipal government was unprepared and unable to organize an effec-tive response. Many administraeffec-tive and political institutions were paralysed, seemingly in a state of shock (ibid.). And yet city life continued, no riots broke out, and Mumbaikars soon organized themselves for a speedy response and recovery.1 The event and its immediate aftermath highlight-ed not only limitations but also the existence of a civic culture.
The 2005 floods affected a city of around 13 mil-lion people.2 Mumbai has now grown to more than 20 million (UNDESA, 2014b), and this rapid growth continues to be characterized by high lev-els of inequality. Informal settlements and mar-kets with weak public infrastructure exist side by side with a dynamic economy and a strong middle
class. By 2020, the city is projected to have the highest population density in the world (ibid.).
Mumbai is no stranger to risk management chal-lenges. At the end of the nineteenth century, fail-ures in urban planning, regulation and public investment resulted in a devastating outbreak of the bubonic plague (Gandy, 2008; Christakos et al., 2007). The risks exposed by the 2005 floods were constructed in a very similar manner.
In 1908, Arthur Crawford, Municipal Commission-er from 1865 to 1871, published plans for urban renewal that provided for adequate housing, water supply, drainage and waste management systems (Crawford, 1908). He had already sug-gested similar plans during his time in office, but they had been opposed by wealthy landowners and officials with vested interests. As a result, the bubonic plague that raged in the city for almost a decade until 1906 led to a heavy death toll and severely impacted the city’s economy, social cohesion and self-image (Dossal, 2005).
Mumbai continued to grow rapidly in the twen-tieth century at the same time as being exposed to a multitude of physical and technological haz-ards, including earthquake, cyclone, storm surge, landslide, rainstorm and local flooding, sea lev-el rise, drought, and nuclear and industrial acci-dents. With the 2005 floods, the strategic and competitive advantages provided by location, history, and the resulting concentration of capi-tal, human resources and technology seemed to have been overtaken by a dramatic accumulation of both systemic and idiosyncratic risks (Revi, 2005).
Today, more than half of the population lives in informal settlements (Bertaud, 2011). Pub-lic investments in infrastructure have been play-ing catch-up. Basic services and utilities such as uninterrupted energy and water supply, waste-water management and garbage collection are non-existent or sub-standard in many parts of the
(Source: Bartholomew, 1908.)
Figure III.1 Mumbai in the early twentieth century
city, particularly in informal settlements (Agarw-al, 2011; Subbaraman et al., 2012). The municipal government is regulating and investing in a land-scape of fluid and erratic changes in demograph-ics, exigencies and prospects (Bertaud, 2011). In addition, it is forced to grapple with corruption in a society (Gandy, 2012). The next disaster is already in the making.
The case of Mumbai provides just a small glimpse of the limitations of the current approach to disaster risk reduction as well as what the “new normal” of accelerating disaster risk is starting to look like.
Part II of this report highlights the success of the HFA in catalysing major investments by coun-tries as well as regional and international orga-nizations in disaster management. The different priorities for action identified in the HFA have dif-ferent degrees of complexity and therefore man-ageability. And the disaster risk management sector has made significant progress in those areas where its governance arrangements are appropriate (UNDP, 2014a).
As suggested in Chapters 1 and 6, while the HFA created space for addressing underlying risk, particularly in Strategic Goal 1 and Priori-ty for Action 4, this space has been only partially explored by governments, regional and interna-tional organizations. HFA progress reports have consistently highlighted a low level of achieve-ment of Priority for Action 4. The syncretic evo-lution, consolidation and expansion of a disaster risk management sector from its origins in emer-gency management has led to its understanding and practice as disaster management (Enia, 2013;
Hewitt, 2013; UNISDR, 2013a; 2011a). If disasters are understood as exogenous threats, then prior-ity is given to policies, plans, strategies and other instruments designed to protect people and their assets from such threats rather than addressing the generation and accumulation of risk inside development.
As a result, it would appear that HFA Strategic Goal 1, the integration of disaster reduction into sustainable development policies and planning, has not been realized sufficiently. The genera-tion and accumulagenera-tion of new disaster risks, par-ticularly extensive ones, seem to be outstripping the increasing efforts to protect development against those risks. As underlined in Part I of this report, as the HFA draws to a close, disaster risk remains a growing challenge, particularly in low and middle-income countries. And the extensive risks of today can become the intensive risks of tomorrow.
However, this apparent shortfall masks a more complex reality. Innovation and progress in oth-er agendas, including those related to climate change, environment, water, urban design and management and sustainability, are leading to the adoption of policies and practices that have direct or indirect co-benefits for disaster risk reduction, even if they are not labelled as such.
Given the focus of the disaster risk management sector on preparing for emergencies and man-aging disasters, these practices are all too rarely documented through the HFA Monitor. Although the tide of risk generation and accumulation would still seem to be flowing in, there is now growing momentum in some sectors to trans-form development in a way that addresses some of the underlying risk drivers.
Unease and uncertainty
Unfortunately, there is mounting evidence that notwithstanding this momentum, the world is going to see rapidly accelerating disaster risk over the coming decades.
Despite the introduction of alternative metrics to measure progress in development, such as the Human Development Index (UNDP, 2014b), the Genuine Progress Indicator (Talberth et al., 2007), the World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al., 2013) or the Social Progress Index (Porter et al., 2014), the decisions of governments and investors alike
are still largely determined by GDP per capita, the rate of GDP growth, credit ratings and short-term return on capital rather than measures of sustainability and equity. The development par-adigm continues to be based fundamentally on economic growth and is characterized by contra-dictions and unsustainable qualities, including the overconsumption of natural capital and the production of inequality.
Over the last quarter of a century, the global econ-omy has doubled in size, an estimated 60 per cent of the world’s ecosystems have been degraded and the benefits of growth have been distrib-uted unevenly: the bottom half of the world’s population now shares just 1 per cent of glob-al weglob-alth. Even in high-income countries, huge gaps in wealth and well-being persist between rich and poor. As these trends evolve, the politi-cal and social consensus on the benefits of devel-opment is being replaced by growing uncertainty and unease, including concerns about increasing disaster risk.
Increasing exposure of economic assets
Global GDP per capita increased by 122 per cent between 1990 and 2010.3 As the economy becomes more global, investment tends to flow to locations offering comparative advantages for capital accumulation, including low labour costs, access to export markets, infrastruc-ture, stability and other factors. As highlighted in GAR13 (UNISDR, 2013a), investment deci-sions rarely take into account the level of haz-ard in these locations or else discount the risk excessively due to the short-term profits that can be made. This has led to large flows of cap-ital into hazard-prone areas and a vast increase in the exposure of economic assets to earth-quakes, tsunamis, storm surges, floods and other hazards. At the same time, the resulting risk becomes globalized as both the causes and impacts of disaster ripple through global sup-ply chains and impacts in increasingly integrat-ed sectors spill over into others.
Growing risk inequality
The concentration of capital generates social and territorial inequalities. The richest 2 per cent of the world’s adult population now own over 50 per cent of global wealth (Davies et al., 2012), where-as the bottom 50 per cent own less than 1 per cent of global wealth (Credit Suisse, 2013). This ratio translates into a Gini coefficient of 0.893, where 0 is perfect equality and 1 is perfect inequality.
In other words, the world is nearing what can be considered absolute levels of inequality (Davies et al., 2012). Sectors and territories without com-parative advantages for capital accumulation are left behind. In those areas, disaster risk is associ-ated with an absence of development character-ized by low levels of investment in risk-reducing infrastructure, an absence of social and environ-mental protection, and rural and urban pover-ty. The geography of risk inequality occurs at all scales, between geographical regions and coun-tries, within countries and even within cities and localities.
Segregated urban development
Urbanization mirrors economic growth. Urban growth per se can concentrate risk when it occurs in hazard-exposed locations. However, in most low and middle-income countries it is also usually characterized by unequal access to urban space, infrastructure, services and security, as specula-tive urban capital is invested in modern enclaves while the low-income majority has access only to informal or sub-standard urbanization. Globally, about one in seven people live in overcrowded, low-quality housing conditions with inadequate access to services (Mitlin and Satterthwaite, 2013). This generates new patterns of both exten-sive and intenexten-sive disaster risk, as low-income households are forced to occupy hazard-exposed areas with low land values, deficient or non-exis-tent infrastructure and social protection, and high levels of environmental degradation.
Climate change
Economic growth requires increasing energy
consumption, which is still largely dependent on fossil fuels and manifests as increased green-house gas emissions. While greengreen-house gas emis-sions by Annex I4 countries to the Kyoto Protocol decreased by 9.3 per cent between 1990 and 2011,5 global emission levels rose over the same time period and well into 2013 (WMO, 2014b), result-ing in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases exceeding pre-industrial levels by around 40 per cent (IPCC, 2013). The emissions of almost 50 per cent of all countries exceed the currently established global thresholds (UNDP, 2014b). As a result, through changing temperatures, precip-itation and sea levels, among other factors, glob-al climate change feeds back into modifications in hazards and magnifies disaster risks. Climate change transfers risk as many of the territories most affected are those which have contribut-ed least to greenhouse gas emissions. But at the same time, climate change is a meta-risk driver, as both its causes and consequences are global.
Overconsumption
Economic growth also relies on the increas-ing consumption of environmental resources, including freshwater, forest and marine resourc-es. Of the 140 countries for which data is avail-able, 59 per cent show an ecological footprint that is above global biocapacity, and 49 out of 172 countries withdraw more fresh water than the global threshold allows (UNDP, 2014b). Many eco-systems that play vital protective and provision-ing roles are beprovision-ing degraded beyond the point of recovery, which can magnify hazard levels, increase vulnerability and challenge resilience.
Like climate change, the consumption of envi-ronmental resources is a reflection of inequality.
Many sectors and territories with high levels of income live beyond their means and rely on the consumption of environmental resources from other areas.
Changing demographies
Demographic change, including shifts due to migration and displacement, also influences
disaster risk patterns and trends. By 2050, the world’s population will have increased to 9.2 bil-lion (Lutz et al., 2014) and the percentage of the ageing population (over 60) in high-income coun-tries is expected to reach 32 per cent (UNDESA, 2013). While the global population is expected to peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and start to decline slowly by the end of the century (Lutz et al., 2014), countries and regions with rapidly growing, young populations are likely to see increasing haz-ard exposure, particularly in urban areas. Given the specific disaster risks posed by demograph-ic change, countries and regions with ageing and declining populations are likely to see increases in vulnerability and reductions in resilience.
The drive for competitiveness
Within the current development paradigm, both businesses and countries continuously strive to remain competitive. By reducing labour costs in the case of businesses or spending on social welfare and protection in the case of govern-ments, the drive to remain competitive and to attract investment may increase the vulnerabili-ty and reduce the resilience of large sectors of the labour force. Conversely, however, the drive to increase energy and resource efficiency in order to reduce costs spurs investment in technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and relieve ecosystems.
Non-linearity and uncertainty
These global drivers of risk are closely interre-lated and concatenated, and they are increas-ingly shaping local realities like the situation in Mumbai. The perception of increasing complex-ity, interconnectivity and dependency of local realities on global processes erodes the capac-ity of local stakeholders to manage their risks and increases uncertainty and unease. Given the multiple feedback loops between these different drivers and their non-linearity, even slight chang-es in the evolution of any one driver can gener-ate unexpected and radical changes in another.
As uncertainty and unease replace certainty and
security in the future, disaster risk reduction may be entering the void.
Predicting what the impact of global climate change, energy consumption or population growth may look like in 20, 50 or 100 years has become something of a social obsession and can be disempowering. Ultimately, if the planetary system is going to collapse, why invest in man-aging today’s risks? At the same time, however, economic stakeholders do not just react passive-ly to change, but actualpassive-ly shape it. Understand-ing the economic, political and social forces that are currently driving risk can also help to identi-fy gaps and points of inflection where change is possible.
Notes
1 http://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/maximum-city/
en-gb (accessed 11 January 2015).
2 Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Population Census:
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portal/anonymous/qlvitalstatsreport.
3 Data from the World Bank Development Indicators: http://
data.worldbank.org.
4 Annex I countries include the industrialized countries that were members of the OECD in 1992, plus countries with econo-mies in transition, including the Russian Federation, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States. For the full list of Annex I countries, see http://unfccc.int/parties_and_
observers/parties/annex_i/items/2774.php.
5 http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/ghg_data_unfccc/items/4146.
php.