The politics of language in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

The concept of vulnerability has been a key concept in studies of disasters and climate change. Vulnerability brings out the socially produced ways in which groups are rendered safe or unsafe in view of hazards. The concept has been a radical move in disaster studies as it took the natural out of natural disasters, and in focusing on issues like power and inequality as factors that turn the occurrence of a hazard into a disaster.

Today, the concept of vulnerability has partly been overtaken by resilience. Increasingly, people (even disadvantaged people) have begun to be considered as resilient, with the capacities to organize, resist, learn, change and adapt. Adaptation, has become the slogan and the proposed solution to the problem of adjusting human systems to actual or expected climatic stimuli.

Does vulnerability still matter?

During the roundtable, participants discussed a number of issues relating to vulnerability and resilience. Questions such as:

• How does vulnerability still matter? 
• Does resilience indeed help to focus disaster response on communities?
• What happens to social inequalities and the role of the state’s duties to protect their citizens?

Panelists

• Greg Bankoff - Professor in Environmental History, Hull University, UK
• Ken Hewitt
• Terry Cannon - Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, UK
• Lisa Schipper - Environmental Social Science Research Fellow, Oxford University, UK
• Sarah Bradshaw - Head of School of Law, Middlesex University London, UK
• Ben Wisner - University College London, UK

The event was organized by ISS, together with the humanitarian exchange platform KUNO and the International Humanitarian Studies Association.