Climate Change and Disasters

Abstract

Ideas and approaches proven successful within disaster risk reduction (DRR) literature and practice are either bypassed or inadequately considered by contemporary climate change work. This chapter explores the intersections between climate change and hazards, vulnerability, and risk, looking at climate change as both a hazard driver and a hazard inhibitor. The implications of the narrow interpretations of vulnerability employed in climate change work are examined, as well as the ways in which climate change has come to act as a scapegoat for issues, events, and processes caused by hazard-independent factors. The chapter formulates a case for climate change adaptation (CCA) to be seen as a subset of DRR and for climate change mitigation (CCM) to sit within existing pollution prevention approaches, with both DRR and pollution prevention sitting within broader sustainability and development processes. The chapter concludes with ways forward to overcome the deeply entrenched demarcations amongst CCA, CCM, DRR, and development.