During the past three years we have seen unusual combinations of events that have brought great suffering to many people. They have also affected economies in ways that spread human loss beyond the people affected to the wider community. They include the coronavirus pandemic throughout the world, massive bushfires in Australia, the United States and Europe, and drought and floods throughout the world. And during the last year we have seen the widening effects on people far away of the local war between Russia and Ukraine.
Such events always shock the people who suffer directly from them. We instinctively tell ourselves that life will resume its normal course. Governments and insurance companies, however, make it their business to reflect on the likely frequency of various kinds of disaster, on their economic and social costs, how they can be avoided and how best to deal with them promptly if they occur.
The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction (13 October) celebrates the work of those who work to prevent disasters, to save lives and property during them, and to minimise the harm done by them.
Much of the harm suffered in disasters is self-inflicted. The risks are well known, but greed or need encourage people to risk their lives and livelihood, and governments to permit them to do so. Australian experience over two centuries has shown that to build houses in fire-prone bush and on floodplains and on beach fronts invites disaster. Yet people continue to be allowed to sell land for building in such areas, and governments exacerbate the risk by attempting to prevent fire and flooding there. This is not disaster reduction but disaster expansion.
The natural disasters of recent years, however, have shown that the task facing the world now is not to reduce risk but to stop it from expanding to intolerable levels. The spread and development of pandemic viruses, drought with its attendant bushfires, and massive flooding from rising sea levels and from heavy rainfall are all direct or indirect consequences of climate change. It is clear that the extraordinary recent weather events that have affected nations throughout the world and devastated human lives are now locked in. They will occur unpredictably but often regardless of how we respond to climate change. The risk we now face is acute and will demand concerted action. If, however, we fail to respond to climate change the risk will also grow exponentially.
If this is so, risk reduction now demands we do more than deal with the effects of natural disasters and wars as they happen. The challenge will be to change the behaviour and the risk-taking habits of human beings. Families need to avoid building in floodplains and on wooded sites. Businesses need to avoid selling land in these areas and investors need to refrain from investing there. Governments need to avoid building dams that will give short term respite to building on plains but ensure long term disaster. This change of behaviour means particularly encouraging concern for the whole community in what we do, and discouragement of selfish individualism and greed.
That may seem utopian. But the failure to do it will certainly make the future of our grandchildren dystopian.