When disaster meets vulnerability

In early May 2023, huge floods went over the south Democratic Republic Congo (DRC), torrential rains flooded entire villages, creating a massive emergency. Within hours, over 400 hundred people were dead and more than thousand people still missing. This story is more and more familiar these days. With climate change, natural disasters are happening more and more and are disproportionately impacting poorer countries. We must think about the human relationship with the atmosphere. Usually, these natural disasters become a political issue where blame is passed around, and it is not looked at in a scientific way . Climate change is reduced to a question of natural forces, carbon parts per million, acts of God. The truth is that climate change is not causing more natural disasters, because many of these disasters are not a natural thing in the first place.

It is true that we are counting more storms, floods and fires because of human caused climate change, but natural hazards like storms, floods, and droughts do not have to lead to devastation and death. But they do when they meet vulnerability and economic inequality. A hurricane, for example, means something completely  different when it hits Singapore as opposed to nearby East Timor. In Singapore, it means rain running down well designed storm drains and maybe some time sheltering at home. But in the less developed country of East Timor, it means life-threatening danger. Take floods as another example. The Netherlands and Bangladesh get about the same amount of rain per year, but flooding has not been a serious threat in European countries since they built dams in the 20th century. When it comes to climate change impact, money matters.

The northern hemisphere has safety through its level of development which the southern hemisphere does not. Therefore the climate risk reflects the level of development in the country more than any other factor. Firstly, it draws us away from the idea of disasters being natural to realizing it's all about the economy. It is not a coincidence that the countries most vulnerable to climate change are also among the world’s poorest, their vulnerability to natural hazards can be seen as a direct outcome of their economic situation. This leads us to a more important conclusion, if environmental risks are a product of the global economy, then addressing inequality will reduce the vulnerability of communities from these not so natural disasters.