As I will blog about in the future once I have a better footing, I have recently started the Master of Disaster, Design and Development program (MoDDD) at the RMIT. One thing that I have noticed is the emphasis on keeping a journal or making blog posts in order to track what we are learning, no doubt so we can refer back, reflect and also benefit from the process of documentation itself, which is arguably a very powerful tool for learning.
The notes above are a summary of the main course this semester; Disaster, Design and Development. This module was about "Global Patterns and Trends in Disaster Occurrence and Impacts", briefly tackled with linked papers and resources/sources for data.
In this module it was interesting to see the distinction between a hazard and a disaster. What I found particularly interesting is the idea that disasters are all unnatural as it is human involvement that turns a natural event into disaster, as Ilan Kelman argues in his paper “Natural disasters do not exist (Natural hazards do not exist either)”.
We tend to look at everything from an Anthropocentric view thinking Nature is the thing that must change - but how about our own habits and patterns that are not beneficial, context-driven or well-thought out and analysed as part of a system? It is largely due to our practices that natural events end up having catastrophic effects on communities.
As an example, I will link in Professor Margaret Cook’s work on the history of Brisbane floods in her book “A River With a City Problem”. Cook (2019) identifies how from the start of British settlers in Brisbane, flooding was perceived by as a matter of controlling the water. One could say that this mode of thinking was the beginning for a history of – on the other hand – uncontrolled development in the floodplains, resulting in a number of floods that throughout history that destroyed homes, killed people and resulted in large economic loss.
However, in contrast to this relationship with the river, the Aboriginal communities in the area took settlement near the river differently, and so were affected much differently by natural flooding that replenished the land around.
“Petrie reveals the climatic adaptations and agricultural practices of Aboriginal people in the area as they responded to the changing environment. In drought, Aboriginal people dug wells in swampy areas for water and constructed weirs across the river or tributaries to regulate the water flow. Aboriginal men would build dams of stone or brush and make traps to block streams to catch eels or fish. They piled wood on the water’s edge to rot and attract cobra or kambi (Nausitora queenslandica), a long white worm, for harvesting.9 The Turrbal and Jagera people had learned to live with the river, using it for food and transportation, but also allowing it to replenish the lands through flooding.” (Cook, 2019, pg.3)
Margaret Cook, similar to Ilan Kelman’s argument, identifies how the term ‘Flood’ is a highly anthropocentric term (2019), which is evident in the above comparison of Aboriginal and British settlers around the river at their attitude and approach to the patters of the river that was replenishing the land they all wanted to live on.
"Nonetheless, at root, as always, is that natech and other disasters are social disasters. Society creates the technology that fails. The fault, dear disaster lovers, is not in our environment nor in our technology per se, but in ourselves. " (Kelman, 2010)
References:
Kelman, I. 2010. “Hybrid Disasters or Usual Disasters?”. Disaster and Social Crisis Research Network Electronic Newsletter, no. 41 (May-August), p. 9.
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