Extractivism and the engendering of disasters: disaster risk creation in the era of the Anthropocene

Extractivism and the engendering of disasters: disaster risk creation in the era of the Anthropocene Sarah Bradshaw Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print, pp.- This paper argues that extractivist logic creates the environmental conditions that produce “natural” hazards and also the human conditions that produce vulnerability, which combined create disasters. Disaster Risk Creation is then built into the current global socio-economic system, as an integral component not accidental by-product.As part of the movement to liberate disasters as discipline, practice and field of enquiry, this paper does not talk disasters per se, but rather its focus is on “extractivism” as a fundamental explanator for the anthropogenic disaster landscape that now confronts us.Applying a gender lens to extractivism as it relates to disaster, further highlights that Disaster Risk Management rather than alleviating, creates the problems it seeks to solve, suggesting the need to liberate gender from Disaster Risk Management, and the need to liberate us all from the notion of managing disasters. Since to ‘manage’ disaster risk is to accept uncritically the structures and systems that create that risk, then if we truly want to address disasters, our focus needs to be on the extractive practices, not the disastrous outcomes.The fundamental argument is that through privileging the notion of “disaster” we create it, bring it into existence, as something ...
Source: Disaster Prevention and Management - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: research