Anna Lukasiewicz - Natural Hazards and Disaster Justice: Challenges for Australia and Its Neighbours

Cover illustration: Jennifer Hart / Alamy Stock Photo

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With the occurrence, cost and human impacts of disasters increasing in Australia and worldwide, attention inevitably focuses on who bears the burden and impacts of these events. Media , political debates and numerous post-event inquiries (142 in Australia between 2009 and 2017) have exposed a multitude of issues around fairness and equity .

Under the broad policy settings of the Sendai Framework and Australias National Disaster Resilience Strategy, addressing the area of natural disasters has shifted from a prepare and respond approach to one that extends across the Preparation-Prevention-Response-Recovery (PPRR) spectrum, involves shared responsibilities and is more whole-of-society and whole-of-government.

Disaster events reveal, magnify and deepen existing injustices and can create future inequalities which lead to further injustice . Disaster justice focuses on these revealed inequities, whether they be spatially, socio-economically or politically created, seeking to better understand the uneven vulnerabilities and the policy and management options that can address them.

On 1920 November 2018, researchers from multiple Australian research institutions involved in disaster justice met in Canberra, Australia in preparation for writing this book. They discussed the meaning, importance and future of disaster justice research in Australia and its surrounds. While globally, disasters include earthquakes and terrorism, our contributors focused mainly on disasters that occur regularly in Australia, specifically floods , fires and storms . While this book focuses on natural hazards , there is nothing stopping others from applying disaster justice to man-made disasters. The book highlights issues discussed at that meeting of relevance to policy, practice and future research. It is divided into three parts: an introduction; a section on governance, including policy, planning, legal and economic approaches; and a third on vulnerability that reveals the implications of inequitable exposure to risk of disasters due to locational and social vulnerabilities but also suggestions for how to address this.