Vulnerability is the extent to which people or buildings are likely to suffer harm from a disaster, while risk is the likely quantified losses that would result considering the probability and intensity of a hazard. As such, risk also includes an element of hazard, the natural or man-made event that can lead to a disaster if there is high vulnerability. In order to initiate programmes for reducing risk in any community, it is necessary to understand specificvulnerabilities and to weigh the resilience against the threats present in the area. This involves a series of steps, the major ones being the assessment and analysis of vulnerability and risk. This should influence public policy for immediate and long-term preparedness, mitigation and vulnerability reduction. Vulnerability and risk assessments are both science and art since quantitative assessments of probability of risks and likely damage are attempted usingmathematical techniques. Socio-economic study with a view to studying communities and specific factors that make them vulnerable, is attempted using the insights provided by such assessments and effective transformation attempted through policy. It is especially important to recognise that this social vulnerability is much more than the likelihood of buildings collapsing or infrastructure getting damaged. It is about the characteristics of people, and the differential impacts of a disaster on people.
UNDERSTANDING VULNERABILITY
To conduct vulnerability analysis, we need a clear idea about what Vulnerability is. Vulnerability is defined in the United Nations Disaster Management Training Programme (1994) as the “degree of loss to a given element at risk (or set of elements) resulting from a given hazard and a given severity level.” The concept of vulnerability can be assessed at various levels and from diverse perspectives. Both physical scientists and social scientists are involved in conceptualising vulnerability. There has also been growing specialisation in the respective fields of hazard and vulnerability assessment. While specialisation is welcome, there is an inherent danger of increased isolation among respective specialists in physical science and social science streams and even across the two broad categorizations in that even within the broad specialisation of physical sciences and social sciences, perspectives are likely to differ with respect to emphasis areas as per super/sub specialisations. Hence an engineer or a scientist/researcher in related fields is likely to perceive vulnerability more in terms of Risk, while a climate scientist, in terms of the likelihood of occurrence and impacts of weather and climate related events. The biophysical concept of vulnerability is akin to the concept of ‘Risk’ while the social science perspective defines it more in terms of socio economic parameters. Experts from the following fields are involved in study and analyses of vulnerability; climate science, policy development studies, economics, disaster management, health, and social sciences along with others. According to Nick Brooks (2003), each of these relates only themselves to a partial understanding of vulnerability. There is a need to rise above specialisations and take an across- the- board, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural view of the issue of vulnerability to present a more complete and holistic analysis of vulnerability for meaningful interest articulation and policy formulation in the area. Physical vulnerability has also to be understood in the context of political conflict, issues of class struggle, unequal access to power and social backwardness to formulate comprehensive vulnerability reduction approach. The same should be attempted by integrating, through a conceptual model, through research, these different and diverse “traditions in a coherent yet flexible fashion.”The attempt on the part of all involved specialists/academics is to get closer to the root causes of vulnerability. The closer the analysis gets to the fundamental causes rather than the symptomatic aspects of vulnerability, the more difficult and complex vulnerabilities get/are in fact to address. However, the more fundamental the vulnerability addressed, the more hazard-resistant the vulnerable group is likely to become as a result.
In most vulnerability analysis methods, there is a clear sense of comparability and convergence in the analysis of vulnerability factors (encompassing the different components of vulnerability discussed above). There is also a vivid realisation that vulnerability conditions are themselves determined by processes and factors that are apparently quite different from a hazard, which is mistakenly held singularly responsible for losses. These root causes, or institutional factors, or more general, political, economic and social processes and priorities are highlighted in much of the vulnerability analysis work that has been done. As peoples’ livelihood and wider political and economic processes determine opportunities and their patterns of assets and incomes, vulnerability to disasters is also a function of this wider environment. All the vulnerability variables are inherently connected with peoples’ livelihoods (lower vulnerability is likely when livelihoods are adequate and sustainable), and their innate resilience related with issues such as poverty (in most disasters) since, it is mostly the poor who are disproportionately more at risk than other groups, and much less capable of recovering easily.
Related concepts are sensitivity, resilience and adaptive capacity. Sensitivity refers to the degree of proneness of a particular ‘element at risk’ to a particular threat, such as climate risk, land degradation etc. Sensitivity would refer to the degree of change that would be brought about as response in one variable that is correlated to the other. Assessing Sensitivity would involve working out the correlation. Resilience is explained as fortitude in the face of a potential threat. In one word, it means resistance. Adaptive capacity refers to preparedness through an ancillary way in that it means how much absorption capacity is here or is needed by policy intervention in this regard, specifically what, in order to withstand natural changes and how to adapt to them. For example, retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas due to global warming, or changes in harvest seasons that could be possible (grain suffers due to early summer) would need to be tackled through adaptation measures such as resistant varieties of seeds, manures, innovative irrigation techniques, etc.
To understand differential vulnerability of different segments of population in a given area exposed in the same measure to a given hazard, it is important to inquire into the differential causes of vulnerability. It encompasses poverty, marginalisation, or other deprivations that accentuate the vulnerability to climate risks or specific biological hazards that affect particularly the sections of the population who are disadvantaged, ‘at risk’, or in other ways in need. Vulnerability involves a predictive quality since it is a way of conceptualising what may happen to an identifiable population under conditions of particular hazards. Precisely, because it should be predictive, vulnerability analysis (VA) should be capable of directing development aid interventions, as also public
policy interventions on the part of governments seeking ways to protect and enhance peoples’ livelihoods, assist vulnerable people in their own attempts at self-protection, and support institutions in their role of disaster prevention.
VULNERABILITY AND CAPACITY
There appears to be two separate approaches to Vulnerability Analysis. The first conceives of them being the two ends of a spectrum, so that people who have a high degree of vulnerability are low in capacity and vice versa. In this approach, there is no ‘separate set of factors’ that should be considered as vulnerability factors or capacities or capabilities; there are simply scales on which high levels of capacity axiomatically indicate low level of vulnerability. The second perceives them as two distinct or only partly inter-related sets of factors since capacity might include institutional membership, group cohesion, or even literacy, which positions people better to cope with adverse conditions, in relation to others, vulnerabilities notwithstanding. The implication is that some capacities may not always be the opposite of vulnerabilities, in that being part of a particular network may be a capacity, or a denial of capacity to others, as is the case with cohesion norms based on caste behaviour in India. This is not to construe that the term vulnerability cannot imply capacities as scalar ‘opposites’. Different conception is simply purported to facilitate conceptual understanding of vulnerability, not to confuse it in any way.
The use of the concept of capabilities emerged in response to the supposedly negative connotation of the term vulnerability, and has been especially stressed in the World Disasters Report, 2004. Instead of Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis, or VCAs, the term employed now is CVA or Capacity and Vulnerability Analysis, signifying the change in approach from vulnerability reduction to capacity enhancement, as policy focus/emphasis. It has been realised that a lot more effectiveness in disaster response and mitigation could be achieved if the emphasis shifted from tackling vulnerabilities singly, to reinforcing capacities that enable communities to fight disasters and recover after suffering losses from any such event. It was suggested that to speak of people as being vulnerable was to treat them as passive victims and ignore the many capacities that make them competent to resist hazards through self-help.
If we accept that measuring vulnerability includes any factor or process that can alter the ‘exposure’ of a person or household to risk, then capacities can also be considered as factors that lead to greater danger (vulnerability) when they are low, and reduced danger when they are high. As per Palakudiyil and Todd (2003), Vulnerability/Capacity could be physical/material, social/organisational/ or motivational/attitudinal.
Physical/Material Vulnerability and Capacity: The most visible area of vulnerability is physical/material deprivation. Variables include land, climate, environment, health, skills and labour, infrastructure, housing, finance and technologies to which the poor are denied access. Poor people suffer from crises more often than the rich because they have little or no savings, few income or production options, and limited resources. They are more vulnerable and also recover more slowly. To understand physical/material vulnerability, one has to ask what made the people affected by the disaster physically vulnerable, in that was it their economic activities (for example, farmers cannot plant because of
floods), or geographic location (for example. homes built in cyclone-prone areas) or lack of access to relief resources that made them suffer particularly.
Social/Organisational Vulnerability and Capacity: How society is organised, its internal conflicts and how it manages them are just as important as the physical/material aspects of vulnerability, though less visible and less well understood. This includes ‘formal political structures’ and the ‘informal systems’ through which people get politically empowered/ socially networked which is a capacity/vulnerability, however the case, which determines access to relief in disaster times and to livelihood means in general. For example, during the recent tsunami, it was realised that aid did not reach many because of caste seclusion. Hence, constitutional provisions/guarantees provided in the Constitution under articles, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, that safeguard the rights of the socially marginalised would need to be invoked in future in such possibilities.
Poor societies that are well- organised and cohesive can withstand or recover from disasters better than those that are ill- organised or lacking in cohesion on some irrational principle as divisiveness on race, religion, and class or caste lines. To explore this aspect in depth with a view to inquiring into the causes of vulnerability, one has to ask what the social structure was before the disaster struck and how well it served the people in relief and recovery; one can also ask what apocalyptic impact disasters had on social organisation, since there has been evidence of attitudes changing or even new ‘permutations and combinations’ emerging in social alignments in post-disaster situations. This underscores the significance of research into social networks/attitudes and how improvements could be affected, possibly through policy interventions to reinforce/discourage behaviour as aforestated
Motivational/Attitudinal Vulnerability and Capacity: This implies how people in society view themselves and their ability to protect themselves in the event of disasters. Groups that share strong ideologies or belief systems, or have experience in cooperating successfully, may be better able to help each other at times of disaster than groups without such shared beliefs or those who feel fatalistic or dependent. Crises can stimulate communities to make extraordinary efforts. Questions to be asked include; what people’s beliefs and motivations are how they affect their behaviour during disasters. The more pertinent question would be: what is the general worldview, implying culture, in that whether communities place reliance on some metaphysical regulation of life or believe in human action. Public policy intervention in this case would need to aim at changing attitudes within communities, since such attitudes could be counter- productive. Long-term measures in this respect would be education of the masses, through which cognitive development could be achieved.
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