Why do you recommend At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters?

Because it provided a revolutionary shift in the way that people think about natural disasters. It was published in 1994 and it was the first to suggest that disaster recovery is not just about physical reconstruction – it also has a social dimension. One of the authors, Piers Blaikie, argues that disasters have a differential impact on those it affects. Poor people are likely to be more affected by a natural disaster than rich people, the latter of whom tend to overcome the loss more quickly.

For example, when discussing flood recovery, Blaikie and the three contributors urge readers not to begin by thinking of the issue of water, but to start with vulnerability. Why is it that some people are living in low-lying land that is susceptible to flooding? Perhaps it’s because somebody else grabbed the people’s land, forcing them to move elsewhere.

This book details a theoretical model called the crunch model, which in my opinion remains the most powerful way of understanding the impact of disasters. It’s very simple: imagine a group of vulnerable people living on low land – the hazard is obviously water. When the vulnerability and hazard come together in the form of a flood, the two factors are multiplied to equal the scale of the disaster. Many policy-makers have acted on the connection that is made between development and disaster.

Tell us about Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third Worldby Mike Davis.

This is a very interesting book – it contains some very good storytelling about the late Victorian famines in Africa, India, China, Brazil and elsewhere. It could almost be described as a narration of human suffering. It also contains many rare photographs depicting the famines.

Davis discusses the role of capitalism and colonialism on the environment and climate during the famines that were related to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern that produces extreme weather. He investigates the role of the colonial government in British India and elsewhere and documents the inefficiency and detrimental policies that contributed to an increase in widespread hunger and poverty. He also suggests that the vulnerability produced by these famines remained long after the British left. Thus explaining the title – The Making of the Third World. Although the term ‘holocaust’ is quite controversial when relating to natural disasters, I believe that Davis is suggesting that the famines may have been preventable, and that they were undoubtedly on a massive scale. In the latter part of the 19th century, between 30 and 60 million died as a result of hunger.

Your next book is A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906.

In 1906, one of the largest earthquakes in American history almost entirely destroyed the American West’s great city of San Francisco. Simon Winchester focuses on the response to the earthquake, which was one of the first to be documented by the media. The earthquake caused a fire that lasted for three days and was far more destructive than the quake itself. Insurance companies refused to pay out in the majority of cases because few people at that time had cover specifically for earthquakes./p>

Though it focuses less on the human stories and more on rebuilding, it provides a very comprehensive ‘bigger picture’ of disaster. It’s not an easy book to read for those without a basic understanding of geography and how earthquakes occur, but it’s terrific for an advanced level understanding.

Tell us about Building Back Better: Delivering People-Centred Housing Reconstruction at Scale.

This is another powerful book written by many different contributors. I contributed a chapter that focuses on the advantages of empowering affected house owners to solve humanitarian challenges.

Broadly, Building Back Better argues the case for changing the power structure relating to reconstruction. The people with resources – that is, governments and aid organisations, are in total control of reconstruction programmes. On the other hand, those that are directly affected by the disaster are also capable of managing their own recovery and often have their own ideas about how to do so. The only thing they lack is money. The affected people and powerful people must work together more closely and become involved in participatory, democratic planning.

The recovery system is complex due to donor reporting rules and there is an apprehension that the media may accuse such organisations of constructing poor quality buildings. And some are of the belief that if money is given directly to those affected, they are likely to spend it on drink and that they will construct low quality buildings. But there are many real life examples where local people have been trained and assisted by governments and aid workers, who facilitate the process rather than controlling it. More often than not, the quality of these buildings was superior to those built by large contractors, who build houses in a uniform style without considering many things that may be important to a particular community.