Talk:Natural disaster

Moving away from the term "natural disaster"

I would like to come back to the naming issue that has been raised here on the talk page time and time again, and has also been discussed on the talk page of natural hazard. We really ought to move away from the term "natural disaster" altogether. I'll copy here something that had been added to this talk page on 26 August 2020 by User:NoNaturalDisasters, and which describes the issue quite well:

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"Several academics, practitioners, policymakers and community groups have used the #NoNaturalDisasters Twitter account, hashtag and consolidated online campaign (launched in June 2018) to inform and educate people and/ or organisations within the disaster risk sector that using ‘natural’ to describe disasters was incorrect. Since its launch, the campaign has grown to include a dedicated website, thousands of followers on multiple platforms and citations in mainstream media articles.

The advocates of this campaign use social media platforms to share the position: If we recognise and accept the standard definition of disaster as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, then we must consider human involvement at the core of that process.

A hazard will only become a disaster should it impact the workings of a society or community. As such, a disaster can only happen where a society or community exists. When a hazard reaches an area of human habitation, policies including decisions around the built environment and social welfare can increase the impacts of that hazard. What’s worse, using ‘natural’ to describe disasters misleads people to think the devastating results are inevitable, out of our control, and are simply part of a natural process. Hazards (earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemics, drought etc) are inevitable but the impact they have on society is not. This campaign aims to halt decades of using incorrect terminology and to highlight the implications of using such terminology."

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I've also been talking with Kevin Blanchard about it and he said: "Instead of "natural disaster", we recommend simply "disaster". We (the campaign) argues that the context of the piece should clarify whether the author is referring to a natural hazard or a technological/ anthropomorphic hazard linked disaster. Our view is that there is no need for a clarification before and we try to state that it simplifies the discussion." And "My slight issue with a title like “Disasters caused by natural hazards” is that the hazard didn't really cause the disaster. It was society's failure to adequately respond to the risk.".

So I would like to propose this as the way forward:

• Option 1: The articles "natural disaster" and "disaster" are merged together and the new title is "disaster".
• Option 2: The content of natural disaster is merged into natural hazard, and a redirect is placed accordingly.
• Option 3: The three pages remain but the articles are reworked to explain why "natural disaster" is a misnomer and the articles itself are edited to actively avoid using that term.

This page shows the pageviews on Wikipedia for the three articles: natural disaster, disaster and natural hazard. The article on natural disasters has very high pageviews – about 3000 views per day which is high compared to other climate change articles.

I notice that the glossary of the IPCC AR 6 report does not include the term “natural disaster”, only “disaster” so that is interesting. However, the WG 2 report does use the term “natural disasters” quite often (I searched for that term and found 134 hits; many of them come from the reference lists though). EMsmile (talk) 08:09, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

P.S. I asked Kevin Blanchard for reliable sources and he sent me these:

There is a considerable (and growing) body of work on the topic... some selected publications here:

Peer reviewed:

• Ball, N., 1975. The myth of natural disasters. The Ecologist, Vol.5, Issue 10: 368-369.
• O'Keefe, P., 1976. Taking the" Naturalness" out of" Natural Disaster". Nature (London), 260, pp.566-567.
• Cannon, T., 1994. Vulnerability analysis and explanation of ‘natural’ disasters. Chapter 1. In: Disaster: Development and Environment. Varley, A. (ed.). London, UK. John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
• Gaillard, J.C., C.C. Liamzon and J.D. Villanueva. 2007. ‘Natural’ disaster? A retrospect into the causes of the late-2004 typhoon disaster in Eastern Luzon, Philippines. Environmental Hazards, Vol. 7, Issue 4: 257-270.
• Aragon-Durand, F.J.. 2009. Unpacking the social construction of ́natural ́ disaster through policy discourses and institutional responses in Mexico: The case of Chalco Valley’s floods, state of Mexico. PhD Thesis, Development Planning Unit, The Bartlett, University College London. Available at: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/18983/1/18983.pdf
• Gould, K.A., M.M. Garcia and J.A.C. Remes. 2016. Beyond "natural-disasters-are-not-natural": the work of state and nature after the 2010 earthquake in Chile. Journal of Political Ecology, Vol. 23: 93-114.
• Kelman, I., 2020. Disaster by choice: How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes. Oxford University Press.

Other reading:

• World Bank and United Nations, 2010. Natural Hazards, Unnatural Disasters. Available here - http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2010/11/15/natural-hazards-unnatural-disasters-the-economics-of-effective-prevention. Washington: The World Bank.
• Bankoff, G., 2010. No such thing as natural disasters. Harvard International Review. 23 August 2010. Available at: http://hir.harvard.edu/article/?a=2694
• Chmutina, K., J. von Meding, J.C. Gaillard and L. Bosher. 2017. Why natural disasters aren't all that natural. OpenDemocracy. Available online at https://www.opendemocracy.net/ksenia-chmutina-jason-von-meding-jc-gaillard-lee-bosher/why-natural-disasters-arent-all-that-natural
• Mizutori, M., 2020 Time to say goodbye to “natural” disasters. https://www.preventionweb.net/blog/time-say-goodbye-natural-disasters

EMsmile (talk) 08:30, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion is also taking place at the talk page of WikiProject Climate Change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change#Avoiding_the_term_%22natural_disaster%22 EMsmile (talk) 19:53, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Question about climate change sentence

I've added this sentence today with a ref to the IPCC AR 6 WG 2 report (it follows a sentence that talks about natural hazards): Some of these now have a higher probability of occurring, and a higher intensity due to the effects of climate change, for example heat waves, droughts, wildfire and coastal flooding.. I didn't give a page number as I don't have a specific sentence in mind but I think my sentence is backed up by that publication in general. Do folks agree? Have I worded it correctly? Pinging User:FeydHuxtable for advice. EMsmile (talk) 19:58, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 19:58, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I made a minor wording tweak, but looks a good & useful addition to me. (Not that my opinion should count for much, as someone who had not prevoiusly worked on the page.) You could specify p9 of the exec summary if you wanted, though I also agree it's fine to laeave the page out in this instance. You might want to consider moving the addition to the "Scale" section, as it perhaps fits in better there than in "Definition". PS - Just so you dont think I'm ignoring if you send any further pings, I'm not likely to be about much for the next few weeks, just randomly saw this one while looking up Beatrice. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! I've implemented both of your suggestions. Looking forward to seeing more of you on Wikipedia again when you have more time. :-) EMsmile (talk) 08:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

I also think this is correct. One hazard that seems to be not universally increasing in frequency is hurricanes and tropical storms Richarit (talk) 16:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Merger completed

The merger of the content of the former "natural hazard" article has now been completed. A redirect has been placed. Now we probably need a bit more work to explain to people how the two terms are connected and to weed out any repetition. If we created a section called "natural hazard" then we could place the redirect directly to that section but I think this is probably not needed. We can explain it directly in the lead and in the terminology section. EMsmile (talk) 13:47, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree we should put some explanation at the top of the article on the two terms. Natural hazard might be best understood by giving examples such as the ones that are already listed. For the definition of natural disaster we could have: A natural disaster is the harmful (or serious harmful?) impact on a society or community following a natural hazard event. citing FEMA. This is simple enough and sidesteps the issue of root causes Richarit (talk) 16:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

That's good. I have changed the first para of the lead and of the terminology section accordingly (please feel free to improve on my edits further). For the lead, I shortened the list of natural hazards to those that are perhaps most universally applicable (a lot of the ones regarding winter weather don't really apply to the Global South), so the shorter list for the lead is now: flooding, drought, earthquake, tropical cyclone, lightning, tsunami, volcanic activity, wildfire. Also I am wondering if we should consistently talk of "natural hazard events" rather than "natural hazards"? I see we sometimes use it like that but not always. EMsmile (talk) 20:10, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

The first sentence under the heading "Impacts"

the word "other" is garbled with a probable typo.

because the page is edit disabled I thought I'd mention this so someone with the proper permissions could change it. Thanks. Borneo Holmes (talk) 01:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I've changed it. Hope you stick around and make some edits, then you'll become autoconfirmed and can edit protected pages as well. Welcome to Wikipedia! EMsmile (talk) 15:42, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 August 2023

Dw2240 (talk) 23:23, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Diseases like infection pandemics pandemic are classified as natural disaster

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Dawnseeker2000 00:22, 17 August 2023 (UTC)