The Social Construction of Natural Disasters …
311
Brazil nowadays, people living in areas considered vulnerable to natural disasters,
causing environmental, social, economic and cultural losses.
And Mendonça (2010), says that natural events aren´t recent, but belong to our
planet´s natural dynamics and have happened even before humanity, before urbanization, however, they have been exacerbated by the microclimates and local climates
created by territorial occupation, mainly with the overload on the use and occupation
of the soil, what according to Gonzales et al. (2013), is one of the main aspects that
can compromisse environmental and life quality, seeing that the excessive concentration held without a propoer planning results in adverse conditions and would thus
compromise environmental and life quality.
To address the concept of disasters, we must understand the rating provided by
the Brazilian Civil Defense (2000), where the disasters are seen as results of adverse
events, natural or not, about a vulnerable ecossystem, causing environmental, material and human damages (Mattedi et al. 2009). Lieber and Romano-Lieber (2005)
see that the disasters should be classified as something more social than natural,
not simple natural phenomena, questioning the society for what hasn’t been done
before, during or after it, what Cannon (2008) reinforces with the idea that natural
disasters are triggered by natural disasters, but can also be considered as products
of processes that involve social, economic and political factors, under the vision
that this construction could be, somehow, innocent, in other words, unintentionally
caused by the society, referring to a fact, or a series of facts that change the ordinary
operating mode of a society (Mattedi and Butzke 2001).
Anyway, innocent or not, we may say that the vulnerability of the population
exposed to natural disasters is intensfied by social factors, among them housing
problems (Ajibade and Mcbean 2014) and that cannot be resoved based on resilience,
seeing that the reading of resilience leads to a pre-disaster condition, that would
recreate the causes of vulnerability provoking themselves a disaster (Jackson et al.
2017), being necessary to focus on the situations prior to the disasters, with something
we can call the social construction of disasters, not only on the hability of reacting
and recoreving, what according to Bang (2014) occures in several countries despite
having a disasters management structure, they still have gaps among the theory, the
constant principles of disaster management and its implementation per se, leading
the governments to a more reactive than proactive approach, cooperating with the
worsening of natural disasters socially constructed.
Hence, analyzing from the perspective that natural disasters are a result of risk
factors socially constructed, and, therefore, cannot be attributed only to the environmental risk factors, we may conceptualize them as a public finding phenomenon
that is vulnerable when it comes to the relation between government and society
in front of the impact of a risk effect that could not be prevented or mitigated in
time (Valêncio et al. 2009), where we can also conclude that the responsibility for
the adverse events is not only environmental, but also of a system that involves the
society as a whole, and its all segments, public or private, exposing weaknesses on
the recognition, management and specially, on the relation between the public entity
and the population.
311
Brazil nowadays, people living in areas considered vulnerable to natural disasters,
causing environmental, social, economic and cultural losses.
And Mendonça (2010), says that natural events aren´t recent, but belong to our
planet´s natural dynamics and have happened even before humanity, before urbanization, however, they have been exacerbated by the microclimates and local climates
created by territorial occupation, mainly with the overload on the use and occupation
of the soil, what according to Gonzales et al. (2013), is one of the main aspects that
can compromisse environmental and life quality, seeing that the excessive concentration held without a propoer planning results in adverse conditions and would thus
compromise environmental and life quality.
To address the concept of disasters, we must understand the rating provided by
the Brazilian Civil Defense (2000), where the disasters are seen as results of adverse
events, natural or not, about a vulnerable ecossystem, causing environmental, material and human damages (Mattedi et al. 2009). Lieber and Romano-Lieber (2005)
see that the disasters should be classified as something more social than natural,
not simple natural phenomena, questioning the society for what hasn’t been done
before, during or after it, what Cannon (2008) reinforces with the idea that natural
disasters are triggered by natural disasters, but can also be considered as products
of processes that involve social, economic and political factors, under the vision
that this construction could be, somehow, innocent, in other words, unintentionally
caused by the society, referring to a fact, or a series of facts that change the ordinary
operating mode of a society (Mattedi and Butzke 2001).
Anyway, innocent or not, we may say that the vulnerability of the population
exposed to natural disasters is intensfied by social factors, among them housing
problems (Ajibade and Mcbean 2014) and that cannot be resoved based on resilience,
seeing that the reading of resilience leads to a pre-disaster condition, that would
recreate the causes of vulnerability provoking themselves a disaster (Jackson et al.
2017), being necessary to focus on the situations prior to the disasters, with something
we can call the social construction of disasters, not only on the hability of reacting
and recoreving, what according to Bang (2014) occures in several countries despite
having a disasters management structure, they still have gaps among the theory, the
constant principles of disaster management and its implementation per se, leading
the governments to a more reactive than proactive approach, cooperating with the
worsening of natural disasters socially constructed.
Hence, analyzing from the perspective that natural disasters are a result of risk
factors socially constructed, and, therefore, cannot be attributed only to the environmental risk factors, we may conceptualize them as a public finding phenomenon
that is vulnerable when it comes to the relation between government and society
in front of the impact of a risk effect that could not be prevented or mitigated in
time (Valêncio et al. 2009), where we can also conclude that the responsibility for
the adverse events is not only environmental, but also of a system that involves the
society as a whole, and its all segments, public or private, exposing weaknesses on
the recognition, management and specially, on the relation between the public entity
and the population.