A disaster refers to an intensive derangement of the overall setting and functioning of either a society or a community (Tierney 2012). The extreme upheaval of the society comprises extensive individual, materialistic, economical, and environmental demolition and negative impacts that exceed the community’s financial and resource ability (McDermott, Barry, and Tol 2014). McDermott, Barry, and Tol (2014) argue that disasters occur because of poor and inappropriate management of risks which in turn stem from perils and general susceptibility. This is because havocs that occur in regions with low culpability do not result to disasters as is characterized by many unoccupied areas. On the contrary, governance is a term used to refer to all activities duly involved in governing specific areas such as governments, families, networks, and markets among others (Tierney 2012). In addition, the means used in the administration of governance in the stated areas could be either via specific laws, laid out norms, common language or ultimately, elements of power (Tierney 2012). As such, governance mainly involves the means and ways used by the relevant individuals to interact and make decisions on various important issues such as creating and reinforcing different social rules and regulations. Thus, this paper mainly focuses on disaster governance as well as bringing out a clear critical analysis on the fact that disaster governance is predominantly shaped by economic and political elites.
Disasters occur in various forms in different countries, regions and states worldwide. Moreover, the period of the occurrence varies in relation to hours, days or weeks depending on the intensity of the destruction. As such, disasters may either develop suddenly, thereby are said to occur in quick onsets or within a long time frame thus being in slow onsets. Therefore, disasters can indeed go on for extremely long periods that could be extensive for even a whole year (Mechler, et al. 2014). Primarily, disasters result from certain imbalances within the society and environment at large, and can be classified as either naturally occurring or artificial, also known as manmade, reasons (Kapucu and Özerdem 2013). Examples of naturally occurring disasters include excessive heat, tornados, tsunamis, sinkholes, wildfires, pandemic diseases, extreme winter and ice storms, earthquakes, avalanches, blizzards, massive floods, famines and landslides (Coppola 2007). Nevertheless, the most intensive natural disasters are both hurricanes and storms occurring during the tropics due to their huge size and great ability of destruction (Coppola 2007). Similarly, tornados are usually excessively violent and destructive but they tend to strike briefly (Mechler, et al. 2014).
Additionally, the most frequent natural disasters are both flooding and wildfires which occur during the rainy seasons and drought periods respectively. The two latter disasters tend to take a toll on the supply of food since it affects farm supplies, forests, soil and overall destruction of the ecosystem thus making it hard for food growth and as a result, the two are indeed the most expensive natural disasters (Blaikie Cannon and Wisner 2014). As such, examples of the deadliest natural disasters globally that resulted to a high death toll, over a hundred million deaths, include a deadly earthquake that hit both Egypt and Syria and led to the death of an approximated one million people and the Black Plague that affected millions of people Europe, Asia and North Africa. In addition, Blaikie Cannon and Wisner (2014) posit that a great famine in India that resulted to the demise of over ten million people, a potato famine in Irish that claimed over a million lives and a deadly drought in China that also took approximately nine million people as well as large numbers of cattle also comprise the deadly disasters. Furthermore, a viral flu disaster that cut across the entire globe claimed over eighty million deaths, the horrendous Yangtze, Yellow and Huai River floods in China led to massive property destruction as well as the death of almost four million people. Finally, another Chinese famine claiming over twenty million individuals, an African drought that led to the death of approximately twenty thousand civilians monthly and the famous famine and floods in North Korea that claimed over three million lives also make up the said top deadliest natural disasters (Leaning and Guha-Sapir 2013).
Similarly, disasters can also occur because of human involvement through negligence, error or specific intent. In addition, human beings also create materials that end up being hazardous to the environment. These types of disasters include contamination of water sources, blasts from nuclear power plants, civil disenchantment and disruption of power services, creation of biological weapons, chemical threats, global warming, and terrorism (Leaning & Guha-Sapir, 2013). In addition, according to Leaning and Guha-Sapir (2013), occurrences of incidences related to occupational fires have risen unceremoniously and the main negative effects include both loss of lives and large amounts of property. Furthermore, societies in the modern world are extremely susceptible to terrorism due to the rise of many extremist groups such as al- Qaeda, al- Shabaab, Boko Haram and ISIS whose main aim is to destroy lives through terror attacks (Blaikie Cannon and Wisner 2014).
Ultimately, the perpetrators of attacks through computers and other networks in cybers mainly target the government or even citizens for either political or social reasons. Examples of the most catastrophic artificial disasters in history worldwide include the Indian disaster known as the Bhopal which involved a gas leak that led to approximately thirty thousand deaths and the bombing of Chongqing during the Second World War, which resulted to the death of over three thousand individuals (Fatuirechi and Miller-Hooks 2014). In addition, there were killer attacks in both London and the United States that involved a killer fog that was also termed as the Great Smog which led to the demise of over twelve thousand civilians and a terror attack by al- Qaeda known as the 9/11 that resulted to over two thousand deaths as well as massive property destruction respectively (Blaikie Canon and Wisner 2014). Finally, in Africa, countries such as Kenya and Nigeria have had a series of terror attacks in the recent years such as the Westgate Mall attack and Garissa attacks by al- Shabaab and attacks by Boko Haram that led to the kidnapping of the Chibok girls which caused an international outrage, respectively.
As a result, governance of disasters is highly important globally in order to manage and revert the occurrences of various disasters. According to Hannigan (2012), disaster governance is a highly upcoming area of interest amongst various scholars focusing on disaster literature dealing with both environmental and risk governance. Therefore, all the strategies involved in both risk and environmental governance closely relate to disaster governance. In other words, the means used by different entities such as the civil servants, media personalities and individuals in the private sectors within the community to fight and contain climatic and environmental risks are similar to those used in disaster governance. As such, the four primary themes that are used to shape and control different strategies related to environmental governance similarly apply to governance of disasters in many ways (Calkin, et al. 2014). These main themes include globalization, governance focused on the market economy, implementation of decentralized government, and use of instruments across different scales. Therefore, the strong emphasis on this approach to governing disasters primarily aims to change the common view of disasters as environmental hazards that only need minimum attention and simple fixes technologically.
Moreover, the overly arced governance systems of the society generally incorporate and control the different forms of disaster governance. As a result, the relevant parties coordinate in various levels in order to achieve their main aim of governing disasters and these levels could be either regional, national, or even globally (Kapucu and Özerdem 2013). Thus, all the arrangements and challenges experienced in disaster governance within the given levels of administration operate under the influence of various factors such as individual settlement trends, global growth, and the general global- system statistics among others (Calkin, et al. 2014). In addition, relationships based on the civil state communities, societal changes, as well as economic syndicates affect disaster governance. Furthermore, several factors such as relationships between economic entities and the civil societies of the state as well as the general capacity of the state considerably affect the disaster governance strategies and capabilities. The economic and political elites within societies in different countries and states play a huge and primary role in shaping the strategies used in disaster governance.
Essentially, the term elite was originally coined from a Latin word known as eligere, which generally means to either choose or elect (Hewitt 2014). As such, according to various political and sociological theories, elites refer to small groups of influential individuals who control and manage an incommensurate sum of material wealth, privileges and political control in a given community or society (Hewitt 2014). Thus, the elites tend to dominate the entire society to an extent of even making national decisions. Hewitt (2014) also argues that members of the power elites actually acknowledge the common exalted positions of other elites in the society. Thus, elites occur in two major groups known as the economic and political elites who play a huge role in the formulation of both policies and strategies that shape disaster governance. As such, the economic elites in conjunction with other well organized business entities that vest their interest in businesses make a considerable amount of impact to the governing bodies in the society. Hence, the elites tend to gain their control and power over the state’s issues through several means such as acquiring and maintaining high corporate positions in prominent businesses and funding groups dealing with discussion of state policies (Coppola 2007). As a result, the economic elites are able to access vital information from the networks on policy planning thereby giving them the mandate to impose remarkable amounts of power over the final decisions on both governmental and corporate policies such as those related to disaster governance.
In the same way, political elites mainly comprise of extremely competent individuals through several ways such as amount of information attained, levels of education and the overall scale of political engagement in the State- civil society. Essentially, political elites tend to have intense control on the prominent officials of the public. (Gibbs and Macleod 2013) posits that recent statistics have it that an approximated seven to nine percentage of grown up individuals, in terms of age, possess the characteristics of political elites. Furthermore, most of the political elites usually are acting managing directors, members of trade unions, individuals in armed forces and company owners or other socioeconomic ranks of that nature. However, these individuals also have political sides whereby they ensure links between them and the society politically. As such, Gibbs and Macleod (2013) posit that the elites maintain their political relations bonding with the community officials as well as engaging in talks on policy reforms within the society. As a result, the political elites tend to possess the mandate to engage themselves in serious political issues such as disaster governance issues in the society.
Therefore, both economic and political elites constitute a large portion of the most enlightened individuals in both developed and developing countries. However, most developed countries tend to show a lot of independence while dealing with large scale catastrophes as compared to developing countries. Nevertheless, in both scenarios, developed and developing countries, huge disasters catalyze the intervention of both external and internal organizations to aid the remaining survivors in handling the trauma as well as educating them on how to prevent occurrence of similar disasters (Imperiale and Vanclay 2016). In other words, the external and internal organizations mainly comprised of economic and political elites chip in both before and after disaster occurrence in different countries and states worldwide in order to sensitize and aid people in disaster governance. Furthermore, Imperiale and Vanclay (2016) claim that the said elites cut across the entire globe in order to help avert the occurrence of disaster governance.
However, the elites’ domination within societies ultimately make power to be concentrated amongst few people, the elites. As a result, such moves result to marginalization of the other people in the society by allowing the elites to rule the society with a kind of aristocratic leadership, which allows them to formulate policies and make decisions based entirely on their interests without putting other people’s ideas into consideration (Mascarenhas and Wisner, 2012). As a result, this leads to disaster capitalism whereby the elites, who own the country’s profits, fully control the country’s affairs both economically and politically. As such, disaster capitalism is a theory clearly brought out by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine” that majors on the increase of disaster capitalism in the society. Thus, in her research, Naomi explained that many people connected disaster capitalism to describe the current situations since clearly, the people in power harnessed catastrophic occurrences to achieve their visions on completely unrestricted markets (Klein 2010). Naomi gave an example how Bush had openly declared that his main agenda of reconstructing the Gulf Coast after its destruction by a catastrophe was to make it a free business area through freeing it of taxes (Klein 2010). Therefore, disaster capitalism led to humanitarian assistance failures like seen through the poor response from the government during disasters such as the hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, and Rwanda and Cambodian genocides.
Nonetheless, the elites tend to have roles in pre-disaster as well as during the occurrence of disasters in order to ensure preparedness within the business and political communities. Thus, as Adolfo Mascarenhas argues, the economic elites subdivide themselves in several groups in order to ensure maximum preparedness of disaster and come up with different strategies that aid in management of disasters (Wisner, Gaillard, and Kelman 2012). These subdivisions include several positions such as economic analysts, catalysts, gap fillers, economic advocates, educators and visionaries. Hence, the elites in charge of the said positions play their parts to the latter in a bid to enhance disaster governance both before and after the occurrence of disasters (Hewitt 2014). Therefore, the elites acting as economic analysts decipher how the occurrence of possible disasters could affect the upcoming businesses and organizations. In addition, their role after the occurrence of disasters is to access the levels of damage caused to crucial industries and their long-term viability as well as also approximate the amount of property and infrastructure destroyed during the occurrence of the hazardous events (Mascarenhas and Wisner, 2012). Moreover, the analytical elites come up with the approximated cost of projects involved in recovery processes.
The other branch of economic elites known as the catalyst elites creates task forces in business recovery in order to work on the different activities involved in the overall preparations for occurrence of disasters. Thus, after the disaster, the catalysts main role is to engage already created task forces with the main aim of prompt and durable efforts helping in the recovery process (Gibbs, Krueger and Macleod 2013). Furthermore, the catalysts also gather the required inputs and incentives for creation of strategies leading to the recovery process as well as update the already set strategic plans to match the severity of the disasters. As for the gap fillers, Gibbs, Krueger and Macleod (2013) claim that their main pre-disaster role is to sensitize the public and private sectors to set up several loan programs in preparation for occurrence of disasters. Thus, this brings out their post-disaster role which is to help businesses with recovery by speeding up loan approvals as well as developing organizational programs and policies required for the full recovery from the disasters.
Moreover, the other constituents of the economic elites referred to as the advocate elites also have major pre-disaster roles such as vouching for relief and preparation strategies, pushing re-entry procedures of business entities forward and finally, sensitizing business people on the importance formulation of emergency plans for their businesses in readiness for disaster occurrences (Malka and Soto 2015). In addition, as their name suggest, the educator elites have a role of training small business entities on various strategies and plans for continuation of businesses even after catastrophic occurrences (Malka and Soto 2015). The educators also raise the business community awareness on the proper management of emergency business plans. Thus, the role of the educators after disastrous events is to ensure business continuity and channel messages of help to the affected businesses to the relevant authorities.
In the same way, the political elites through global societal political systems also play a significant role in the management of disaster governance. As stated earlier, the individuals mainly involved in shaping and structuring governance of disasters are the political elites since they tend to have the upper hand in the required traits and intelligence levels for leadership (Tierney 2012). Hence, the political elites are also extremely important in pre-disaster preparations as well as post-disaster recovery for both the economic and political sectors. Thus, Tierney (2012) posits that political elites aid in addressing the various issues that affect and hinder acute preparations for occurrence of disasters as well as the management of hazards once they occur. Therefore, the main issues and concerns addressed by political elites include the primary focus on limited funds allocated to business and economic recovery after catastrophes, lack of flexibility in the use of public funds and inconsistency in the set requirements worldwide.
As such, the political elites advocate for increased concerns on the issue of limited funds since it is indeed a matter of global concern. Thus, they vouch for an increase in the amount of funds dispatched to the relevant authorities for the purposes of facilitating quick recovery processes for business entities and the entire affected society after catastrophic events. (Galindo and Batta 2013) claims that the amount of public funds allocated to recovery of business and economic entities is relatively smaller compared to the funds set aside for addressing other governmental issues. Hence, Galindo and Batta (2013) claim that the role of political elites in addressing the said issue is to sensitize the state leaders as well as the overall community on the urgency of prioritizing funding of recovery projects. This is because the success of the corporate world generally governs the overall well-being and financial position of societies globally. Hence, the relevant authorities should promptly address disruptions of the business cycles resulting from disaster occurrences by ensuring proper and adequate funding in order to recover and maintain the affected business entities and other related organizations.
In conclusion, as clearly illustrated in the essay, both economic and political elites play a huge role in shaping disaster governance. They aid countries and states worldwide in maintaining and enhancing better efficient and effective approaches and responses to disaster prone societies as well as the already affected regions. In addition, the elites also improve academic endeavors that support the use of network related theories for enhanced research on massive disaster occurrences as well as ways involved in disaster governance. Ultimately, the elites also aid different constituents of the society such as the government, business entities and the overall society globally in the path to recovery after catastrophes via their well stated approaches to disaster governance.
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