Inequality in Natural Disasters: From Within the Country to Across Borders
While natural disasters reveal the extreme disaster recovery inequalities within the United States, the same relationship of disaster inequality is presented across the globe as well. In America, the disproportionate allocation of relief resources demonstrates the country’s extreme wealth inequality as lower-income and minority communities received little to no aid in terms of disaster recovery and prevention; hence, natural disasters occurring in the US exacerbate wealth inequality. However, this aggravation of wealth inequality isn’t solely present in the US, rather it expands to a global wealth inequity because of inequitable prevention and recovery in countries of different wealth.
Similar to the prioritization of wealthy neighborhoods in the allocation of disaster relief, high-income countries with a high and growing GDP tend to have more resources allocated to combat natural disasters whether it is through recovery or prevention. Low-income countries severely suffer from natural disasters more than high-income countries because of their higher susceptibility to damage from natural disasters and lower capability to cope with damage from natural disasters (Nazrul Islam and Winkel). For example, while the Netherlands and tropical island countries, such as Fiji, have low lying elevation causing more exposure to rising sea levels, the Netherlands — a high-income country — built sea walls as well as other structures that lowers its susceptibility to damages from flooding in a rising sea level as opposed to those low-income tropical island countries that economically suffer greatly from flooding (Nazrul Islam and Winkel). Unlike high-income countries, low-income countries don’t have the money or resources to prevent damage from natural disasters.
Not only is basic infrastructure better at preventing disasters in those high-income countries, the recovery after natural disasters in high-income countries fair better than low-income ones. High-income countries tend to have the highest number of natural disasters to hit their country, making 47% of 222,200 natural disasters from 1980 to 2011 (Rentschler). They also lose the most amount of money in disaster recovery and risk management, making up 66% of $3.53 billion dollars in absolute economic losses to natural disasters from 1980 to 2011 (Rentschler). To put it another way, high-income countries do end up suffering a lot of damage because of the amount of natural disasters occurring in their region. Nevertheless, low-income countries make up the highest percentage of fatalities due to natural disasters while only making up 9% of 222,200 natural disasters in a 31-year period (Rentschler). While low-income countries have the least percentage in absolute economic losses, low-income countries end up losing the most in terms of percentage of their country’s GDP in which the overall economic losses in low-income countries averages to 25% of GDP (Rentschler).
By recognizing wealth inequality from natural disasters and its processes in recovery and prevention as a global issue rather than just a local American issue, high-income countries such as the United States, can not only determine a local solution to its local wealthy inequality issue, but also transcend its solution across borders and aid low-income countries in its disaster prevention and recovery. The local solution of building resilience to natural disasters in the local low-income communities such as low-income neighborhoods in states with high susceptibility to natural disasters across the US can lead to a global solution in which high-income countries help build resilience to natural disasters in low-income countries. In a World Bank and the GFDRR report, both programs call for action at a governmental national level as a commitment to improve outcomes for low-income people after natural disasters; they propose there be global resilience policy packages administered at the national level that aims to reduce asset loses in natural disasters as well as increase resilience (Hallegatte et al.). Overall, with an international lens on the wealth inequality issue present in the Unites States after natural disasters, we can decrease poverty caused by natural disasters around the world; we can take our “within-country inequalities” to address the “across-country inequalities” while coming up with a global solution that countries can utilize locally.
Sources:
Hallegatte, S., Vogt-Schilb, A., Bangalore, M., & Rozenberg, J. (2017). Climate Change and Development Series: Unbreakable; Building the resilience of the poor in the face of natural disasters. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978–1–4648–1003–9
Nazrul Islam, S., and John Winkel. “Climate Change and Social Inequality.” UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Working Papers, 2017, doi:10.18356/2c62335d-en.
Rentschler, Jun E. “Why Resilience Matters — the Poverty Impacts of Disasters.” Policy Research Working Papers, 2013, doi:10.1596/1813–9450–6699.
