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Heavy casualties and damage (disasters) are triggered either by a single natural hazard – a ‘singular disaster’ – or through cascading damages to a series of causally-linked systems – ‘disaster chains’. Disaster chains are more common and occur when impacts to one system cause secondary and tertiary disasters in other linked systems. An example of a disaster chain includes widespread flooding (primary disaster) that contaminates drinking water supplies (secondary disaster) and leads to an outbreak of waterborne illness like cholera (tertiary disaster). The hazard factors – usually described as vulnerability factors in the international hazards and disasters research community – constitute things like previous land management practices or access to resources by different community members. The combination of exposure, sensitivity and capacity determine a system’s underlying hazard factors (see Chapters 1 and 2 for a discussion on vulnerability). In the flooding and cholera example, a community without knowledge about the need to boil water before consumption or the means to do so during and after a flood is more vulnerable to suffering multiple types of harm. The damage caused by events like the Zhouqu downpour, when superimposed on other stresses and previous hazard damages is magnified by the disaster chain effects – the mudslide, the dammed river, the submerged town – that result. In September 2010, Typhoon Fanapi passed through Taiwan and weakened into a severe tropical storm before hitting southern China. As it moved down the coast of Guangdong Province, the storm continued to lose energy – but the death toll climbed (Figure 3.1). Fanapi brought heavy rains that triggered mudslides and mountain landslides that left 90 people dead or missing, and flash floods caused a dam failure killing another 28 according to the Guangdong Department of Civil Affairs. Property losses were also heavy. As is often the case in disaster chains, the secondary events are more damaging, but these have been more difficult to predict and prepare for under China’s legacy of a reactionary disaster response system. Although each disasterrelated department took emergency response measures, heavy casualties and property loss resulted due to uncertainty about the typhoon’s path, heavy rain and each of the other links in the disaster chain. A more holistic disaster risk reduction management system that focuses on identifying and reducing underlying vulnerability factors – like soil erosion or building on steep slopes – would be much more able to prevent disaster chains than the older system. Extreme weather and slow-onset events are becoming less predictable due to climate change and, when coupled with China’s rapid and unevenFIGURE 3.1 Disaster chain of Typhoon Fanapi (source: unpublished data from the National Disaster Reduction Center of China database)socio-economic growth, are leading to more complex disaster chains, with multiple disasters sometimes occurring in the same area within the same year. These conditions are forcing China to update its ideas and approaches toward disaster management. This includes the need to improve its researchers’ ability to analyse and assess disaster chains and their effects that magnify the losses and damages of natural disasters. It will also require policy makers to adopt a more holistic and forward-thinking disaster and climate adaptation response than the current paradigm of reactionary, sector-siloed policy. This chapter first gives an overview of extreme weather events – the underlying hazards that trigger natural disaster – as well as the changes in the frequency, intensity and distribution of slow-onset shifts in seasons, temperature and precipitation that China is experiencing as a result of the effects of climate variability and change. It then examines China’s recent approaches to predicting, mitigating, responding to and reducing the risk of weather-related disasters through practical and policy measures, including an in-depth look at one of China’s approaches to disaster risk assessment in a case study. Finally, based on new research, the chapter will examine the remaining challenges China will need to overcome in order to build robust disaster risk reduction strategies and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. |
