SSRN Id4794204

Deconstructing disaster risk creation discourses
Grace Muir a and Aaron Opdyke a

a
School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Abstract
Processes of disaster risk creation are outpacing the achievements of disaster risk reduction
initiatives. Preventing risk creation is consequently an objective recognised by major disaster
frameworks. However, there exists a gap in our understanding of the processes contributing to risk
creation, with the existing body of knowledge lacking conceptual clarification to guide empirical
applications. This review distils how disaster scholarship either implicitly or explicitly theorises the
concept of disaster risk creation by employing a semi-systematic scoping strategy and thematic
analysis of the literature. Disaster risk creation is inferred to be the process, or set of processes,
through which risk is constructed (by human actors) in relation to (socio-)natural hazards. The major
themes emerging from scholarly enquiries into risk creation are identified as (1) risk-creating
developments, (2) risk production in relation to risk reduction efforts, and, intersecting these
themes, (3) the multi-scale nature of risk creation. To avoid disaster risk creation and question the
continued establishment of risk-creating path dependencies, we identify a need for future research
to look both at ongoing and changeable, as well as more distal, trajectory-setting processes. The
outcomes of this review have the potential to enrich and advance the application of disaster risk
creation within the field of disaster studies, inspiring the further interrogation and eventual
deconstruction of disaster risk creation processes.
Keywords
Disaster Risk Creation; Development; Inequity; Disaster Studies; Literature Review.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4794204

1 Introduction
With disaster occurrence projected to be on the rise, there is growing attention to the generation of
disaster risk as progressively outstripping risk reduction efforts (Covarrubias & Raju, 2020; Lavell &
Maskrey, 2014; UNDRR, 2015a, 2022). It has been suggested that disaster risk reduction (DRR) may
only truly be achieved by understanding and addressing processes of disaster risk creation (DRC)
(Alexander, 2016). Leaving communities to “reduce risk created at macro levels” without challenging
DRC will only perpetuate inequities in felt risks (Alcántara-Ayala et al., 2022; Clark-Ginsberg et al.,
2021b). An equitable reframing of approaches would entail not just countering existing or anticipated
risks but actively targeting the processes which routinely create them (Castro et al., 2015; UNDRR,
2022).
Wisner (2019) suggests a need for the conceptual clarification and empirical documentation of the
DRC process - the ‘hidden’ counterpart of DRR. Research centring on the concept remains limited
(Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021b), with the existing pool of literature not yet comprehensively reviewed.
This review attends to this need by charting how the concept of DRC has been explored to date.
Preventing DRC is an objective recognised by major disaster frameworks (UNDRR, 2015b), so it is
hoped that such a review inspires the further interrogation, and eventual deconstruction, of the
enclosed processes. This review seeks to answer:
1. How is disaster risk creation defined and conceptualised in academic literature?

2. What are the recognised sources, processes, and products of disaster risk creation?
Here, we briefly specify the scope and analytic bounds within which this research is situated. This
review does not attempt to comprehensively collate insights on all components broadly contributing
to disaster occurrence or disaster risk. Despite literature reinforcing the prevalent discourse that
disaster risk is created at the intersection of hazards, vulnerability, and exposure (e.g. Alves et al.,
2021), it is beyond the scope of this paper to synthesise all ways this interface has been studied. This
element of the discourse can be furthered at the reader’s discretion via the abundant literature on
vulnerability paradigms, disaster frameworks (e.g. the PAR model), and root causes of disaster. While
recognising the ensuing discussion cannot be detached from such discourses, this review looks
explicitly at ‘disaster risk creation’ as a theoretically important and distinct (set of) process(es).
2 Methods
We used a semi-systematic scoping strategy to identify a broad range of literature reporting on
disaster risk creation (Munn et al., 2018; Snyder, 2019). A semi-systematic approach was adopted on
the basis that a fully systematic approach, defining strict upfront search and inclusion criteria, would
lack a predefined base of commonly accepted DRC-related terminology (e.g. Petticrew & Roberts,
2008). It was also anticipated that many scholars would discuss risk creation processes implicitly,
rendering a fully systematic approach inadequate to capture the plurality of ways the concept is
discussed (Snyder, 2019). An iterative exploration of literature discussing DRC informed the initial
search string, which utilised preliminarily identified DRC-related terms. We searched publication
titles, abstracts, and keywords in the Scopus database in November 2023 using the following: (
creat* OR construct* OR generat* OR produc* OR driv* OR increas* ) W/3 "disaster risk*". ‘W/3’
narrows the search to instances where “disaster risk” lies within three words from any of the
bracketed terms. The use of ‘*’ in the search string enabled the inclusion of multiple variations of
each term, with creat*, for instance, encompassing terms such as create(s), creating, creation, and
created. We limited our search to books, book chapters, articles, and reviews.

Supplementary search strategies were adopted through the review process to broaden the pool of
reviewed literature. This included a concurrent search for the bounded term “disaster risk creation”
in Google Scholar to identify missing papers that explicitly discuss DRC within their body text which
Scopus is unable to search as it is limited to title, abstract, and keywords. Additional search strings,
such as: ("risk creat*" AND disaster) or ("creat* risk" AND disaster), were informed iteratively. We
snowballed the search using included article or book bibliographies to identify further relevant
sources.
From the initial Scopus search, 400+ studies’ titles and abstracts were screened according to
iteratively designed inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria, at its broadest, required studies to
describe any (set of) human-driven process(es) leading to a heightened state of disaster risk. This
was the understanding of DRC adopted by the authors upon conception of the screening process.
‘Increasing’, for example, would have to be framed in a way that aligned with this definition to be
included in the analysis component of the review. The review specifically targeted natural hazard-
related risk, so any isolated discussion of (e.g.) finance or business-related risk was excluded.
Examples of excluded topics from the initial search thread comprised references to (1) ‘creating’
disaster risk models, frameworks, policies, or knowledge, (2) ‘increasing’ disaster risk management,
reduction, monitoring, or governance efforts, or talking generally to (3) an ‘increased (trend in)
disaster risk’ to contextualise a study, without suggesting there will be any discussion or analysis of
risk-enhancing processes. Studies which appeared to discuss risk-creating processes in their abstracts
were later excluded from the review if there was no further expansion in the main body text. After
initial screening, we identified 150 studies for inclusion.
Following this, we thematically analysed the selected literature with the aim of providing an
overview of the dominant ideas and patterns emerging from the assessed texts (Braun & Clarke,
2006). The primary search string enabled the identification of papers deemed to have conceptual
overlaps with the central term (DRC), i.e. talking to processes by which people and social processes
are actively enhancing disaster risk. All texts were imported into NVivo software for qualitative
content analysis to determine common patterns surrounding DRC. Inductive qualitative coding was
first used to capture how the concept of disaster risk creation and its offshoot terminologies are
defined in academic literature. Through a parallel phase of inductive coding and categorisation we
thematically clustered sources, processes, and products of DRC identified in the reviewed literature.
Examples of source codes included ‘development pressures’, ‘build back better ideologies’, ‘systemic
constraints’, ‘risk subjectivities’; process codes included ‘band-aid DRR solutions’, ‘urgency in decision
making’, ‘marginalised populations’; and product codes included ‘inadequate structures’, ‘hazard
proximity’, ‘displaced risk’. These codes experienced multiple iterations and were ultimately
categorised according to the major themes of the ensuing discussion.
3 Findings
Scholars note that we have constructed and continue to construct risk(y) societies, with socially- and
structurally-induced vulnerabilities woven into their very fabrics (Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022; Coates &
Warner, 2023) (see Figure 1). Literature presents processes of disaster risk creation as intertwined in
distinct social assemblages (e.g. Dickinson & Burton, 2022), contextually situates instances of DRC in
case examples, and relates them to diverse forms of governance. A point of divergence in empirical
scholarship is whether patterns of risk creation are discussed retrospectively, focusing on ‘realised
risk’ manifest in past events (e.g. Uehara et al., 2022), or in an anticipatory fashion. As an example,
Guadagno & Guadagno (2021) discuss processes of disaster risk construction via a retrospective
analysis of disaster damage. Rumbach & Németh (2018, p. 341) argue for the equal importance of
assessing the ongoing accretion of risk, specifically in urban developments, to bring light to unjust

processes of risk creation and distribution. Other approaches employed to study DRC processes
include mapping disaster-causing factor chains, conducting policy or organisational analysis, and
adopting urban, colonial, or development studies perspectives.
Figure 1. (In)tangible and (un)intentionally inequitable influences interacting across spatiotemporal scales,
culminating in disaster risk creation (DRC). The presented sample of risk-creating components are extracted
from scholarly enquiries into DRC.
We interpret DRC to be the process, or set of processes, through which risk is constructed (by human
actors) in relation to (socio-)natural hazards. Through this review, attention is drawn to the sources,
processes, and products of DRC. We begin the review by exploring definitions of DRC. We then
unpack the risk-creating nature of development decisions, risk production in relation to DRR efforts,
and finally, the multi-scalar nature of processes of risk creation. The latter of these incorporates
development and DRR-related processes but focuses squarely on interrogating the significance of,
and relations between, different scales of influence in DRC. We end the review by discussing some
proposed means of avoiding DRC, although recognise such discussions are in their infancy.
3.1 Defining disaster risk creation

The discourse surrounding the creation, construction, or production of disaster risk predominantly
centres it as a ‘socially constructed’ phenomenon (e.g. Alcántara-Ayala, 2021), a product of human-
mediated processes and chains of causation. Clark-Ginsberg et al. (2021b) label the interpretation of
risk as socially constructed a unifying feature of work on DRC. Rumbach & Németh (2018, p. 342)
likewise suggest DRC as a concept “focuses attention more squarely on human agency in the
production and distribution of risk”. DRC is thus a process aligned with individuals’, communities’,
organisations’, and governments’ implicit or explicit, voluntary or involuntary choices and adopted
behaviours. Whether decision makers are ignorant to the risk-creating implications or knowingly
creating inequitable risk is replete, with both encapsulated respectively in Lewis & Kelman's (2012)
‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ categorisations of risk-creating behaviours. DRC processes are also regarded here as
encompassing ‘a lack of action’. This review will later further the idea of intentionality in DRC.

Oft highlighted is the systemic nature of the production of disaster risk (e.g. Covarrubias & Raju,
2020; Yang et al., 2018), so, in attempting to understand risk creation processes, these should not be
unbound from the systems within which they are situated. Risk-creating actions are, for instance,
discussed as bound in neoliberal agendas, post-colonial trajectories, or the systemic marginalisation
of populations (e.g. Barclay et al., 2019; Covarrubias & Raju, 2020). We interpret Poudel et al.’s
(2023, p. 5) framing of DRC as implying the production of risk takes place via the amalgamation of
both ongoing and elapsed decisions and actions as well as their dynamically evolving byproducts.
The idea of disaster risks being in a permanent state of construction is echoed by Sandoval et al.
(2023). Another important definitional element is the positioning of DRC as a pre-, during, or post-
disaster process. While Kelman's (2018) framing, among others’, seemingly confines DRC to the ‘pre-
event’ space, other framings appear to contend for a broader situational positioning of DRC
processes. We highlight a sample of definitions from the literature in Table 1.
Table 1. Disaster risk creation definitions.
Authors DRC Definitions

Clark-Ginsberg et al. “the creation or exacerbation of hazard, increase in exposure and
(2021a, p. 445) propagation of vulnerability”
Clark-Ginsberg et al. “a product of inequity”
(2021b, p. 449)
Poudel et al. (2023, p. 5) “a constellation of active processes through which risk is produced and
reproduced”
Wisner (2022, p. 185) “the evil twin of ‘disaster risk reduction’”
Dickinson and Burton “a process that increases vulnerability”
(2022, p. 203)
3.1.1 Through which lens is disaster risk creation conceptualised?

Disaster risk is a concurrently social and physical condition (e.g. Barclay et al., 2019). The dominant
lens through which conceptions of disaster risk, and subsequently DRC, are framed in the literature
relates to the habitually core components: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Guadagno &
Guadagno (2021), for example, discuss the influence of outmigration on settlement-related risk
creation with specific regard to all three elements in the context of Southern Italy’s Apennines.
Sandoval & Sarmiento (2020) present these elements more implicitly, with DRC emerging via the
combination of socio-environmental fragilities, exposure, and housing precarity.
The role of hazard generation in risk creation is explored across the reviewed studies. Cheek et al.
(2023), for instance, note new hazards are generated through the interactions of the built
environment with existing hazards, using the landfill-induced heightened incidence of seismic
liquefaction in Tokyo as an example. Aronsson-Storrier (2020) and Derakhshan et al. (2020), along
similar lines, respectively note increased landslide and seismic disaster risk succeeding fracking and
wastewater injections. Rumbach & Németh (2018) speak to the construction of risk via ‘multi-storied
concrete buildings’ on hillslopes, exacerbating slope failure incidence. Within this context, a
secondarily generated downslope hazard via collapsed building debris is also observed. Such
phenomena have been referred to as ‘socio-natural’ hazards, “generated at the intersection of
human practices and environment” (Lavell et al., 2023, p. 132). Commonly aligned (hazard-
exacerbating) processes broadly include climate change and environmental degradation, with the
spatial scales of causality and impact not always aligned (Alcántara-Ayala, 2021). One example of risk
creation through climate change is reported by Shang et al. (2023), who note the associated melting
of permafrost increases the risk to building foundations whose stability is influenced by the thermal
regime of the surrounding permafrost. Poudel et al. (2023) explore another example whereby

Khokana’s (Nepal) urbanisation trajectory is modifying hazard geographies. Prevailing socio-
environmental relations are also considered more generally as risk-creating (Forino, 2016).
Some scholars diverge from explicitly discussing hazard generation as a risk-creating element,
framing “exposure and vulnerability as the main ingredients” (Alcántara-Ayala, 2021, p. 324), with
exposure further depicted a necessary determinant of DRC (Ehrlich et al., 2018; Lavell et al., 2023).
Alcántara-Ayala (2021) suggest disaster risk results when landslide exposure emerges via rural
transformations and the stationing of socio-economic activities on hazard-susceptible land.
Contrasting more hazard-oriented conceptualisations of DRC are both Lewis and Kelman (2012) and
Kelman (2018), who primarily centre their discussions on ‘vulnerability drivers’ and ‘vulnerability
creation’. Dickinson & Burton (2022, p. 203) complement this standpoint by suggesting DRC “is a
process that increases vulnerability”. Chipangura et al. (2017) note the dominance of hazard
framings across the Zimbabwe disaster risk management system, critiquing the resultant silencing of
vulnerability and theistic framings, with the latter labelled key components in the social construction
of risk. Covarrubias & Raju (2020) explicitly use the vulnerability paradigm to investigate the role of
the political-economic system as a ‘vulnerability creator’. Clark-Ginsberg et al. (2021b), Jerolleman
(2019), and Sarmiento (2018) likewise centre vulnerability in their DRC framings.
Although vulnerability is centralised in many DRC discourses, Lizarralde et al. (2021) problematise
conceptualisations of DRC as synonymous with vulnerability creation, noting alignment with a
‘radical constructivist approach’ neglects hazard-related discourses. Peters (2021) explicitly
distinguishes between vulnerability creation and DRC in conflict contexts, seeing the former as only a
partial insight into the processes contributing to DRC. The author does, however, report the majority
influence emanates through vulnerability creation (p.5). It is important to note that vulnerability is
not an entirely unproblematic concept, often abused in disaster studies (Cannon, 2022) by failing to
account for the fact “those facing systemic oppression are made vulnerable” or “vulnerabilised” by
agents and institutions (von Meding & Chmutina, 2023). We observe that DRC might work to draw
specific attention to the processes and sources of risk creation which are often left unaccounted for
in vulnerability discourses (Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022).
3.2 A tendency towards risk-creating development decisions

Wisner (2016, p. 35) surmises that “the very development process that is supposed to ‘lift all boats’
is, in fact, sinking [certain groups’] by creating risk”. Mirroring this assertion, the framing of disasters
as ‘disruptors’ of development is problematised, with scholars suggesting they should instead be
viewed as the very result of development in its failed forms (Chmutina et al., 2021; Lavell et al.,
2012). Development supposedly entails “the movement upward of the entire social system” (Myrdal,
1974, p. 729), but risk-generating forms of ‘development’ actively work against this collective
uplifting. Employed conceptions of development frequently challenge this ideal due to the malleable
and value-laden nature of ‘moving upward’ or ‘making better’ (Chambers, 2004; McEwan, 2009).
Development decision-making subsequently involves navigating inconsistent or conflicting guiding
principles, with incompatible and inequitable goals often resultingly pursued (Fra.Paleo, 2015;
Lukasiewicz, 2020).
Many DRC discussions centre themselves in urban contexts, with risk creation manifest in structural
development processes via (e.g.) the consolidation of capital and populations onto hazard-
susceptible or otherwise unsuitable land, hazard generation, and processes of socio-spatial
marginalisation (Castro et al., 2015; Guadagno & Guadagno, 2021; Lavell et al., 2023; Pagett, 2021;
Rumbach, 2014; Sulfikkar Ahamed et al., 2023). Disaster risk can thereby be viewed as a reflection of
socio-spatial configurations (Ramalho, 2019; Meriläinen & Koro, 2021), created in the production of

spaces (Lara et al., 2021; Ríos, 2015). There is also a noted connection between displacement, forced
by rural development projects or urban gentrification, and DRC (Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022; Wisner,
2016). The accompanying creation of risk is associated with displaced populations facing foreign
hazards, livelihood concerns, and the erasure of place local identities, knowledge, and community
structures (Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022; Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021).
The following sections are framed around three inductively derived themes, depicted in Figure 2. The
first relates to the foundations of risk-creating development decisions, the second to the processes
involved in upholding such tendencies, and finally, to the general product of these processes.
Figure 2. The sources, processes, and products of risk-creating development decisions.
3.2.1. Why do development decisions create disaster risk?

Literature is replete with examples of settlements being (knowingly) expanded into hazard zones
(e.g. Poudel et al., 2023) or constructed to deficient standards. Development decisions are therein
tightly bound to processes of DRC (Ruiz-Cortés & Alcántara-Ayala, 2020). There appears a reluctance
among practitioners to challenge mainstream planning processes and ideologies with the greater
consideration of disaster risk and alternative socio-spatial configurations. To illustrate this, we draw
on literature highlighting competing development priorities and exploring informal settlement
contexts. This section is framed around the emergent idea that there are explicit, hidden, and
neglected agendas underlying development decisions, each with associated spectrums of
intentionality in their risk-creating implications.
3.2.1.1. Neglecting disaster risk concerns

Observable silos in development and DRR policy- and decision-making can result in government and
private sector development activities that are insensitive to the risk they produce (e.g. Poudel et al.,
2023; Raikes et al., 2022). The risk-creating effects of these disciplinary silos are exemplified by
Lizarralde et al. (2020) who point to the separation of departmental responsibilities as heightening
risk to settlements. Scholars contend that DRR should be more fluidly integrated into development
planning processes to negate the risk-creating potential of established development practices
(Bosher et al., 2021; Joshi et al., 2022; Oliver-Smith et al., 2017a, 2017b). Sandoval et al. (2023)
similarly call for incorporating awareness of DRC into inter-sectoral development components,
namely water, agriculture, and housing. Yet, disaster risk continues to be viewed as a separate and
distinct entity (Alcántara-Ayala et al., 2023), with DRR agendas (e.g. in reconstruction) resultingly
constrained by conflicting development standards (Cheek et al., 2023).
The tendency for decision-makers to view disaster risk as low-priority next to demands for property
development is echoed across the literature (e.g. Barclay et al., 2019), with a lack of risk-oriented
land-use planning potentiating DRC (Su et al., 2021; Vogel et al., 2022). The deficient regard for
disaster risk in urban development decisions could, in part, be fuelled by the incongruous training of

and standards held by built environment practitioners (Chmutina & von Meding, 2022). Deficiencies
in building codes further inhibit DRR integration (Chmutina & Bosher, 2015). Corruption is another
means through which the possession of hazard-prone land, and subsequent DRC, is enabled. French
et al. (2020), for instance, report on the intentional shortcoming of Peruvian officials to enforce risk-
related regulations to advance their political backing. Risk can also be created through a deficiency of
context-specific regulations, which hinder safe development practices since difficulties in compliance
can promote non-adherence to (e.g.) suggested building codes (Rumbach & Németh, 2018). Data
deficiencies in remote regions can fuel these non-contextually grounded policies (Rumbach &
Németh, 2018). Coates (2021) observes an incidence in the district of Nova Friburgo, Brazil in which
land was deforested, subsequent construction was unregulated and overlooked by the environment
secretariat, the area was hit by a landslide, and approved once again as a site for a new housing
development. These instances of disregard for disaster risk in development contexts are not unique,
so what is competing with the agenda to address disaster risk?
3.2.1.2. Explicitly competing priorities & tacitly affective powers

Urban landscapes are the product of various political ideologies, economic powers, and development
regulators (Cheek et al., 2023; Ríos, 2015). Conformance to select principles, norms, biases, and
values is inferred here as explicitly and tacitly guiding decision-makers in ways that culminate in DRC.
To understand the processes by which risk is created, Tuhkanen et al. (2018) suggest a need to
recognise inherent trade-offs in decisions and their effective potential. Kii & Doi (2020) highlight
trade-offs in relation to urban seismic risk and economic efficiency, with the spatial clustering of
urban activities evidencing a trade-off of the former for the latter. The significance of trade-offs in
DRC demands critical examination of the values underlying prioritisation processes.
Clark-Ginsberg (2020a) reports the creation of risk is unavoidable in complex urban settings since
there are inescapable trade-offs in risk. However, when trade-offs are made between development
and disaster risk, short-term ‘development’ goals and economic interests are often the prioritised
objectives (Chmutina et al., 2021; Hilhorst & Mena, 2021). Profit-seeking frequently prioritises DRC
over DRR (Clark-Ginsberg, 2020b) and decision-making powers often lie with actors who gain from
the risk they emplace on others (Alcántara-Ayala et al., 2023). This process of prioritisation appears a
core risk-generating process, and economic interests prove to be a strong governing force (Aronsson-
Storrier, 2020; Kennedy, 2013). In Castro et al.'s (2015) study, the consolidation of informal
settlements in at-risk areas followed desires for ‘economic advancement’ in two cities in Chile. Such
processes are often overlooked (Berg & De Majo, 2017), likely given their fundamentality to the
continuity of the (heavily desired by those benefitting) ‘economic status quo’ (Cheek et al., 2023).
There exists a lack of accountability to ‘intertemporal fairness’ in relation to DRC in land-use planning
decisions. A socially or politically induced notion of urgency in addressing economic concerns
(Hilhorst & Mena, 2021) and near-range visions in national policy development and investments
encourage risk-enhancing decisions by neglecting temporally-removed risk (Alcántara-Ayala et al.,
2023; Barclay et al., 2019; Marincioni & Negri, 2020; Stevenson & Seville, 2017). The immediate
‘need’ for settlement or transport infrastructure is, for instance, reported to supersede risk-related
concerns, motivating development on floodplains (Coates & Warner, 2023). At an individual decision-
making level, land pressures, feelings of prosperity, and the potential for income generation can all
encourage trade-offs which favour short-term (risk-creating) development gains (Murnane et al.,
2016; Paci-Green et al., 2020; Rumbach & Németh, 2018). The attention drawn to the competing
‘needs’ of today and the future brings attention to the fundamental subjectivities in how risk is
defined. Even the framing of today’s needs as ‘urgent’ versus future risks only a ‘potential’ by
Murnane et al. (2016) is reflective of the seemingly dominant tendency to prioritise short-term gains.

Prioritising short-term hazards can also create down-the-line risks for other hazard types (Rumbach
& Follingstad, 2019). In contrast to the discourse that short-termism is leading to DRC, Coates &
Warner (2023) imply that by focusing on future risk, forced displacement in Rio de Janeiro produces
presently felt risks. The observed temporal dichotomies in processes of prioritisation promote a need
for assessments of both long- and short-term outcomes of development decisions in relation to DRC
(Thomalla et al., 2018).
3.2.1.3. Informal settlements versus formal planning processes

‘Informally-occupied’ areas are grounds for some of the highest incidence of socially-constructed risk
(Lavell et al., 2023), with increases in risk through urbanisation projected to be found primarily in
‘unplanned’ areas (Akola et al., 2023). Roy (2009) views informal housing as lying outside the formal
realms of regulation. Such settlements are typically non-compliant with governing bodies’
established standards, lacking basic public services, and situated on hazard-prone land (Sandoval &
Sarmiento, 2020).
There is some consensus on the risk-creating implications of rapid and ‘poorly planned’ urbanisation
processes (Dickinson & Burton, 2022; Kumar & Bhaduri, 2018; Lucatello & Alcántara-Ayala, 2023).
Poudel et al. (2023) describe the development path of Kathmandu Valley as ‘haphazard’, lacking pro-
poor, risk-informed urban plans. Providing an important contrast to conceptions that a lack of land-
use planning potentiates DRC, Clark-Ginsberg et al. (2022) demonstrate that if flooding is framed as a
product of ‘inadequate state control’ in council guidelines, the implementation of regulatory, control-
oriented risk management measures may be promoted. This is problematic since adopting planning
approaches that overlook informal local systems can also generate risks (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2020).
It is thus important to stress that although DRC may emerge in unplanned spaces, the creation of risk
will not (necessarily) be averted by retaining centralised development controls, especially where
alternate agendas (besides equitable DRR) shape the motivations of developers. So, although
informality may be a ‘feature’ of DRC, it can be central to cities’ functioning (e.g. in Freetown - Clark-
Ginsberg et al., 2022) and working with rather than against informality is therefore essential to
addressing DRC.
Land tenure and security, as well as housing ownership, are of relevance to the discourse on DRC
since they shape the anticipated permanency of infrastructure. Insecure housing or land tenureship
can result in a risk-enhancing tendency towards lower quality housing materials, with a comparative
incentive to invest in structures where tenure is secure (Rumbach, 2014; Skwarko et al., 2024; Unger
et al., 2017). Deficient urban services are also noted to be heightened by tenure insecurities in
informal settlements, with the associated ‘conditions of fragility’ contributing to DRC (Peters et al.,
2022). Rectifying issues of insecure tenure could thus be one means of working with conditions of
informality to undermine related risk-creating construction practices.
The socio-political and geographic marginalisation of such settlements is implied by Peters et al.
(2022) to result in risk-creating fragilities. Sandoval & Sarmiento (2020) analyse national urban
development guidelines discussing (jointly) the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction
(SFDRR) and informal settlements. No clear means towards facilitating DRR in these contexts are
identified in the reports, nor is the recognition of urban development processes’ role in DRC
(Sandoval & Sarmiento, 2020). The attempted management of unplanned spaces is (unsurprisingly,
given the observed policy neglect) noted to facilitate DRC. Parida et al.'s (2023) study site in
Bhubaneswar hosts risk-creating tendencies via ‘adaptive’ slum redevelopment processes.
Purportedly used as a ‘risk governance tool’, the process is interpreted to neglect consideration of
potential conflicts, only focus on select risks, and construct spatially differentiated risks and
opportunities. There appears limited guidance for incorporating ‘informal’ spaces into planning

practice, with these instead seen as “chaotic, illegal, and unwanted spaces within a city that need
revival” and stand in conflict with existing modes of development (Parida et al., 2023, p. 4). Castro et
al. (2015, p. 110) further highlight the stigma and power-deficiencies associated with ‘informal’
settlements, viewing them instead as simply an “alternative mode of the production of the urban
space”. Their case shows how formalising informal settlements exacerbates and creates risks via
institutional insensibilities that consolidate their hazard exposure and conditions of precarity (Castro
et al., 2015). A similar case of neglect by development authorities towards urbanising villages in Delhi
is reported by Kumar & Bhaduri (2018). Such processes of exclusion are seemingly validated by
negatively held conceptions of the urban poor (Ramalho, 2019).
3.2.2. How do decision-makers create disaster risk?

With the foundations of development-related DRC set by the conditions outlined thus far, here we
explore the processes facilitating risk-creating decisions in societies purportedly sensitive to disaster
risk concerns. There often exists a misalignment between the ‘resilience’ narratives put forward by
(inter)national urban development policies and the actual decisions and actions actors adopt
(Rumbach & Németh, 2018) – a ‘discursive fantasy’ deepened by ever-overriding risk-creating
ideologies (Covarrubias & Raju, 2020). Manipulated risk discourses are reported here to enable
development decisions to create disaster risk even where they supposedly account for it. Since
disaster risk is a dynamic and subjective phenomenon, it is easy for those in power to ‘fail’ to
incorporate the risk experiences, perceptions, and ideologies that compete with their (neoliberally-
oriented) objectives. Recognising which voices influence (high-level) development decisions is
important (Aronsson-Storrier, 2020), as low representation and accountability can normalise risk-
creating activities (Thomalla et al., 2018), when the needs of marginalised, at-risk persons are
overlooked by unaffected decision-makers (Poudel et al., 2023). Dominant risk interpretations often
reflect “one cultural reality rather than a universal truth” (Gaillard, 2021) and non-transparent (or
blatantly biased) ‘expert’ assessments of risk can perpetrate powerful actors’ (cultural) values into
decision outcomes, resulting in the nonuniform distribution of benefits (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021).
Risk discourses which centre the voices of those unaffected in situations of disaster can lead to
decisions wherein benefits are emplaced with greater value than the concurrent negative
implications, as observed in post-disaster relocation development projects (Bodine et al., 2022;
Lizarralde et al., 2020). Here we look at how the sidelining of certain risk knowledge facilitates DRC.
The idea of ‘risk-informed development’ is seemingly redundant in its intentions if risk definitions
can be so easily manipulated to attend to alternate agendas. If particular ‘organising principles’
shape how risk is perceived, they can influence adopted actions by making certain interpretations of
reality more convincing (Chipangura et al., 2017). Local knowledge may be liable to manipulation
where it is forced to conform to ‘experts’’ prior generated disaster risk knowledge and conceptions.
Risk-related concerns surrounding livelihoods and community may therefore be neglected where
local perspectives are “socially constructed as less reliable and therefore irrelevant” (Espia &
Salvador, 2017, p. 87). Coates (2021) reports from Brazil, for instance, that people wishing to return
to their affected residencies post-disaster were more concerned with losing their community or
commuting distances than the risk posed by mudflows. While such concerns are sidelined in
‘arbitrary’ DRR-related decisions, those with the money to influence decisions are blatantly better
accounted for (Coates, 2021). The imposition of top-down, technocratic decision-making approaches
discount grassroot experiences and legitimise externally-defined conceptions of hazards (Clark-
Ginsberg et al., 2021; Wisner, 2022), undermining capacities to escape conditions of risk (Tagalo,
2020). Decisions to label places ‘at-risk’ additionally have down-the-line impacts on levels of
investment in places with implications for homeownership, creating risk by limiting disaster relief
capacities (Jerolleman, 2019). Competing ideologies in what is deemed a risk to any given community
10

should be accounted for and influential in how we are defining and working with risk if the aim is to
negate patterns of risk creation as perceived by the people adversely experiencing hazard events.
Oliver-Smith et al. (2017b) present disaster risks as socially constructed both in terms of human
actions and risk perception. Aligning with the latter, Renn & Klinke (2015, p. 26) suggest risks can be
conceptualised as mental constructs “created and selected by human actors”. Although scholars
talking to the social construction of risk are not primarily referring to these ‘mental’ constructs (e.g.
van Riet, 2021), this perspective is pertinent to the DRC discourse as it helps critique how risk is
considered and thus managed. Since disaster risk exists in our minds as a result of constructed
narratives, it is pertinent to note that risk narratives are subjective and liable to the influence of
social actors (Coates & Warner, 2023). The notion of ‘disaster’ is also fundamentally a product of
subjective construction processes (Lizarralde et al., 2021). Thus, important to discussions of DRC is
the level of meaningful accountability to subjective and multiple experiences and perceptions of
disaster risk.
The effect of framing is such that equal but differentially presented problems can conjure disparate
decision outcomes (Fischhoff, 1995; Kahneman, 2003). With actors able to choose the risk lens that
fits their preferred discourse, DRC can thereby be inadvertently (or immorally) potentiated. Positivist
risk framings among DRR staff can, for instance, lend to a narrow conception of risk as a probability
(Tagalo, 2020). What results is the operation of DRR agendas and activities in line with this
conception of risk. Bodine et al. (2022) put forward that relocation decisions often follow and are
shaped by one type of hazard event and relocation processes need to be more accountable to multi-
hazard threats. Their case shows that while reducing storm surge exposure, relocated persons face
increased flood exposure. Marchezini (2020) similarly shows that in the face of competing hazards,
certain hazards have favoured weightings in political agendas. In Lizarralde et al.'s (2021) study,
residents were taught that constructing on slopes was unsafe; these teachings nonetheless resulted
in risk-creating construction practices, as risk was also contingent on structures being able to
withstand hazards. The prioritisation (and associated sidelining) of certain risks or risk components
can thus contribute to DRC (Parida et al., 2023).
A related stream of discussions emerging from the literature concerns how risk comes to be defined
as ‘acceptable’; a challenge in the face of contrasting risk conceptions (Fuentealba, 2021). Dickinson
& Burton (2022) frame DRC as playing a key role in “creating unnecessary increases in vulnerability
and disasters”. We should question who has the power to define what an ‘unnecessary’ level of
vulnerability or incidence of disaster is. Thomalla et al. (2018, p. 1) similarly refer to a ‘tipping point’
beyond which risk-taking developments exceed “tolerable and acceptable risk levels”, but again, who
is defining ‘tolerable and acceptable’? Determining risk acceptability is not a technical conundrum,
and although ‘experts’ can contribute, social negotiations and the inclusion of psycho-cultural risk
parameters are critical (Cienfuegos, 2022; de Oliveira Santos et al., 2021; Huang, 2018; Murnane et
al., 2016). Yet, locally-defined risk elements remain on the periphery of urban planning decisions
(Poudel et al., 2023). There also appears a temporality to places and decisions being perceived as
‘risky’, with competing priorities able to take precedence and facilitate DRC where risk conceptions
are low. Shifts in risk perception occur through time in the face of felt risk (see Hartmann, 2011), with
patterns of risk creation reemerging with time post-disaster (Surjan & Shaw, 2009).
Disaster education can be utilised as a means of shaping risk perspectives to uphold the status quo
and dominant political ideologies. Coates' (2021) study hones in on an example of a DRR programme
manipulated by political concerns, which influence the design, delivery, and reception of initiatives,
yet are frequently left uninterrogated. Key appears how the framing of causal components leads to
11

risks being viewed as reducible or otherwise (Coates, 2021). Based on these observations, it seems
important to consider how the dissemination of disaster-related information influences and
potentially perpetrates risk-creating processes. As well as education being a potential means or
enabler of DRC, a lack of targeted education can also result in the construction of new disaster risk
(Ruiz-Cortés & Alcántara-Ayala, 2020). Ruiz-Cortés & Alcántara-Ayala (2020) thus argue for the
greater participation of youth in DRR education with the hope this will shape a mindful and informed
generation of actors.
With approaches to addressing any said risk through development influenced by whether
components are framed or perceived as risk-enhancing, there is a need to examine the im/explict
values accounted for in the risk definitions shaping policy and practice (Espia & Salvador, 2017). As
Matthewman (2015, p. 154) observes, the “right risk culture can make all of the difference”.
3.2.3. What do development decisions produce?

Having charted the enabling conditions (sources and processes) of DRC, we here explore the
generally-observed product of risk-creating development decisions. Central to the DRC-development
discourse is that there often exists distinct beneficiaries and victims of risk-creating processes (Chan
& Liao, 2022; cf. Fra.Paleo, 2015). Disaster risk has been and continues to be displaced, transferred,
and offset to certain populations through (urban) development processes. Clark-Ginsberg et al.
(2021b, p. 450) purport embedded socio-political inequities enable certain groups “to create risk and
allocate it to others”. One example can be seen through lower-income inhabitants being subject to
risk created by strategies protecting city ‘elites’ (Alvarez & Cardenas, 2019; Jerolleman, 2019). In New
Orleans, canals designed to protect ‘well-off’ areas actively displace risk into racially-segregated
areas (Zakour & Grogg, 2018). Risk creation can thus be seen as a ‘transactional’ process, with the
bearers of created risk often holding no power to rebuff risk-generating developments (e.g. Bodine et
al., 2022; Rumbach & Németh, 2018).
The idea that specific actors or processes put people at-risk is articulated across the reviewed
literature, highlighting agency in the creation of risk (e.g. Earle, 2016; Paci-Green et al., 2020). Those
responsible for DRC are either inferably or directly noted, but where ‘risk-creators’ are highlighted
they are, on the most part, not the same groups as those with the risk imposed on them (Wisner &
Lavell, 2017). Ríos (2015) emplaces direct responsibility on provincial and municipal governments
and developers in producing uneven disaster risk spaces, with the capital (or social) gains associated
with DRC largely inaccessible to the groups fronting the consequences. When risk is offset to
marginalised populations in this way, inequitable and unjust patterns of risk emerge (Clark-Ginsberg,
2020b). Powers regulating global economies disregard concerns for social justice, resulting in the
continued imposition of risk “on those least likely to benefit” (Linarelli et al., 2018, p. 226). Given
those constructing vulnerability in pursuit of ‘economic development’ and those risks are
subsequently allocated to are seldom one and the same, it appears key to question whom economic
gains are expensing (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021). DRC is subsequently reported as “a product of
inequity” by Clark-Ginsberg et al. (2021b, p. 449), with Thomalla et al. (2018) drawing specifically on
distributive equities in development-related trade-offs.
With certain groups embodying a disproportionate share of the risks relative to the associated
benefits, DRC is a perpetuation of social injustices (Jerolleman, 2019). Social injustice produces
disaster risk and is embedded in the spaces we construct (Chmutina & von Meding, 2022; Poudel et
al., 2023), with cases illustrated in Haiti (Cheek et al., 2023), Latin America, and the Caribbean (Lavell
et al., 2023). The creation of such ‘spatially unjust’ settlements are commonly noted products of
neoliberal development models (Sandoval et al., 2021). Despite competing structural forces there is
12

space for more just and equitably distributed risk (Rumbach & Németh, 2018; van Riet, 2021). This is
not something to be tackled within disaster scholar and practitioner realms alone; it will require
political and institutional will to address inequalities and overturn marginalising, profit-oriented, and
ultimately risk-creating systems. Unjust socio-spatial arrangements will otherwise remain central and
structurally-embedded enablers of DRC.
3.3 Risk production amidst reduction efforts

Discussions centred on DRC oft incorporate ideas concerning DRR (Dickinson & Burton, 2022). DRC is
an observable product of systemic imbalances creating disparate beneficiaries and victims of
(purportedly) resilience-enhancing initiatives. To question authority figures employing ‘DRR’ is
stigmatised (Wisner, 2020), but it appears these ‘solutions’ can actually be significant processes
through which risks are further generated and consolidated. Manifestations of created risk (disaster
‘events’) are additionally frequently met with DRR attempts that use this already heightened risk
level as a baseline from which risk should be reduced. If we do not challenge the bounds of our risk-
creating systems through revised risk reduction efforts, operationalising DRR will continue to be a
necessary, but self-defeating practice.
We identify three main themes (Figure 3) within the disaster risk reduction – production arena: (1)
inequitable access to DRR measures as creating risk, (2) DRR measures that paradoxically create risk,
and (3) DRR measures that fail to combat DRC, thereby enabling such processes to prevail.
Figure 3. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) or production? Adjusting DRR’s possibility space encourages activities
that do not just reduce select risk components while upholding risk-creating systems, but holistically reduce
risk by ensuring equitable access and actively targeting risk creation.
3.3.1. Inaccessible DRR

An absence of investment in equitable and accessible DRR resources by governing bodies is noted
across literature sources to create risk for certain groups via the coupled tapering of coping
capacities (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021; Govindarajulu, 2020). Gumucio et al. (2022) report how the
restriction of local coping capacities through acts of ‘counter-humanitarianism’ in conflict enables
DRC by blocking access to humanitarian aid. The low institutional functionality and capacity in post-
conflict areas to instigate DRR, alongside the assumption that DRR cannot be enacted in conditions of
conflict, leave billions without access to DRR initiatives in these settings (Caso et al., 2023; Peters,
2021). DRC is also seen to emerge where resource-strained states have inhibited capacities to invest
in proactive DRR measures. Low investment in proactive DRR is in part potentiated by deficient risk
13

understandings (Alcántara-Ayala et al., 2022). Ultimately, however, the lack of any notion of legal
responsibility by the international community to provide significant humanitarian assistance outside
instances of recovery and reconstruction significantly perpetuates DRC in marginalised states
(Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022).
Jerolleman (2019) contends the emplaced localised or individualised responsibility to reduce losses
ignores inequities in DRC and the associated constraints affected groups have in accessing protection.
DRC thereby shadows ‘the commodification of safety’ (Jerolleman, 2019). Power relations are vital in
understanding participation in DRR initiatives, with disparate constraints and opportunities notable
relative to social groups’ inclusion in risk governance structures (Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022; Collins,
2018). Nonuniform accessibility to DRR infrastructure in ‘lower-value’ or ‘informally-settled’ areas is
seen to parallel the creation of risk (Akola et al., 2023; Coates, 2021). The systematic exclusion of
those residing in informal settlements from governing bodies’ DRR and preparedness activities, as
well as related decisions, can also force these groups into a state of dependence on NGOs for risk-
reducing services (Peters et al., 2022). This marginalisation process is noted to create risk through
vulnerability production.
3.3.2. DRR initiatives as risk creating

The concept of DRC can help draw attention to the paradoxical nature of intended risk reduction
policies and highlight myriad instances whereby DRR measures have produced further disaster risks
(Bankoff & Hilhorst, 2022; Hilhorst & Mena, 2021). We speak to both intentionally corrupt and
unintended instances of risk creation through DRR but suggest ‘unintentional’ instances should
equally be critiqued in their failure to anticipate the risk-creating consequences of initiatives. It
should be noted that the positioning of presented cases along this spectrum of intentionality is not
always easily inferable since the disparities between stated and hidden intentions are rarely explicitly
interrogated. This leaves a critical research gap towards understanding the processes surrounding
DRC through risk reduction efforts.
3.3.2.1. Unintentional byproducts of DRR initiatives

One way well-intentioned initiatives have induced counterproductive effects and contributed to DRC
is by intensifying and concentrating development behind purportedly hazard-protective structures
(Lazarus, 2022; Ríos, 2015). Initiated under a notion of ‘safe-development’, the accompanying risk-
creation is oft hidden and denied significance, despite the heighted potential for disastrous
consequences upon defence failure (Lazarus, 2022; Tierney, 2014). This safe-development paradox,
otherwise termed a ‘control paradox’ - an, often unfounded, notion of control over nature (Coates &
Warner, 2023) - lends to the accretion of risk in diked or leveed areas following investments and
population influxes (Mochizuki et al., 2014). Regulatory approaches may unknowingly incentivise
initiatives which create risk in increasingly complex and interdependent systems (Clark-Ginsberg,
2020b; Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021). However, posing DRC as an ‘unintended’ or ‘unpredictable’
outcome of initiatives which ‘innocently’ seek to reduce risk creation or encourage risk reduction
removes any element of blame for malpractice. This is problematic if used as a means of making
ambiguous the responsibility of risk creators to prevent (deliberately or otherwise) inequitable risk-
creating actions. Although it may be difficult to decipher in all cases the extent of intentionality in the
risk-creating nature of actions adopted, the lack of any anticipation or acknowledgement of DRC
processes paralleling DRR efforts appears a key enabler of their continuation.
DRR-motivated slum-clearance projects in Nairobi, Lagos, and Bangkok are reported to have
destabilised informal modes of risk governance (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2020). Without an enforced
responsibility to anticipate and account for the risks created in such initiatives, the fundamental
14

intent behind DRR can be severely undermined. Another case of ‘unintentional’, but arguably
predictable, risk creation is put forward by Rumbach (2014), where town planners in India failed to
account for the influx of low-income workers to Salt Lake’s periphery, with increased risks for the
portion of the population left residing outside the protected township. Parida et al. (2023) suggest
unanticipated consequences are more probable if there is a narrow focus on certain risks, which
raises questions of justice in anticipating threats and accounting for at-risk populations’ epistemic
rights. Samaraweera (2023) show how post-flood, a bridge was built by the government in a Sri
Lankan riverside community, with an aim to reduce flood risk, yet subsequent flood events entailed
new dynamics directly because of the bridge, with residents having reduced evacuation capacities to
evade these newfound risks. From these examples, it appears ‘unintentional DRC’ may just be
another way of framing the absence of anticipation of DRC processes, with a lack of investment in
anticipating risks an enabler of inadvertently risk-creating practices.
Contrasting the dominant conception of DRC as a pre-event process, post-disaster risks have also
been noted to be created by ineffective or inefficient response processes (Hao & Wang, 2020;
Hilhorst & Bankoff, 2022). Hilhorst & Mena (2021) provide an account of social resistance to the
lockdowns employed in response to COVID-19, which ultimately proved a means of DRC. A common
feature of post-disaster settings in relation to DRC is the urgency under which decisions are made
(e.g. Thomalla et al., 2018). Speedy construction in such settings may be celebrated and strived for
(e.g. in Aceh post-2004) over minimising risk or ensuring livelihoods are supported (Cheek &
Chmutina, 2022). Peters (2021) reports, for example, how in the southeast Bangladeshi mountains
flood and landslide-related risks were increased by the rapid construction of roads and shelter to
host Rohingya refugees.
Disaster management agencies have explicitly been posed as enablers of DRC. Clark-Ginsberg et al.
(2021b) look at the ‘organizational roots’ of DRC by investigating how disaster management agencies,
specifically the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), create risk. They
responsibilise FEMA for its role in DRC, purporting such agencies embody biases that mean
supposedly resilience-enhancing initiatives can be inhibited by distributive, procedural, and
contextual inequities (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021b). This can be through the sidelining of certain
voices in decisions or prioritisation of ‘expert’ risk understandings resulting in inequitably beneficial
measures (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2021b). If DRM frameworks, plans, and policies reflect only the
dominant ideologies, risk framings and perceptions (Cheek & Chmutina, 2022; Espia & Salvador,
2017), certain risks or risk components may ‘unintentionally’ (or otherwise) be left unaddressed,
culminating in DRC (Parida et al., 2023). Resultantly, decisions to employ DRM measures can be risk-
creating when they fail to account for other risk elements. DRM policy controls instated in areas of
high disaster recurrence can, for instance, restrict basic government service provision, leaving at-risk
populations without services that would ultimately enhance their coping capacities (Lavell et al.,
2023).
3.3.2.2. Using ‘DRR’ narratives to purport alternate agendas

Ideas of intentionality arise through discussions of post-disaster rebuilding efforts. Although risks
created through associated growth patterns may be the emergent byproducts of well-intentioned
actions, they can also arise through the intentional capitalising of opportunities for restructuring
socio-spatial configurations (Lazarus, 2022). In post-disaster settings, DRR agendas may be frontlined,
most notably through the promotion of ‘build back better’ (BBB) ideologies in recovery. Under the
BBB narrative, progress is regularly measured in terms of the speed and nature of recovered
economic assets rather than relative building safety or protection of livelihoods (Cheek & Chmutina,
2022; Chmutina et al., 2021). This creates space for the emergence of risk-creating processes via
15

disaster capitalism. Sandoval et al. (2022) note the limited examination of public and private effects
on DRC using this perspective, themselves scoping global instances wherein disaster capitalism had
facilitated DRC. Their findings show that failing to strive for ‘positive social change’ enables
egocentric actors to dominate DRR spaces and create risk through neoliberally-oriented reforms. To
this note, Cheek & Chmutina (2022, p. 604) suggest “reconstruction under a banner of BBB is,
ironically, the process of reconstructing risks”. The SFDRR’s fourth priority area aims to reduce DRC
through this very ideology, though lacks practical guidelines (Schipper et al., 2016). Hopes that this
ideal could shift development practices to truly reduce risks and prevent the creation of new risks are
resultingly not oft attained, with vulnerabilities instead rebuilt (Magnuszewski et al., 2019).
Risk management stimulated by politically constructed feelings of urgency has created a multitude
of risks by facilitating adherence to political or financial elites’ ulterior motives over legitimate and
locally-driven risk concerns (Parida et al., 2023). Coates & Warner (2023, p. 6) point to a case of
forcible resettlement in Rio de Janeiro, where powerful actors’ motives are disguised as post-
disaster ‘resilience-enhancing’ measures but attend to their “longstanding policy of forced removal
of the poor”. The manipulation of post-disaster environments to serve underlying political agendas is
also reported by Hilhorst & Mena (2021) who discuss the securitisation of emergency responses as
an instrument to serving ulterior political objectives, such as oppressing populations, media, and
opposition groups. They describe how governments use the ‘state of exception’ arising in response
landscapes to employ ‘urgent’ actions and agendas, sidelining all competing issues to address the
prioritised threat, with these actions presented as an objective necessity. Aase (2021) presents a
case in which one threat (the COVID-19 pandemic) was used to accelerate the relocation of Rohingya
refugees, overriding resistance aligned with the risk-creating potential in forcing their inhabitation of
hazard-prone relocation sites. Enforced ‘risk-reducing’ relocations post-flood can additionally
increase risks via non-access to post-flood compensation for households choosing to remain in-situ
(Samaraweera, 2023). Displaced persons’ voices and needs are continually marginalised in disaster
plans (Peters, 2021; Rumbach et al., 2020) and post-disaster settings could be more equitably and
inclusively planned for outside this state of emergency (Bodine et al., 2022), overturning risk-
creating forms of risk governance.
3.3.3. DRR measures that fail to combat processes of DRC, enabling them to prevail
Without insinuating disaster studies has not “achieved a good deal” through existing initiatives,
Wisner (2019, p. 61) suggests work towards risk reduction remains ‘trapped’. DRR institutions are
seen as shying away from challenging the ‘harsh realities’ of DRC, focusing instead on delivering
normatively positive (‘risk-reducing’) outcomes (Alexander, 2016). There exists a persistent and
overwhelming focus on corrective and compensatory risk management (Lavell & Maskrey, 2014),
otherwise termed ‘symptom management’ (Raikes et al., 2021). Socially-constructed ‘emergency
imaginaries’ help in sustaining symptom management over system reform in post-disaster
landscapes (Aase, 2021). While such measures can temporarily offset disaster events or lessen their
impacts, they systematically fail to address risk-creating processes (Chmutina et al., 2021), and
cyclically reinforce response-dominated systems, impeding the instigation of transformational
approaches (French et al., 2020; Oliver-Smith et al., 2017b). DRR that fails to account for risk-creating
processes will only further compound them, lending to an ever ‘uphill battle’ and hindering progress
in reducing net risk levels (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2020; Raikes et al., 2021).
Wisner (2019, 2020) proposes the term DRR might even be distracting from the issue of DRC, with
associated terminology only perpetuating solutions adhering to inequitably-balanced agendas rather
16

than combatting the very issues driving the need for risk reduction efforts in the first place. Disaster
studies, with its overwhelming focus on ‘DRR’, has disenabled political and scholarly engagement
with socio-political and economic systems’ role in DRC (Lizarralde et al., 2020; Wisner, 2019). Cheek
& Chmutina (2022), as an example, report ‘BBB’ ideologies generally fail to confront the systems that
produced the very risks they supposedly set out to reduce. Under this lens, DRR interventions and
‘resilience-building’ in the built environment will uphold risk-creating processes by simply preserving
the ‘status quo’ (Cheek & Chmutina, 2022; Cheek et al., n.d.; Chmutina et al., 2023). Without
challenging the political roots of risk-creating processes, such approaches merely prepare
marginalised groups for sustained conditions of risk (Coates, 2021).
3.3.1.1. Apolitical attempts to reduce ‘naturalised’ risk

Promoting disasters as ‘natural’ phenomena is a politically-driven method of displacing responsibility
for DRC (Chmutina & von Meding, 2019, 2022). Focusing on physical hazard attributes to understand
disaster risk can have the effect of marginalising key social construction processes (Chipangura et al.,
2017; Oliver-Smith et al., 2017b). Risk is then (falsely) believed to emerge almost entirely from
uncontrollable processes, limiting proactive attempts to reduce risk by targeting socio-political
processes. Thus, “externalising tragedies to climate or nature precisely avoids tackling - and by
extension enables - the kind of unsustainable developments that created disaster in the first place”
(Coates & Warner, 2023). Chipangura et al. (2017) present their observations of Zimbabwe’s DRM
system and note it to be ruled by hazard framings, in the process supressing interpretations of
disaster risk as socially-constructed. Positivist and deterministic framings of risk force DRR away from
holding social processes accountable in DRC (Lizarralde et al., 2021), resulting in hazard mitigation
dominating DRR policy realms (Raikes et al., 2022).
In the same way nature is used to render disaster risk an unavoidable aspect of socio-political
systems, so too is the framing of vulnerability as an uninterrogated ‘weakness’ of certain individuals
or groups - instead of seeing them as fundamentally ‘vulnerabilised’ or made vulnerable (von Meding
& Chmutina, 2023), perpetuating paternalistic forms of DRM (Bankoff, 2001). Problem framing
influences the solution space and subsequently adopted solutions, so under this mindset, DRR will
continue to embody approaches that fail to critique nor overturn the conditions driving DRC, instead
re-embedding inequalities. Influential frameworks, such as SFDRR, have been rendered apolitical
projects given their lack of critique of power in their vulnerability discourses (Chmutina et al., 2021).
Identified ‘vulnerable persons’ are therein provided access to support but no means towards
questioning the risk-creating conditions they are afforded (von Meding & Chmutina, 2023). Such risk
framings can perpetuate beliefs that “vulnerability is a regrettable state of being that must be
responded to with charity, but not system change” (von Meding & Chmutina, 2023, p. 369), thereby
upholding the very systems that create risk. With the core of DRC noted to lie in unjust social
structures, more politically-oriented DRR interventions are encouraged (Clark-Ginsberg, 2017).
In their analysis, which takes DRC back to the educational roots of practitioners, Chmutina & von
Meding (2022) suggest that since higher education practices in engineering disciplines are founded in
‘objectivity’, they embody apolitically-oriented curricular. Their study argues this reinforces
ineffective, technocratic practices among built environment practitioners who assume disasters can
be avoided by ‘taming’ nature. Uncritically apolitical DRR pedestals ‘objective’ problem-solving and
‘technical fixes’ (Gaillard, 2019). Viewing these as neutral solutions only perpetrates risk by leaving
the value biases of practitioners unquestioned and overlooking the fact risk is socially-constructed
(Chmutina & von Meding, 2022). The issue raised here is not that technical solutions cannot in some
sense reduce risk, it is instead that it so commonly overrides the parallel need for transformation in
17

our risk-creating social systems (Berg & De Majo, 2017). By leaving DRC unchallenged, presently
employed ‘risk-reducing’ initiatives simply prepare communities for sustained conditions of risk.
3.4. Multi-scalar relations in risk creation

Scholars see disaster risk as created via diffuse actors and activities, with risk-creating processes
discussed at an array of spatiotemporal scales (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2022; Lavell et al., 2012;
Meriläinen & Koro, 2021; Oliver-Smith et al., 2017; Peters, 2021; Wisner, 2001). Bounding ‘risk
networks’ thus carries the potential to miss important risk-creating relations (Clark-Ginsberg, 2020b)
and there is conflict in the literature concerning approaches to analysing associated processes (e.g.
between DKKV and FORIN) (Alcántara-Ayala et al., 2023). This section thus aims to unpack
discussions related to multi-scalar processes in DRC. It appears imperative to look both at processes
which are ongoing and changeable but also more distal trajectory-setting processes to question the
continued establishment of risk-creating path dependencies.
3.4.1. Intangible risk-creating processes

The literature frequently assesses the broader contexts within which disaster risk is produced, with
local manifestations of risk commonly presented as the result of wider (inter)national processes
(Clark-Ginsberg, 2017). The rights of risk bearers are undermined by powerful global actors’ decisions
overriding local spheres of influence, cementing external desires to retain the disproportionately
beneficial ‘current state of affairs’ (Covarrubias & Raju, 2020). This ‘extra-territorial’ shaping of
locally-manifest disaster risk (Lavell et al., 2012) is evidenced by Gumucio et al. (2022), who report
on locally-embedded elements of DRC tied to individuals’ coping capacities as parallelling wider
societal inequalities. Clark-Ginsberg (2017) also report that agents external to Freetown’s slums (e.g.
in the wider city, authorities, global actors through climatic influences) largely produced residents’
felt flood risks. Distal socio-political and economic arrangements thus appear significant in feeding
DRC processes at the local level.
3.4.1.1. Turning a blind eye to disconnected risk components

Scholars draw attention to a disregard by both public and private-sector actors for the cascading risks
potentiated by their decisions (Aase, 2021; Thomalla et al., 2018). Using Stevenson & Seville's (2017)
discussion of private-sector-induced DRC, it is inferred self-interested decision-makers may, with
spatial or temporal detachment between risk sources and recipients, be able to neglect the risk they
impose on others, given the regulatory challenges in connecting disconnected DRC processes. The
distanced nature of activities’ risk-creating implications has been used to justify actors’ ignorance or
neglect, fuelling the (re)creation of risk (Kousky & Zeckhauser, 2006). The tendency for risks
associated with ideologies of growth to be relocated across spatiotemporal dimensions is further
observed by Tierney (2014) to mask DRC.
A lack of knowledge on risk drivers and components could be fuelling this ability to turn a blind eye
to processes of risk creation. Ruiz-Cortés and Alcántara-Ayala (2020), for instance, suggest weak
policies exist and create risk because of knowledge deficiencies. Anticipating decision outcomes may
be difficult in complex systems (Stevenson & Seville, 2017), but to what extent is this excusable for
the undue neglect for thorough analysis of forms of DRC? The idea of decisions being ‘blind to risk’ is
correlated with a lack of political will to ensure investments are systematically and equitably risk-
informed, laying the grounds for DRC (Chmutina et al., 2021; Wisner, 2020). There are resultingly
instances where DRC processes have not just been neglected, but intentionally concealed, with
urban developers making risks ‘invisible’ to conform to real estate pressures (Acuña et al., 2021). This
intentional concealing is clearly inexcusable, but there is not always a clear line separating intentional
actions from the unintended. A means of concealing processes in DRC can be seen in the attribution
18

of select disasters to climate change, shifting public attention instead to bygone processes of
industrial eras (Coates & Warner, 2023; Raju et al., 2022). In discussing climate-related disasters,
Lizarralde et al. (2021, p. 2) suggest external groups’ role in DRC “can translate into a feeling of
impotence and dependence”. Jackson (2021) similarly reflects on the despondency among study
participants towards the changeability of systemic roots in identifying productive means towards risk
reduction. Given its potential to generate feelings of impotence, there are significant implications
associated with the deliberate suppression of awareness on the changeability of risk-creating
processes and creation of an artificial distinction between processes and their risk-creating
implications in the public eye.
DRC is not confined to the tangible processes tied to the primary incidence of felt risk, so why do we
continue to treat disasters as time-bound events (Huang, 2018; Meriläinen & Koro, 2021)? Even
major frameworks, such as SFDRR, do little to engage with far-off processes, focusing instead on
measuring event-based impacts, such as the number of damaged facilities attributed to disasters
(Chmutina et al., 2021; Wisner, 2020). Given the temporal disparities that exist between processes of
DRC and felt impacts, it is critical to undermine narratives of a bound disaster ‘event space’. “Events
are merely processes made visible” (Matthewman, 2015, p. 136); this can be the process of
neoliberalism, systemic exclusion, environmental degradation, or any other risk-creating practice
observed in this review. Assuming there exists a detached period before a disaster ‘event’ disguises
the entangled risk-creating socio-economic and political processes in this temporal realm (Aronsson-
Storrier, 2022; Bosher et al., 2021; Cheek & Chmutina, 2022; Fuentealba, 2021). This vail of
intangibility likely enables symptom management and other ‘easy fixes’ to prevail over the
prevention of obscured risk-generating processes (Poudel et al., 2023; Thomalla et al., 2018; Tran &
Shaw, 2007). Although reactive risk reduction efforts can be seen as a normative good, they detract
attention “from other times and spaces that could be better loci for intervention” (Coates & Warner,
2023, p. 1). Oliver-Smith et al. (2017a) likewise indicate a need to move away from an exclusive
concentration on the ‘disaster site’ to sites of policy creation and execution.
The lack of attention to spatiotemporally removed processes weakens decision-makers’

accountability towards their risk-creating outputs. Despite clearly unjust, cross-national influences in
DRC (see Aronsson-Storrier, 2020; Wisner, 2022), there is a reluctance among wealthy states to
embody a collective international responsibility for global experiences of disaster risks, as adopted in
international climate conventions (Dickinson & Burton, 2022). Rumbach & Németh (2018) likewise
question the obligations urban development professionals hold across generational divides in their
decision-making practices. The present lack of accountability for the societal implications emerging
from public and private sector decisions increases suboptimal outcomes for society (i.e. risk creation)
(Stevenson & Seville, 2017). Temporally-displaced risks have, for instance, been observed in Mexico
City following attempts by officials to push risks to the urban periphery; as the city expanded,
previously exploited groundwater in the outskirts increased incidences of subsidence, flooding, and
landslips (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2020). Although such outcomes could be framed as ‘unintended
byproducts’ of innocently driven processes, there is room for actors to take responsibility for and
anticipate distal risk-creating processes.
3.4.1.2. Structural constraints

In problematising processes of DRC, we must consider the factors involved in the constraints of
choice. Consider, for instance, persons systemically forced into situations in which they ‘choose’ to
adopt actions which increase their risk. A (perceived) lack of alternative may force marginalised
groups onto hazard-prone land. With such choices constrained by broader systemic issues, we
denote such forms of DRC largely involuntary (Sandoval et al., 2021). When assigning blame in
19

relation to DRC, the potential for unethical ‘victim blaming’ should be critically considered if the most
observable and directly-tangible processes are those at the micro level and higher-level processes
are sidelined (van Riet, 2021).
Samaraweera (2023) draws attention to the importance of considering and accounting for wider
system structures when analysing its individual components, with structural foundations shaping
individuals’ behaviours and the implications of those behaviours. Covarrubias & Raju (2020) find the
lens of neoextractivism useful for its multi-scalar positioning enabling examination of local-level
processes of DRC and their connection to regional politico-economic arrangements. In their study, to
understand disaster risk governance they deem it essential to begin from the guiding economic and
socio-political principles shaping ‘development’ practices. Cheek & Chmutina (2022) further this
discussion on global-state interactions, reporting on states’ drive towards compatibility with the
global economy, suggesting global capital trends thereby help define national economic and legal
structures. Regarding legal structures, Aronsson-Storrier (2020) analyses the role of international law
in DRC, stating that while some laws (e.g. on human rights) help enforce DRR, others (e.g. investment
law) provide opposing forces. The role of international investment law in perpetuating disaster risk is
only furthered by governments’ pressure to pursue various foreign investments and the associated
absence of risk-creating safeguards (Wisner, 2020).
Systems constrain the ‘possibility space’ within which development and DRR processes are
undertaken, resulting in a seemingly self-fuelling cycle of risk creation. Possibility spaces are bounded
(abstract) places wherein political ideologies have defined the realms of potentiality in decision-
making (Dittmer, 2014; McGowran & Donovan, 2021). Recovery processes are, for instance,
implicated in DRC by re-establishing the risk-producing systems wherein they emerge and are
structurally constrained (Cheek et al., 2023).
3.4.2. Risk-creating trajectories

The idea that societies have been, and continue to be, set on long-term risk-creating pathways is
apparent through our global development trajectories (Oliver-Smith, 2015). A city’s trajectory is
shaped by both past and present (un)intentional choices of officials and built environment
professionals (Clark-Ginsberg et al., 2020). The ability of urban environments to significantly alter
their built form is constrained by previous developmental tactics (Lara et al., 2021), with existing
urban fabrics or land use mediating DRC by controlling available choices (e.g.) on available
settlement locations (Guadagno & Guadagno, 2021). Places as we see them today have their roots in
their histories, cultures, and structures and are set on development paths within global systems
(Cheek et al., 2023b). These historic undercurrents shaping present-day social structures and support
networks are labelled the starting point for DRC (Gumucio et al., 2022), and are key for
understanding both how conditions of risk emerge but also “how societal inertia causes them to
persist over time” (Barclay et al., 2019, p. 151; Duvat et al., 2021; Lazarus, 2022). Dominating
resilience ideologies that work with incremental (or stagnant), rather than transformational change,
enable inequitable risk-creating development and capitalist-oriented practices to prevail (Thomalla et
al., 2018; von Meding & Chmutina, 2023). The accompanying status quo produces and upholds
societal inequalities and subsequent disaster risk (Cheek et al., 2023; Olson et al., 2020). Below we
briefly explore three connected thematic areas.
3.4.2.1. Colonial drivers

Barclay et al. (2019) report how actions and choices adopted during colonial times influenced the
development path of Dominica. Land-partitioning and the shifting of settlements during this time, for
instance, shape present-day risk accumulation through populations’ patterns of habitancy (Barclay et
20

al., 2019). Rooted in this historically-determined state, processes through time have culminated in
(and continue to contribute to) DRC. Associated dispossession of land and resources has ongoing
implications for felt risks, e.g. by determining recovery capacities. Continual manifestations of
oppression mean colonisation is itself a form of ongoing DRC (Lambert & Mark-Shadbolt, 2021).
Nepal, Latin America and the Caribbean are reported as some cases where (neo-)colonial legacies
actively influence DRC through global economic frameworks (Covarrubias & Raju, 2020; Poudel et al.,
2023).
3.4.2.2. Cultural norms

Fitting within the overarching conception of risk creation as a product or process of human
behaviours and actions, attention is drawn to cultural influences in the construction of risk (e.g.
Bankoff et al., 2015). The constructs shaping our behaviours are grounded in cultural values
concerning our relations to each other and the material world (Oliver-Smith, 2015). Achievements in
DRR are noted to be hindered at the core by dominant groups’ guiding (socio-cultural) principles
which influence global societal development processes (Oliver-Smith, 2015). Depicting neoliberalism
as a cultural construct, Oliver-Smith (2015) suggests it enables DRC by informing socio-
environmental relations and globalisation processes. National DRM organisations’ cultures can also
been seen as powerful in determining commonly-accepted practice and beliefs, which thereby shape
individual and groups’ risk-related behaviours and perceptions (e.g. Chipangura et al., 2017).
3.4.2.3. Cumulative and overlapping risk components

Risk-creating processes do not emanate in simple, linear forms. It is instead the combination of risk-
creating factors that culminate in the construction and subjective experience of risk. It is inevitable
that disaster risk, a complex and subjectively perceived phenomenon, can be attributed to a
multitude of risk-creating components; exactly which depends on the scale of analysis and framing of
risk. Scholars list and frame groups of interdependent components when discussing risk creation,
with dialogues of ‘interacting’ components commonly arising across the reviewed literature (e.g.
Gumucio et al., 2022; Sandoval & Sarmiento, 2020). While Huang et al. (2021) present a
methodology for uncovering ‘disaster-causing factor chains’, others contend for approaches which
focus on mapping relational networks of components (e.g. Qazi & Simsekler, 2021).
3.5. Avoiding disaster risk creation

Processes of DRC are socially-constructed, and thus theoretically avoidable (Figure 4). Since a need
for avoiding the construction of new risks has been stressed by scholars and prominent DRR
institutions, perhaps the most significant dearth of literature lies in outlining practical means through
which to achieve these ends (cf. Peters et al., 2022). Risk communication is presented as one
mechanism through which averting DRC could be promoted as a social and institutional priority
(Alcántara-Ayala, 2018); advancing teachings in DRR is, for instance, noted imperative to avoiding
DRC in built environment practices (Chmutina & von Meding, 2022). It also appears pertinent that
traditional forms of DRM are broadened to encompass ongoing processes of DRC and disaster risk
concerns are meaningfully integrated at multi-scale levels of governance and development
(Magnuszewski et al., 2019; Raikes et al., 2022). This will require collective action across society
(Clark-Ginsberg, 2020b). By improving our behaviours and choices we can lessen the negative
consequences associated with disaster events (Dickinson & Burton, 2022). However, the competing
values aligned to these ‘choices’ appear to be what defines the risk-creating trade-offs witnessed
across society. The key is thus to unpack what is constraining and influencing our risk-creating
decisions to understand our potential to overturn them.
21

Figure 4. Divergent pathways towards (1) preserving the current state of affairs (risk creation) or (2) altering the
trajectory to avoid disaster risk creation.
Avoiding DRC will entail stakeholders and at-risk populations attaining a greater understanding of the
factors driving risk and support in strengthening disaster risk governance systems (Alcántara-Ayala,
2021). FORIN appears to be a versatile tool which has been employed in response to a desire to
interrogate processes of risk creation (Wisner, 2016). Understanding processes and trajectories of
DRC and communicating them in a meaningful way could help change attitudes towards risk-creating
decisions (Alcántara-Ayala, 2018). This process of understanding may, however, not be so simple.
Competing narratives of risk creation (e.g. Lizarralde et al., 2021) may inhibit groups from attaining a
collective acceptance of who or what processes are responsible for, or involved in, DRC. Lizarralde et
al.’s (2021, p. 10) study respondents question the ascription of DRC “to local corruption and socio-
political dynamics versus colonial crimes, American politics, or pollution in industrialized nations”.
Despite observed successes of community-based DRR, the localisation of blame and promotion of
efforts centred on individual responsibility to address risk will not negate the ongoing processes of
risk creation that require broader structural changes (Clark-Ginsberg, 2020b; Sandoval et al., 2023).
The prevalence of competing trade-offs and systemic constraints outlined in this review should not
insinuate that the problem of DRC is too embedded in our societal norms and practices to overturn.
Instead, the bearers of inequitable risk should be empowered to demand change from those creating
it through meaningful community dialogues (Clark-Ginsberg, 2020a; Coates, 2021). Empowering
marginalised groups can help “shift the dynamics of the futures-in-the-making”, i.e. manipulating
present-day DRC processes to overturn risk-creating trajectories (McGowran & Donovan, 2021, p.
1607). Countering presently problematic BBB ideologies, disaster memories could be utilised to shift
discourse, practice, and culture towards resisting DRC (Fuentealba, 2021). Attempts to draw focus to
risk-creating processes “are often edited out, marginalized or ignored, as they may strike sensitive
chords among authorities and special interest groups” (Oliver-Smith et al., 2017b). Further research
would thus be welcome into ways of overcoming identified forms of resistance and competing
priorities, navigating towards systems which favour the avoidance rather than creation of disaster
risk. Recognising ways of overcoming resistance (e.g. in the private sector) towards crossing sectoral
boundaries, for instance, is one means through which such groups’ contributions to DRC could be
mitigated (Clark-Ginsberg, 2020b). Breaking such silos and cultivating collective concern for DRC
should help embed disaster risk concerns into development practice (Lavell et al., 2023) - this could
be achieved in part through greater convergence research (Lakhina et al., 2021; Peek et al., 2020).
22

4. Conclusion
The dialogues presented in this review collectively call for transformational change away from
inherently risk-creating practices. Dominant risk discourses align with a preservation of the status
quo and breaking the cycle of risk creation appears stalled. The centralisation of risk perceptions that
do not account for the priorities of those being put at risk are seen to lead to risk-creating
development decisions. Subsequently, those who gain out of risk-creating decisions, and those
bearing the risk, are seldom one and the same, with marginalised and less influential groups forced
to adopt the role of risk bearer. Problematising the processes by which risk is created could provide a
gateway for remediating the relation between development and disaster risk through interventions
targeting ‘risk-generating’ development decisions (Tuhkanen et al., 2018). This will, however, involve
overcoming the presently low political will to support institutional capacity to prospectively address
disaster risk (French et al., 2020). While it would be naïve to envisage a state without trade-offs
between DRR and short-term development gains, it is not unreasonable to suggest disaster risk be
considered and prioritised to a greater extent from the initiation of development-related decisions
(Magnuszewski et al., 2019). Kelman (2018) remarks that “[c]reating risk is not necessarily
detrimental”. But fundamentally, the state of DRC appears such that if those embodying the negative
implications of risk-creating processes are not also proportionally benefitting (or at least are given
agency to do so), DRC as a process is detrimental and wholly unjust. How we achieve a more just
state of affairs in the distribution of risk is a question for further research and interrogation.
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Deconstructing disaster risk creation discourses

Grace Muir a and Aaron Opdyke a

Disaster Risk Creation; Development; Inequity; Disaster Studies; Literature Review.

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1. How is disaster risk creation defined and conceptualised in academic literature?

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3.1 Defining disaster risk creation

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Authors DRC Definitions

3.1.1 Through which lens is disaster risk creation conceptualised?

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3.2 A tendency towards risk-creating development decisions

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Figure 2. The sources, processes, and products of risk-creating development decisions.

3.2.1. Why do development decisions create disaster risk?

3.2.1.1. Neglecting disaster risk concerns

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3.2.1.2. Explicitly competing priorities & tacitly affective powers

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3.2.1.3. Informal settlements versus formal planning processes

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3.2.2. How do decision-makers create disaster risk?

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3.2.3. What do development decisions produce?

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3.3 Risk production amidst reduction efforts

3.3.1. Inaccessible DRR

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3.3.2. DRR initiatives as risk creating

3.3.2.1. Unintentional byproducts of DRR initiatives

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3.3.2.2. Using ‘DRR’ narratives to purport alternate agendas

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3.3.1.1. Apolitical attempts to reduce ‘naturalised’ risk

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3.4. Multi-scalar relations in risk creation

3.4.1. Intangible risk-creating processes

3.4.1.1. Turning a blind eye to disconnected risk components

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The lack of attention to spatiotemporally removed processes weakens decision-makers’

3.4.1.2. Structural constraints

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3.4.2. Risk-creating trajectories

3.4.2.1. Colonial drivers

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3.4.2.2. Cultural norms

3.4.2.3. Cumulative and overlapping risk components

3.5. Avoiding disaster risk creation

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