‘ VULNERABILITY ’ : A MATTER OF PERCEPTION

Disaster response agencies increasingly use the concept of ‘vulnerability’ to analyze processes and conditions that lead to disasters, and to identify disaster responses. Because no common definition of ‘vulnerability’ exists, agencies use the concept in the way that best fits their usual practice. Ironically, ‘vulnerability’ is not a concept that grassroots communities use. They approach recurrent ‘adverse events’ as part of ‘normal life’, while rare or new disasters are dealt with from a perspective of survival. People take risk-related decisions from a range of alternatives based on local knowledge, past experience, experiments, opportunities and existing coping mechanisms. While outsiders might label two households as equally vulnerable – because they live in apparent similar conditions – the two households might still perceive risk differently and, as a consequence, prefer different risk reduction measures. The degree of perceived risk varies greatly among households and depends on class, gender, location, and other particular conditions shaped by economic, social and political processes. Communities at risk would benefit from a framework that links poverty, disaster risk reduction and development efforts. People’s participation is essential and should be empowering to address the root causes of their vulnerability.