Don t let disaster recovery perpetuate injustice Author(s): Sovacool, B. K. Journal:

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1 Coversheet This is the accepted manuscript (post-print version) of the article. Contentwise, the post-print version is identical to the final published version, but there may be differences in typography and layout. How to cite this publication Please cite the final published version: Citation: Sovacool, B. K. (2017). Don t let disaster recovery perpetuate injustice Publication metadata Title: Don t let disaster recovery perpetuate injustice Author(s): Sovacool, B. K. Journal: Nature DOI/Link: Publication date: September 2017 Document version: Accepted manuscript (post-print) General Rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognize and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. This coversheet template is made available by AU Library Version 1.0, October 2016

2 Disaster Recovery 1 Don t let disaster recovery perpetuate environmental injustice Towards more just and equitable disaster recovery Benjamin K. Sovacool *12 * Corresponding Author, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex Jubilee Building, Room 367, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9SL Phone: B.Sovacool@sussex.ac.uk 1 Professor and Director, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), School of Business, Management, and Economics, University of Sussex, United Kingdom 2 Professor and Director, Center for Energy Technologies, Department of Business Development and Technology, Aarhus University, Denmark Summary/By-Line: The history of disaster recovery has a troubling political economy that tends to marginalize the most vulnerable or degrade the environment. We must to better to promote more just and equitable recovery efforts in the future. Word count (main text only): 710 Introduction With two earthquakes in Mexico City, Hurricane Maria barreling towards the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico at the time of writing, Bangladesh and India marked by devastating monsoon flooding, and Texas and Florida only beginning their recovery from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, disaster recovery has become an exceptionally important and timely topic. Disaster recovery efforts form an essential component of any global attempt to cope with both naturally occurring events as well as human-induced events such as climate change. Most of the time, these projects produce net benefits to society. However, depending on their design and governance, such projects can invariably lead to adverse social and environmental, political, and economic outcomes. Efforts intended to build resilience can

3 Disaster Recovery 2 create unique sets of winners (commonly discussed) and losers (often ignored). In other cases, they can interfere with environmental policies or the goal of climate change mitigation. As an example, reconstruction after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 damaged ecosystems in multiple ways such as sand and gravel extraction from river channels and the rapid siting of new housing without regard to environmental sensitivity. This only made reconstructed homes more vulnerable to subsidence and collapse later. In Vermont, after Tropical Storm Irene, local and state officials allowed an unusual amount of dredging in stream and riverbeds to collect gravel to help quickly repair roads. These actions, however, reduced the ability for ecosystems to lessen future flood surges, thus making those very roads even more susceptible to storms and undermining the repair work itself. Some Vermont state policymakers were so overwhelmed that one local senator publicly announced that the state became lawless for several weeks. He argued that Vermont s emergency policy amounted to a de facto Do what you have to do and we ll sort it out later. In the Maldives, nicknamed the flattest country on earth, poor coastal protection measures intended to mitigate disasters such as flooding and storm surge, such as dredging to create sandbars and erecting seawalls, have unintentionally reduced the flow of nutrients to coral reefs, weakening a natural shield against storm swells and surges. Coastal communities there have also removed vegetation to expand settlements and resorts and have mined sand for use in construction. These activities have increased the exposure of the Maldives to rising sea levels and floods. More recently, Hurricane Katrina recovery involving infrastructure repair and rehabilitation efforts following the storm were so comprehensive, and focused on enhancing Kommenterede [b1]: Moved up here as we re still on an environmental theme human safety, that they often damaged the environment through the use of heavy equipment, dispersal of rock and sand, and dredging enabled the capture of public housing by private

4 Disaster Recovery 3 actors. Millions of homes owned or occupied by evacuees were declared a nuisance and marked for demolition so that they could resold at cutthroat rates. The federal government allocated billions of dollars to the Army Corps of Engineers to fix, upgrade, and rehabilitate levees and floodwalls, but in some ways this only served to entrench, rather than eliminate, vulnerability. For instance, tto expedite repairs, environmental and air pollution standards were Formateret: Venstre, Indrykning: Første linje: 1,27 cm curtailed so that hazardous wastes were not properly stored and bans on open burning lifted. The rebuilding of canals and roads further eroded environmental buffers (such as wetlands) critical to future storm surge mitigation. Repairs were never fully implemented by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in levees closest to many rural and minority areas, meaning people moved back into unsafe areas. Cleanup efforts also concentrated toxic pollution and debris in particular landfills or alongside communities of color. Furthermore, sediment left in the wake of floodwaters contained high levels of arsenic, leaving elevated concentrations of arsenic in soils at numerous playgrounds and schools. These examples and dozens more like them illustrate that sometimes the best intentioned disaster recovery or mitigation efforts can increase environmental vulnerability. In other situations, disaster recovery efforts can take advantage of property destruction to redistrict or redesign urban areas in elites favor, with negative impacts on justice or equity. The best-known example might be the 1906 earthquake that ruined a large part of San Francisco in the United States. There, city leaders were successfully able to move Chinatown from its earlier, central and geographically favorable location to a more marginal neighborhood upon rebuilding. In New Zealand, the Canterbury quakes consolidated national power at the expense of local groups. After the earthquakes, community officials and residents were excluded from

5 Disaster Recovery 4 decision-making processes around the status of their homes with limited input into the process or rights of appeal. Even the emerging impacts of Hurricane Harvey have a notably inequitable distribution. Poorer and minority communities have borne the lion s share of flooding and related morbidity and mortality. Even if an evacuation had been called across the city of Houston, many lower income residents would not have had the access to cars or buses to facilitate it. Poorer, rural, and minority communities also resided adjacent to the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, which exploded after the storm due to lack of backup electricity generators. To conclude, we can no longer imagine that disaster recovery efforts sufficiently protect, and empower, those most in need. Plans that look good on paper can be extremely problematic in implementation contexts. If we do not reconceive the ethics and politics of disaster recovery efforts, we will not be able to design more effective, and fair, procedures and projects. The people most affected by disasters never choose to have them occur, but what national and international policymakers decide next will be critically important for their well-being.