Analysis of power distribution and participation in sustainable natural hazard risk governance: a call for active participation

Abstract

The distribution of decisional power and ability of local communities to participate in natural hazard risk governance (NHRG) are critical success factors for sustainable development. This article assesses the evolution of power distribution and participation at the local level in NHRG using bibliometric and international discourse analysis. The results show that participation-related concepts are underrepresented in NHRG, compared to environmental resource management and community & livelihood development fields of research. This implies the existence of societal/community barriers that impede the development of a sustainable paradigm in NHRG. In addition, when present, participation is mostly passive (non-decisional), a finding also observed in the representation of these concepts in the international discourse of United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). For sustainable NHRG, it is necessary to have explicit targets of authentic and long-term support for active community involvement with a planned share of power. This prescription is supported by unequivocal references in the recent (2010–2011) international discourse of UNISDR.

Keywords:

• geohazards
• risk awareness
• sustainable development
• preparedness
• community

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank two anonymous reviewers as well as M. Strupler, G. Boyer and J. Villemaire for rich transdisciplinary discussions. We are also grateful to N. Lewis and P. Peres-Neto for their useful review of an earlier version of this paper. A particular thanks to Institut des Sciences de l'Environnement for hosting UBV at the UQAM. This article is a scientific contribution to the Laboratoire de Dynamique et de Gestion Intégrée des Zones Côtières of the Université du Québec à Rimouski and was funded by a Ph.D. Scholarship from NSERC and FRQNT.

Notes

1 The UNISDR changed name many times during the last 20 years and all available documents on their website do not necessarily identify the original organization name. Here we use ‘UNISDR’ consistently to identify the lead author of the documents.