Sarah Bradshaw discusses the concept of disaster and its imapct on vulnerable populations. First, she stipulates that there is no such thing as a natural disaster; there are natural hazards, like hurricanes or earthquakes, and they become disasters when they have an impact on a population that can’t respond to that event. Next, she asks: What defines a vulnerable population? She also discusses the notion of adaptive realism, which relates to responding to the risks that we think we can change or that are imminent. The vulnerability of a region lies in why those people came to live there and so becomes as much about inequality and power, and therefore political and historical, as about natural events. 

This video is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.