Disaster Diplomacy: How Disasters Affect Peace and Conflict

184 Pages·2011·0.21 MB·English

by  Ilan Kelman

Disaster Diplomacy
When an earthquake hits awar zone or cyclone aid is flown in by an enemy,
many ask: Can catastrophe bring peace? Disaster prevention and mitigation
provide similar questions. Could setting up a flood-warning system bring
enemy countries together? Could a regional earthquake building code set the
groundwork for wider regional cooperation?
This book examines how and why disaster-related activities do and do not
create peace and reduce conflict. Disaster-related activities refer to actions
before a disaster such as prevention and mitigation along with actions after a
disaster such as emergency response, humanitarian relief, and reconstruction.
This volume investigates disaster diplomacy case studies from around the
world,inavarietyofpoliticalanddisastercircumstances,fromearthquakesin
Greece and Turkey affecting these neighbours’ bilateral relations to volcanoes
and typhoons influencing intra-state conflict in the Philippines. Dictatorships
are amongst the case studies, such as Cuba and Burma, along with democ-
raciessuchastheUSAandIndia.Noevidenceisfoundtosuggestthatdisaster
diplomacy is a prominent factor in conflict resolution. Instead, disaster-related
activities often influence peace processes in the short term – over weeks and
months – provided that a non-disaster-related basis already existed for the
reconciliation. That could be secret negotiations between the warring parties
or strong trade or cultural links. Over the long term, disaster-related influ-
ences disappear, succumbing to factors such as a leadership change, the usual
patterns of political enmity, or belief that a historical grievance should take
precedence over disaster-related bonds.
This is the first book on disaster diplomacy. Disaster-politics interactions
have been studied for decades, but usually from a specific political framing,
covering a specific geographical area, or from a specific disaster framing. As
well,plentyofquantitativeworkhasbeencompleted,yetthedatalimitationsare
rarelyadmittedopenlyorthoroughlyanalysed.Fewpublicationsbringtogether
the topics ofdisastersand politics in termsofa disaster-diplomacyframework,
yielding a grounded, qualitative, scientific point of viewon the topic.
Ilan Kelman isaSeniorResearchFellowattheCenterforInternationalClimate
and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO).
Disaster Diplomacy
ff fl
How disasters a ect peace and con ict
Ilan Kelman
Firstpublished2012
byRoutledge
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Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Disasterrelief.2.Disasters--Prevention.3.Humanitarianassistance.
4.Conflictmanagement.5.Politicalviolence--Prevention.I.Title.
HV553.K4252011
363.34'56--dc22
2011005711
ISBN:978-0-415-67993-0(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-80621-0(ebk)
TypesetinTimes
byIntegraSoftwareServicesPvt.Ltd,Pondicherry,India
Contents
List of tables vii
1 The origins of disaster diplomacy 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 A brief history of disaster diplomacy 4
2 Moving forwardwith disaster diplomacy 7
2.1 What this volume offers 7
2.2 What this volume does not offer 8
2.3 The structure of this volume 9
3 Hypotheses and research questions 11
3.1 Definitions of disaster diplomacy 11
3.2 Hypothesis: catalysis, not creation 13
3.3 Questions for disaster diplomacy 15
4 Empirical evidence: Case studies 18
4.1 Organising case studies 18
4.2 Iran–USA from 1990 onwards 20
4.3 The Philippines from 1990 onwards 24
4.4 Southern Africa 1991–93 26
4.5 North Korea from 1995 onwards 27
4.6 Cuba–USA from 1998 onwards 30
4.7 Greece–Turkey from 1999 onwards 32
4.8 Eritrea–Ethiopia 2000–02 34
4.9 India–Pakistan in 2001 and 2005 36
4.10 26 December 2004 tsunamis: Sri Lanka and Aceh 40
4.11 26 December 2004 tsunamis: other locations 44
4.12 Hurricane Katrina in 2005 48
4.13 Two May 2008 disasters 52
4.14 Island evacuation due to sea-level rise 55
4.15 Disaster-casualty identification 60
vi Contents
4.16 International vaccination programmes 63
4.17 Summing up the case studies 66
5 Analyses and typologies for disaster diplomacy 69
5.1 Quantitative analyses 69
5.2 Qualitative typologies 77
5.3 No predictive model 98
5.4 Summarising the typologies 100
6 Explaining disaster diplomacy’s successes 102
6.1 Success pathways 102
6.2 Further success: tit-for-tat 106
6.3 Further success: mirror disaster diplomacy 108
7 Explaining disaster diplomacy’s failures 110
7.1 Failure pathways 110
7.2 Further failure: inverse disaster diplomacy 113
7.3Furtherfailure:disaster-relatedactivitiesexacerbatingconflict 114
8 Spin-offs 119
8.1 Environmental diplomacy 119
8.2 Para-diplomacy and beyond 122
9 Limitations 127
9.1 Ethics 127
9.2 Confounding factors 131
9.3 Bias 133
10 Principal lessons for application 135
10.1 Be ready for assistance offers from enemies 136
10.2 All diplomacy tracks can be useful 137
10.3 Disaster diplomacy operates at many levels 139
10.4 Lessons should be implemented, not forgotten 140
11 Filling in the gaps 142
11.1 Can the limitations be overcome? 142
11.2 Why further study disaster diplomacy? 144
11.3 Main gaps to be overcome 146
12 The future of disaster diplomacy 147
References 150
Index 166
List of Tables
4.1 Disaster-diplomacy case studies in this chapter (in alphabetical
order by case-study name) 19
4.2 Examples of Hurricane Katrina aid offered by states in conflict
with the USA 51
4.3 Summaryof disaster-diplomacy case studies and research
questions 67
5.1 The complex-adaptive-systems approach applied to three
disaster-diplomacy case studies 80
5.2 Propinquity evident in disaster diplomacy case studies 86
5.3 Aid relationships evident in disaster-diplomacy case studies 87
5.4 Diplomacy tracks followed in disaster-diplomacy case studies 89
5.5 Disaster-diplomacy examples for type of state involvement 92
5.6 Active and passive disaster diplomacy 96
5.7 Summaryof disaster-diplomacy typologies and categories 97
6.1 Pathways promoting disaster diplomacy 103
7.1 Pathways inhibiting disaster diplomacy 111
1 The origins of disaster diplomacy
1.1 Introduction
The world spends over $1.4 trillion a year in recorded military expenditures
(SIPRI, 2009), but less than 1.5 per cent of that on net official humanitarian
assistance(GHA,2009;OECD,2008).Thatfinancialsupportforwarproduces
results. The UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (Gleditsch et al., 2002;
Harbom and Wallensteen, 2009) listed 37 armed conflicts around the world
for 2008, covering approximately one fifth of the world’s countries. Battle
deaths in armed conflicts totalled about 10 million from 1946 to 2002,
although battle deaths account foronly a small fraction of war-related deaths
(Lacina and Gleditsch, 2005).
With such widespread conflict around the world throughout history, it is
likely that non-conflict disasters sometimes strike conflict zones. Examples of
non-conflict disasters include earthquakes, industrial explosions, floods,
transportation crashes, epidemics, and hurricanes. With conflict undermining
governance,livelihoods,andbasicservicessuchashealth,water,andsanitation,
the overlapping conflict and non-conflict disasters are inextricably linked.
Awar-weary population with reduced physical and psychological health is
moresusceptibletoapandemic.Agovernmentfocusingonwar mightneglect
promulgation, monitoring, and enforcement of earthquake-related building
codes. Conflict frequently interferes with or cuts essential supplies such as
food, medicine, and building materials, making it difficult for people to keep
their homes and communities prepared for floods or storms.
These examples represent the well-known phenomenon of conflict increasing
disaster vulnerabilityand exacerbating disasterimpacts. Isthe reversepossible?
Could some form of non-conflict disaster striking a conflict zone lead to
compassion, desire to help, or collaboration in order to deal with that
disaster? This book covers some aspects of such ‘disaster diplomacy’.
Basicdefinitionsprovideastartingpoint.Asastartingdefinition,adisaster
is ‘a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society invol-
ving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and
impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to
cope using its own resources’ (UNISDR, 2009). Also a starting definition,
2 The origins of disaster diplomacy
diplomacy can refer to peaceful conduct of official business amongst sover-
eign-state governments and other government-related entities involved in
world political matters (after Bull, 1977, although this definition is by no
means exclusive to the English school of international relations).
From the definition of disaster, all forms of activities related to disasters
can be described. Disaster-related activities refer to what happens – for
example, investigations, proposals, policies, practices, and actions – before a
disaster along with what happens after a disaster. Before a disaster, activities
can cover prevention, planning, mitigation, preparedness, and risk reduction.
Post-disasteractivitiesincorporateresponse,relief,reconstruction,andrecovery.
Many manuals attempt to put disaster-related activities into a sequence
or a never-ending cycle. The cycle includes a disaster leading to post-disaster
activities that then segue into pre-disaster activities until another disaster
strikes. Most such models have been criticised as being culturally biased,
unrealistic, or unhelpful for a long-term view. For example, Balamir (2005),
Lewis (1999), van Niekerk (2007), and Wisner et al. (2004) indicate frustra-
tion with the cycle model and provide alternatives, plus La Red (La Red de
Estudios Sociales en Prevención de Desastres en América Latina; www.
desenredando.org) has long been debating how to do better than the ‘cycle’
concept.
The reason for the critiques is that, by having a disaster-orientated focus,
the cycle could sometimes be interpreted as implying that disasters must
always happen and that the disaster part of the disaster cycle can never be
changed –whetheror not thatisthe intention orimplementationof the cycle.
The critics of the ‘disaster cycle’ offer suggestions to explicitly move away
from disaster, rather than always including it in the model. Their approach
emphasisestheimportanceofpre-disasteractivities,ratherthanbeingreactive
by putting measures in place to prevent the disaster that just happened.
No author denies the need to be ready for disasters and to implement
appropriate post-disaster activities. They recognise that, while a world free
from disasterswould be ideal, currentrealities seem likely to preclude that for
some time into the future. They also accept that it is equally unrealistic to
assume that disaster must be an inevitable part of any efforts to deal with
disasters.
Instead,disaster-relatedactivitiesneedtobeseenasoverlappingandconnected
phases, always with the goal of reducing disaster risk over the long term so
that, even when a disaster occurs, it is not as bad as the previous time. That
matches UNISDR’s (2009) description of ‘disaster risk reduction’ as ‘The
concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to
analyse and manage the causal factors of disasters, including through reduced
exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, wise man-
agementoflandand theenvironment, and improvedpreparedness for adverse
events’. Improvements are frequently seen in communities being able to help
themselves (Ogawa et al., 2005), in educational programmes (Holloway, 2009),
andinlegalframeworksforsupportingdisaster-riskreduction(Spence,2004).
The origins of disaster diplomacy 3
Understandingthe‘disaster’partofdisasterdiplomacymustbeseenwithin
these wider contexts. All disaster-related activities are covered, pre-disaster
activities and post-disaster activities, seeking to break the cycle.
The concept of ‘diplomacy’ also has wide contexts for disaster diplomacy,
beyond the starting definition. Rather than referring strictly to bilateral or
multilateral relations amongst entities representing sovereign-state govern-
mentsandothergovernment-relatedentitiesinvolvedinworldpoliticalmatters,
numerous aspects of international affairs, international relations, peace, and
conflict are covered. For understanding ‘diplomacy’ within ‘disaster diplo-
macy’,those in conflict orcollaborating (and sometimes both simultaneously)
could be sovereign states, international organisations, non-profit groups,
businesses, or non-sovereign territories. Many of the latter are sub-national
jurisdictions with their own government such as municipalities or provinces.
Scope furtherexistsfor individuals to be consideredas the entities involvedin
disaster diplomacy irrespective of their affiliation with governmental or
non-governmental bodies.
Bringing together ‘disaster’ and ‘diplomacy’ yields ‘disaster diplomacy’.
Is the topic worthy of study? The theme appears to be most popular in the
media after a disaster hits a conflict zone or a country which has enemies.
An expectation is often implied that disaster should bring peace, whether
or not any precedent or realism exists for that expectation. Policy- and
decision-makers can be forced to respond to populist pushing for a
disaster diplomacy process that they would rather avoid – legitimately or
otherwise.
Science tends to be more cautious about leaping into disaster-diplomacy
desires or trying to force forward such a process. Instead, the question is
asked: does evidence exist to support the hope for disaster diplomacy?
By investigating multiple, diverse case studies, from numerous perspectives,
this question is addressed at many levels in this book. In doing so, a
balance is sought in the argumentation, seeing whether arguments favouring
disaster diplomacy are justified – or whether so little empirical support
for disaster diplomacy exists that it is a tenuous thread.
The disaster-diplomacy work reported in this book places heavy emphasis
onrelativelycontemporary events and situations. The years 2000–10 aremost
prominent, although case studies from previous decades and centuries are
mentioned. Most of the case studies, contemporaryorolder, are embedded in
thelongscientificandpractitioner historythatleduptothepastdecadeorso
of disaster diplomacy investigations.
The case studies and analyses, in fact, draw on the long history of many
fields of study that involve disaster-related studies and diplomacy-related stu-
dies. All fields, all histories, all case studies, and all literature are not
covered – far from it. To be comprehensive would require a volume several
times the size of this one. Instead, this book provides a baseline for further
exploration of the fields, the histories, the case studies, and the literature.
With such abaseline – incorporating a clear inception point and a clear path