Disability-Inclusive DRR: Information, Risk and Practical-Action

Abstract

The chapter argues that although risk and vulnerability are central to the disaster risk reduction (DRR) community's collective endeavours, to date scant attention has been paid to the most at-risk within our work. Disability is a crosscutting issue that significantly increases risk for individuals who are often already living with exclusion. While many DRR interventions claim to be participatory in their approach, interventions that recognise and respond to the needs of people with disability remain paradoxically few. The chapter draws on practitioner experience of implementing DRR education projects for people with disability between 2007 and 2012 in Indonesia. The current state of play regarding disability and DRR policy is outlined and an explanation for the lack of engagement by DRR actors in the field is suggested. In response, a simple model, drawing on Richard Heeks' Information Chain (1999), is presented as a way to practically reconsider disability from a DRR perspective and to guide the planning and implementation of more inclusive DRR programming.