‘‘This one caught us unaware’: Disaster politics and institutions during Cyclone Freddy in Malawi

Abstract

Global debates around increased frequency and intensity of flood disasters habitually return to questions around the responsibility of national states. The visibility of disaster politics and understanding of the policies and legal tools used by different actors during disasters is minimal, serving disaster risk reduction poorly. We examine these elements through a study of disaster responses by state and non-state actors in Malawi, drawing from 25 interviews with actors central to disaster responses, and 10 individual storytelling activities in affected communities. Results show disaster actors are not a homogenous category, and actors deploy different tools during emergencies. Disaster politics and coordination converge around the Department of Disaster Management Affairs and donors, but formal processes are ‘caught unaware’ and descend into chaos when disaster landscapes change. Meanwhile, tools and processes relied upon by stakeholders in flood disaster responses are narrow, incomplete and insufficiently account for national and local particularities and place-based vulnerabilities in disaster communities. This research shows that disaster responses should account for the nature of disaster politics, including the different policy and legal tools activated during disasters and processes relied upon and what this means for impacted communities caught in between. Actors emphasise socio-cultural and socio-political dimensions of disaster institutions to be better understood alongside fiscal-economic and legislative and regulatory elements. This paper advances an approach that accounts for ‘disaster scapes’ – as interdisciplinary, cross-sectional and holistic formulation of a whole variety of disaster outcomes beyond floodwaters to encapsulate the effects of sediment movement.