Technocracy, disaster risk reduction and development: A critique of the sendai framework 2015-2030

Abstract

This article is a criticism of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (sFdrr), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and currently the non-binding international policy on this topic. It deconstructs the sFdrr's technocratic approach to disaster risk reduction, due to natural hazards, given the fact that it invites, paradoxically, to the adoption of policies that increase people´s vulnerability. Epistemologically speaking, the sFdrr holds a rationalist understanding of disaster risk, whose origin is in the modernisation theory of development. The undesired outcome of the technocratic understanding of disaster risk is because this approach is not able to trace the grounds of this phenomenon which are the human decisions represented in the social, economic and political structures of society which cause poverty, a vulnerability to disaster risk. In deconstructing the sFdrr's rationalist understanding of disaster risk, I found this approach is grounded on two paradigms: 1) the idea of discharging on science and technology the responsibility to solve man-made problems such as vulnerability to disaster risk, and 2) the modernization theory of development. These paradigms do not recognize the role of human decisions in creating vulnerability.