Preparedness for slow‐onset environmental disasters: Drawing lessons from three decades of El Niño impacts

Abstract

El Niño warm events provide a fruitful case for the study of disaster‐induced learning due to their reoccurring nature and the high level of uncertainty surrounding their impacts. The purpose of this study is to elucidate impediments and opportunities for learning from El Niño disaster planning. To achieve this, we analyse and compare two lessons learned reports from the 1997–98 and 2015–16 El Niño events. These reports also refer to the 1982–83 El Niño event, providing a longer case‐record. The findings suggest that inter‐event learning is facilitated by the existence of at least three key elements: the presence of national research programmes on El Niño mechanics and forecast capability; a development approach to disaster risk reduction, where root causes such as poverty and socio‐economic exclusion are considered, and the availability of media channels that refrain from sensationalist framing in favour of relevant and useful messages regarding appropriate mitigative strategies. Unfavourable learning conditions were identified as those characterized by a lack of political will, reliance on reactive response strategies and a lack of inter‐agency coordination.

The inevitable role of El Niño: a fresh insight into the oil market

“…Thailand and Vietnam) experience severe heat and drought (Hu & Fedorov, 2019). From the above phenomena, we can sum up the three main effects of the El Niño phenomenon during the period of 1997-2016: the rise in global temperature, frequent natural disasters and agricultural crises (Trenberth et al, 2002;Reyes & David, 2009;Shultz et al, 2014;Staupe-Delgado et al, 2018). Thus, there are three transmission paths to explain the negative influence of NINO to OP.…”

“…El Niño phenomenon mainly refers to the abnormally warming of the sea temperature in the tropical oceans of the Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean (Rensch et al, 2015). Then, the global climate pattern is changed by El Niño phenomenon (Martin et al, 2013;Staupe-Delgado et al, 2018;Rojas et al, 2019), which affects the demand and supply in the oil market, as well as the fluctuations in its price (Changnon, 1999;Cruz & Krausmann, 2013;Cashin et al, 2017). In general, the occurrence of El Niño phenomenon brings high temperatures (Fan et al, 2017), which is reflected in several periods with super El Niño phenomenon (e.g., in 1925-1926, 1997-1998, 2014-2016).…”

Understanding sustainable disaster mitigation of stakeholder engagement: Risk perception, trust in public institutions, and disaster insurance

“…Mastering knowledge of disasters will help form an objective level of perception and subjective judgment. Therefore, strengthening knowledge of disasters via various channels and enhancing the public's familiarity with the risk of geological disasters and post‐disaster response measures will contribute to risk management (Staupe‐Delgado, Kruke, Ross, & Glantz, ). The knowledge of pre‐disaster prevention, self‐rescue in disasters, and post‐disaster response ensures efficient and sustainable disaster management.…”

“…tive judgment. Therefore, strengthening knowledge of disasters via various channels and enhancing the public's familiarity with the risk of geological disasters and post-disaster response measures will contribute to risk management(Staupe-Delgado, Kruke, Ross, & Glantz, 2018). The knowledge of pre-disaster prevention, self-rescue in disasters, and post-disaster response ensures efficient and sustainable disaster management.8 | CONCLUSIONS Geological disasters are frequent and have a considerable impact on residents in landslide-prone areas.…”

Evidence of intense climate variation and reduced ENSO activity from δ<sup>18</sup>O of <i>Tridacna</i> 3700 years ago

“…Extreme El Ninõ brings about many climatic disasters, such as catastrophic flooding, bushfire and drought, in recent decades (Ramírez and Briones, 2017;Staupe-Delgado et al, 2018;Yu et al, 2018;Yu et al, 2019). With global warming persists, the question of whether high temperatures are related to extreme El Ninõ events is still controversial.…”