Is nature angry with us?
The phrases pervade disaster reporting: Nature Bats Last. Angry Weather. When Nature Strikes Back. The Angry Earth. Nature Runs Rampant.
This wording connotes nature being at war with humanity. Or, at least, nature and humanity being opponents in a competitive game, with each team needing to energise themselves against the other in order to win. Such attitudes are the antithesis of dealing with disasters successfully.
To avoid disasters, our actions ought to be about cooperating and living with nature – and with each other – without harm, including without harming ourselves. We should recognise and implement the millennia-old worldviews that humanity and nature are inextricably intertwined.
Rivers do not break their banks because of their fury or ire. Water runs into the river which rises and expands, sometimes meaning that floodplains are used as floodplains. If we have built on floodplains without considering the meaning of "floodplain", then a disaster is likely.
Disaster research from its foundations explained and demonstrated that addressing disaster risks means adjusting to and modifying nature and ourselves. We must reduce vulnerabilities so that "hazards" are not hazardous.
If we have done nothing about seismic risk, then people could die when infrastructure collapses in a powerful earthquake. It is not because nature hates us, is trying to get us, or has scored a goal in extra time. It is because we have done nothing about seismic risk.
And, in fact, building in a seismic zone can have advantages. In many places, an earthquake fault raises the water table, so it is easier to find a reliable water supply for settling arid lands. We can cooperate with nature to live in drought-prone locations. We can cooperate with nature to live in earthquake-prone locations.
If we must claim that we are playing games with nature regarding disaster risks and disasters, then they should be cooperative games. No dice, no random card draws, and no spinning of wheels. Instead, avoiding disasters is 100% based on strategy, without bringing luck into it. Either everyone wins or else everyone loses based on a unified team playing the disaster risk reduction game to help each other.
The strategy must be long-term and never-ending. If we rely on that extra-time goal, or other last-minute scoring for victory, then it is too late. Building codes and planning regulations do not change our infrastructure overnight. Education is a generation-long endeavour. Overcoming poverty, oppression, and marginalisation cannot happen with seconds until the buzzer (or the hazard). These actions are how disaster risk is best reduced and they are all long-term, never-ending societal processes.
Nature does not care whether or not we implement them. Nature does not get sad if suburbs encroach into burnable forest. The forest will catch alight and burn the suburb. Nature does not get angry when humanity fails ourselves. It will provide the tornado or volcanic eruption irrespective of law-breaking or discrimination.
Even if nature does emote, it might be happy as well as angry (or these emotions might be 'anthropomorphism', which means attributing human characteristics to non-humans). Or nature might join us in identifying and criticising who we know really deserves negative epithets for disasters, because they created the suffering.
Certainly, if nature were to write the headlines, we can guess its words about us and disasters.
Ilan Kelman (Instagram/Threads/X @ILANKELMAN and Bluesky ilankelman.bsky.social) is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and a Professor II at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, integrating climate change into both. Three main areas are: (i) disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy; (ii) island sustainability focusing on safe and healthy living and livelihoods; and (iii) risk education for health and disasters.