Published works

Disaster justice, a term coined by Verchick (2012), is an emerging field of study focusing on the role of societies, specifically their governing structures, in creating and perpetuating vulnerabilities, inequalities and injustices that are magnified by natural hazards. Disaster justice is a problem of governance, rather than nature or luck, that elicits moral claims for effective and fair disaster management (Douglass & Miller, 2016). Verchick makes this point succinctly: “In the Anthropocene, there is no such thing as a natural disaster. Anthropogenic carbon emissions amplify the force and frequency of many environmentally triggered events. Land-use planning decisions squeeze some populous communities into the unsafe places where those escalated forces are more likely to land” (Verchick, 2016, p. 6). This emerging field thus draws heavily on the related concepts of environmental justice and climate justice.
In this review paper, we first outline how disaster management constitutes a justice issue. We then briefly introduce the different justice concepts applicable to disaster management and finally propose what the concept of disaster justice can do for disaster management.