Politics and Policies for Managing Natural Hazards

Policies to manage natural hazards are made in a political context that has three important characteristics: local preferences and national priorities, short-sighted political decision-making, and policy choices informed by experience instead of future expectations. National governments can set broad policy priorities for natural hazard management, but it is often local governments, with conflicting policy priorities and distinctive hazard profiles, that have the authority to implement. Moreover, legislators who are tasked with passing laws to put policies into force are rewarded with reelection by voters who are only concerned with issues that have an immediate impact on their day-to-day lives (e.g., the economy) as opposed to hazards that may or may not occur until some undetermined point in the future. Finally, legislators themselves face challenges making policies to mitigate and manage hazards because they fail to see the longer-term risks and instead make decisions based on past experiences. This article broadly lays out the challenges of the policy environment for natural hazards, including intergovernmental concerns, policy myopia, and shifting policy priorities. It also describes the politics shaping the management of natural hazards, namely, electoral politics, the social dynamics of blame assignment, and the various political benefits associated with disaster relief spending.