of climate change on the natural and built environment. From a hazards perspective, the very broad use of the
concept of adaptation by climate scientists serves to blur important distinctions among different types of adaptive
strategies. This is especially true with respect to the types of activities that fall under the rubric of disaster
mitigation.
Taking steps to mitigate the effects of disasters is difficult for several reasons. Mitigation efforts tend to
be expensive, but more important is the fact that it is easier to oppose mitigation investments than it is to oppose
response and recovery expenditures once a disaster has occurred. Compared with disaster preparedness measures
(e.g., developing plans, stockpiling supplies, training) mitigation also tends to require specialized technical
expertise—another reason why it is expensive. Additionally, of critical importance is the fact that within the US
federal system, the adoption and implementation of many mitigation activities falls within the purview of local
governments, and those governmental units are typically influenced most by the same real estate and development
interests that are most likely to oppose mitigation. States and the federal government also play important roles
in the mitigation process, but even in such cases the actions of local jurisdictions still have an impact. Moreover,
until the passage of the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, federal funds for mitigation projects only became
available to local communities after they had experienced disasters—and even then only for certain mitigation
activities. Consequently, the current US hazard mitigation landscape is a patchwork of differing approaches in
which some communities and regions are afforded protection from some hazards (but not others), while others
remain vulnerable, often as a matter of conscious choice.
Agenda Setting
Reducing losses from disasters has been described as “a policy without a public,” in that no large
grass-roots constituency has developed around the issue. Instead, disaster reduction moves on and off political
agendas as a function of several factors. In some cases, elite groups consisting, for example, of scientists,
engineers, and other technical experts are successful in mobilizing support (and neutralizing opposition) for
loss-reduction measures. In others, policy entrepreneurs and political champions are able to persuade political
leaders and members of the public to adopt hazard-reduction policies. These same groups and their political allies
occasionally succeed in establishing institutions that are charged with advocating for loss reduction policies; the
California Seismic Safety Commission is one such example. Additionally, as suggested in the preceding section,
actions undertaken by federal and state governments can influence hazard-related policymaking at state and local
levels.
While many policy advances have been made during non-disaster times, it is disaster events themselves
that are often key factors in helping to set political agendas. The literature emphasizes the extent to which
disasters open windows of opportunity for the advancement of loss-reduction policies, both because they
make disaster-related issues immediately salient and because they (temporarily) weaken opposition. Skillful
policy advocates can even capitalize on the occurrence of disasters in other parts of the world to advance local
and national policies, as happened with seismic retrofit legislation in Los Angeles after the 1985 Mexico City
earthquake and with US tsunami warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.
Politics, Economics, and Hazards
Current scholarship in the fields of hazards and disasters emphasizes the ways in which disaster losses are
produced not by so-called forces of nature but rather by normal societal processes that create and allocate risk.
Disasters are not unusual events but rather are understandable and explainable in the context of the societies in
which they occur: axes of development and underdevelopment, North-South power differences, the exercise of