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1. Introduction
Human livelihoods are generally tailored to locally prevailing climatic conditions. An abrupt and radical departure from the climate to which a society is well adapted can, therefore, result in disaster, placing pressure on personal livelihood and disrupting economic activities (Smithers and Smit, 2008). El Niño warm events modify prevailing weather patterns in many parts of the world, often in dramatic and unforeseen ways (Zebiak et al., 2015; McPhaden, 1999). El Niño can be broadly defined as “the anomalous appearance from time to time of warm sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean” (Glantz, 2001a, p. 2). We will use the popular term “El Niño” throughout this text to refer to the broader, Pacific-basin wide phenomenon of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
Researchers have pointed out that El Niño is rarely discussed in the hazard research community (Glantz, 2001b; Zebiak et al., 2015). This creates a risk of minimising El Niño to nothing more than floods and droughts that can be managed in a reactive manner (McEntire, 1999). However, in the El Niño research community there is a growing realisation that El Niño can be understood as a spawner of environmental hazards (Glantz, 2001b), while also warranting consideration as a hazard in its own right due to its unique and recurring nature.
Proactive management of El Niño-induced droughts and floods requires a bridge between hazard forecasting, prevention, and preparedness. In theory, reliable forecasts and warning mechanisms can provide sufficient lead time for the initiation of proactive measures that may, if successful, cushion, if not prevent the impacts of a disaster. In practice, however, forecasts do not always activate disaster preparedness measures due to the perceived unreliability of forecasts, or due to cultural, economic or institutional constraints (Pulwarty et al., 2004). In other instances, slow-onset hazards do not receive much attention until their severity become intolerable (Glantz, 1999), because seemingly more urgent, competing socio-economic problems in El Niño affected regions often distract decision makers from timely action on slow-onset hazards. Hence, discovering new risk reduction strategies based on the premise that forecasts must result in action is necessary.
This paper aims to demonstrate how the “contingency planning” approach to disaster preparedness inhibits proactive management of slow-onset disasters – such...