Vulnerability of Small Island Developing States to Natural Disasters

• Author: Marina Povitkina,Martin Sjöstedt
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1070496516682339
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Vulnerability of Small

Island Developing States

to Natural Disasters:

How Much Difference

Can Effective

Governments Make?

Martin Sjo

¨stedt

1

and Marina Povitkina

1

Abstract

Small island developing states (SIDS) have been identified as particularly vulnerable to

natural disasters and climate change. However, although SIDS have similar geograph-

ical features, natural hazards produce different outcomes in different states, indicat-

ing variation in vulnerability. The objective of this article is to explore the sources of

this variation. With the point of departure in theories about how political institutions

affect adaptive capacities, this article sets out to investigate whether government

effectiveness has an impact on the vulnerability of SIDS. While claims over the

importance of institutions are common in the literature, there is a lack of empirical

accounts testing the validity of such claims. This shortcom ing is addressed by this

study’s time-series cross-sectional analysis using data from the International Disaster

Risk database and the Quality of Government data set. The results show that gov-

ernment effectiveness has strong and significant effects on the number of people

killed and affected by natural disasters.

Keywords

democracy, government effectiveness, natural disasters, political institutions, small

island developing states, vulnerability

Journal of Environment &

Development

2017, Vol. 26(1) 82–105

!The Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1070496516682339

journals.sagepub.com/home/jed

1

Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Marina Povitkina, Political Science Department, University of Gothenburg, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden.

Email: marina.povitkina@gu.se

Small island developing states (SIDS) are generally held to be particularly vul-

nerable to natural hazards and disturbing weather events (Wong, 2011).

Development challenges associated with exposure to natural hazards—for exam-

ple, loss of lives, livelihoods, and shelter—have even prompted the proclamation

of 2014 as the year of SIDS (UN, 2014). Due to SIDS’ geographical location in

hazard-prone regions, but also their relative isolation, limited physical size, and

a concentration of population along coastal zones, policy makers and scholars

argue that SIDS require special attention and support in adapting to increas-

ingly severe weather events (Pelling & Uitto, 2001; UN, 2014). However, despite

a generally dismal outlook, similar natural hazards in fact produce widely dif-

ferent outcomes in dif‌ferent countries, indicating great variation in vulnerability.

While some SIDS seem to cope and adapt fairly well, others suf‌fer tremendously.

That is, the impact of natural hazards of the same physical magnitude ranges

from going more or less unnoticed or causing only small disturbances to result-

ing in severe catastrophes (Adger, Hughes, Folke, Carpenter, & Rockstro

¨m,

2005). The overall objective of this article is to explore the sources of this vari-

ation further. This is done by critically reviewing existing literature on island

states and vulnerability and then testing if the claims put forward in this litera-

ture are empirically valid. In particular, the study tests previous claims holding

governance and political institutions to be of crucial importance in explaining

variation in vulnerability. The chosen methodological approach is a time-series

cross-country quantitative analysis where we, in order to explore the sources of

variation in vulnerability, use statistical data on disaster outcomes as well as on

a number of potential explanatory factors. While such analyses in general—and

the use of aggregated data and indices in particular—of course, have limitations

as regards analytical depth and nuance, we believe this approach provides a

much-needed contribution to an otherwise case-study dominated f‌ield of

research. While the empirical focus is on SIDS, the article certainly has the

potential to also shed light on issues of disaster risk reduction and adaptive

capacity more generally.

More specif‌ically, in order to test the validity of the claims put forward in the

existing literature, this study aims to look closer at the association between

the impact of natural hazards and factors held to act as a buf‌fer and moderate

the ef‌fects. That is, the empirical analysis sets out to investigate whether islands

experiencing milder impacts are relatively well equipped in terms of the factors

held to reduce vulnerability, especially in terms of certain characteristics related

to governance and political institutions. The choice of small island developing

states is motivated by the fact that they constitute a hard test of the explanatory

power of previous claims. Investigating variation in impact within this natural

hazard prone group of countries hence gives us the leverage to test the strength

of the generic claims about adaptive capacity and vulnerability.

The article proceeds as follows: The next section provides a brief overview of

extant claims about factors exacerbating or reducing the impacts from extreme

Sjo¨stedt and Povitkina 83