Informal Disaster Governance

• Published in: Politics and Governance
• Main Authors: Duda, Patrizia Isabelle, Kelman, Ilan, Glick, Navonel
• Other Authors: Research Council of Norway
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cogitatio 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; climate change; disaster governance; disaster risk reduction; policy change; Svalbard; Climate change
• Online Access: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/3077; https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v8i4.3077

Scholars and practitioners are increasingly questioning formal disaster governance (FDG) approaches as being too rigid, slow, and command-and-control driven. Too often, local realities and non-formal influences are sidelined or ignored to the extent that disaster governance can be harmed through the efforts to impose formal and/or political structures. A contrasting narrative emphasises so-called bottom-up, local, and/or participatory approaches which this article proposes to encapsulate as Informal Disaster Governance (IDG). This article theorises IDG and situates it within the long-standing albeit limited literature on the topic, paying particular attention to the literature’s failure to properly define informal disaster risk reduction and response efforts, to conceptualise their far-reaching extent and consequences, and to consider their ‘dark sides.’ By presenting IDG as a framework, this article restores the conceptual importance and balance of IDG vis-à-vis FDG, paving the way for a better understanding of the ‘complete’ picture of disaster governance. This framework is then considered in a location where IDG might be expected to be more powerful or obvious, namely in a smaller, more isolated, and tightly knit community, characteristics which are stereotypically used to describe island locations. Thus, Svalbard in the Arctic has been chosen as a case study, including its handling of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, to explore the merits and challenges with shifting the politics of disaster governance towards IDG.