An Unmitigated Disaster: Shifting from Response and Recovery to Mitigation for an Insurable Future

Abstract

Australian households are increasingly vulnerable to natural hazard-related disasters. To manage disaster risk, government commissioned inquiries have called for greater investment in mitigation. This article critically examines the call for a shift in funding priority towards pre-disaster mitigation measures, in the context of growing concerns around the ability of households to access and afford insurance. It examines mitigation measures in the context of three prominent Australian disasters: the Black Saturday bushfires (Victoria, 2009), the Queensland floods (2010-2011), and Cyclone Yasi (Queensland, 2011). We argue that as a mode of disaster security, mitigation operates as a complex assemblage of logics and practices of protection, preparedness, and resilience, which problematizes simplistic protection/resilience binaries. On the one hand, mitigation serves as a mode of protection, which underscores the dominant maladaptive rationality of insurance. It promises a collective solution to uninsurability that is limited by government fiscal constraints and growing employment of risk-reflective insurance pricing. On the other hand, there is evidence of an emergent rationality of household insurance as a path to resilience and preparedness-for example, in the development of insurance systems that price household retrofitting technologies and in the development of policyholder education campaigns. This resilience rationality holds the promise of securing individuals previously excluded from insurance. However, for householders lacking the necessary physical, cognitive, and financial capacities to make themselves and their properties resilient, the transition to a pre-disaster mitigation mode of security will likely do little to alleviate disadvantage and marginalization.

The Neglected Role of Risk Mitigation Perception in the Risk Governance of Underground Technologies—The Example of Induced Seismicity

“…Thus, the public would conclude differently how well their concerns were taken into account and respond differently to the technology as well. This finding is comparable with a previous study, which analyzed three different hazards and showed that all hazard types required specific tailor-made mitigation approaches (de Vet et al 2019). This is important for risk governance, as these frameworks generally assume that knowing about risk perception and designing risk mitigation measures accordingly (Trutnevyte and Wiemer 2017) would suffice.…”

Rethinking the interplay between affluence and vulnerability to aid climate change adaptive capacity

“…First, while social vulnerability is increasingly considered in climate change policy, most applied and region-specific management activities focus on emergency response and short-term recovery. This is at the expense of targeted investment in long-term mitigation measures, which has been shown to both reduce social vulnerability to associated disasters and alleviate poverty (de Vet et al 2019 ). Broadly speaking, economic growth is considered mainly in light of its mitigative influence on vulnerability, even though it can also generate social vulnerability and inequity (Eadie and Su 2018 ).…”

Privatizing climate adaptation: How insurance weakens solidaristic and collective disaster recovery

“…Neither do insurance payments fund adaptive action at a household level through upgrading housing: this is often challenged by insurers, as it contradicts the common insurance principle of "no betterment". This means that no property improvement should be gained by the insured: the nature of the insurance transaction is to reinstate property to its original condition, rather than upgrading it (de Vet, Eriksen, Booth, & French, 2019;O'Hare et al, 2016). Insurers are starting to engage with the potential benefits of adaptive retrofitting, and there is opportunity for insurers to reduce premiums where risk is reduced by proactive adaptation, but this is not yet widely practiced (CRO Forum, 2019).…”

“…Insurers are starting to engage with the potential benefits of adaptive retrofitting, and there is opportunity for insurers to reduce premiums where risk is reduced by proactive adaptation, but this is not yet widely practiced (CRO Forum, 2019). Rather, adherence to the no betterment principle is still a common complaint made by Australian households recovering from disaster (de Vet et al, 2019).…”