THE CLIMATE-DISASTER NEXUS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

TOWARDS A REINFORCING HUMANITARIAN NARRATIVE

Resumo

The climate-disasters nexus and the construction of the idea of international threat reach many international organizations. In this sense, a narrative has been building norms and political actions designed to meet the hegemonic standard of human rights and serving humanitarian precepts. Disaster and climate change studies are still dominated by Western epistemologies, which is where ideas are shaped and where there is funding available, perpetuating the hegemony of Western scholarship and the imperialist characteristic of the disaster risk reduction agenda. This occurs in practice and the daily life of different international organizations under the justification that it is necessary to intervene and rescue those who suffer the effects of climate change and disasters. Climate change and disasters have affected different communities differently, especially the most vulnerable and poorest, many of which are receiving the legacies of the western colonialism and neocolonial practices. The humanitarian narrative brings in its essence many questions about what and who is human and, therefore, who deserves or not to be protected by human rights.   This is particularly exacerbated in contexts where these three specimens of human and environmental-related phenomena become interdependent and trigger multiple humanitarian crises. This research aims to understand how the climate-disaster nexus impacts human rights protection in the international discourse, reinforcing the humanitarian narrative. It follows a qualitative approach associated with bibliographical and documentary research on data reflecting humanitarian discourses central to the disaster risk reduction agenda at the United Nations, namely the main frameworks on the subject, that are the Yokohama, Hyogo and Sendai Frameworks. In this sense, the research questions to what extent the climate-disaster nexus is reinforcing the humanitarian narrative in the context of the Disaster Risk Reduction agenda?  The research is based on the assumption that that the nexus between climate change and disasters have a direct impact on the humanitarian narrative and human rights protection, reinforcing the appeal of the victim who urgently needs help to be assisted.