Natural disasters and marginalization are more connected than we could ever consider, every year the number of people affected by those disasters such as hurricanes, earthquake, tsunami increase but in the other hand, the humanitarian aid and the people’s capacity to respond effectively are decreasing, making the situation more worrying. In 2019, there were a total of 409 natural disasters events worldwide, according to analysis by Save the children, in the same year climate crisis devastated parts of east and southern Africa with floods, landslides, drought and cyclones leaving at least 33 million people at emergency levels of food insecurity or worse.¹

Both rich countries such as the United States and Japan and developing countries as Haiti and Pakistan have faced tough times due to natural disasters, obviously the intensity and the long-term effects were way more devastating in the poorest countries, but also on the rich ones it was a challenges and they weren’t prepared for that, even if they thought they were, and the response was far from efficient.  

Disaster impacts with greater ferocity and damage happens on poor and excluded communities, “only poor people worry about how they will manage to feed, clothe and house their children and pay the bills for basic necessities like lighting and water” In my point of view we can connect this to  the challenge that we are facing in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic, that is affecting the whole world but the people that are struggling the most are those of low-income that do not have access the best hospitals and health-care and are also losing their jobs because most of them can’t work from home, and as Dominelli² points out it is not true that “we are all in this together” because the social position of those affected has a huge bearing on post-disaster outcomes.

[1] 2019: Natural disasters claim more than 1200 lives across East and Southern Africa

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/2019-natural-disasters-claim-more-1200-lives-across-east-and-southern-africa   

[2] Dominelli, Lena. 2012; Green Social Work: From Environmental Crises to Environmental Justice pp. -