GUEST EDITORIAL Living on the Ring of Fire: Perspectives on Managing Natural Hazard Risk in Pacific Rim Countries Douglas Paton University of Tasmania, Australia rom the perspective of studying natural hazards, the peace and tranquillity that might be expected Ffrom a literal translation of its name does not always capture the reality of life for communities on the Pacific Rim. This reality is more readily discerned in its alter ego: the Ring of Fire. The latter leaves one in less doubt as to the hazardous circumstances likely to prevail in this region. In addition to the hazards posed by the numerous volcanoes that resulted in the ‘Ring of Fire’ appellation, communities situated around the Pacific Rim also have to contend with earthquakes, tsunami, storms, cyclones/typhoons, flood and bushfire. To this list of acute events can be added hazards of a chronic nature such as salinity, environmental degradation and sea-level rise that represent growing threats to many Pacific Rim countries. The region also faces increased risk from health-related hazards. Sydney, for example, has been identified as a pandemic hotspot as a result of it being a hub linking the airways of Asia and the United States. Recognition of the risk these hazards pose to Pacific Rim modate this issue and offer insights into how personal, communities has stimulated interest in identifying how to community, societal, cultural and organizational factors facilitate sustainability by developing community and interact to facilitate sustainability. Furthermore, they do societal capacity to co-exist with the potentially hazardous so in a way that supports the growing recognition of a elements in the environment (Paton, 2006a). It is by need to integrate risk management strategies within developing a capacity for co-existing with periodically mainstream community activities (Paton, 2000; 2009). hazardous environmental processes that a community can The articles that comprise the special edition cover more readily adapt to and recover from the disruptive volcanic, earthquake, flood, heatwave and tsunami consequences of hazard activity. The contents of this hazards. To provide as representative a picture of hazard special edition offer insights into how achievement of the research within Pacific Rim countries as possible, the col- goal of developing adaptive capacity and sustainability lected papers draw on work conducted in New Zealand, might be advanced. These insights accommodate both the Australia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, India and the United complex interrelationships and cultural diversity charac- States. The special edition is presented in two parts. teristic of communities around the Pacific Rim and the Part 1 opens with Cottrell’s account of how women multi-hazard nature of the environment in which people have developed strategies to adapt to an annual hazard, in Pacific Rim countries live and work. the wet season in northern Australia. Cottrell highlights Because disaster impacts on people, communities the need to distinguish between resilience and vulnera- and societal functions and institutions, a comprehensive bility, and demonstrates the consequent benefit that can representation of adaptive capacity must accommodate accrue to our understanding of adaptive capacity from multiple levels of analysis. When examining complex so doing. Cottrell’s study illustrates the insight and inge- socio-environmental processes, however, psychology has nuity that the woman she studied brought to the process often fallen foul of the context minimisation error and of facilitating their ability to adapt to uncertain and failed to adequately address how the social context in threatening circumstances. which people live influences people’s thoughts and In the next article the focus switches from demo- actions (Joffe, 2003). The articles presented here accom- graphic to dispositional influences on hazard Address for correspondence: Douglas Paton, School of Psychology, University of Tasmania, Launceston TAS 7250, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] JOURNAL OF PACIFIC RIM PSYCHOLOGY Volume 3, Issue 1 pp. 1–3 1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 26 Sep 2021 at 04:07:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1375/prp.3.1.1 Douglas Paton preparedness. Mishra et al. discuss preparedness for picked up by McIvor et al. In addition to demonstrating flood and heatwaves. They discuss how prior experience support for the predictive utility of the model for earth- of hazard consequences interacts with the dispositional quake and flooding hazards in New Zealand and characteristic of locus of control to predict preparedness Australia, respectively, McIvor et al. offer some sugges- for these hazards. In their respective discussions, both tions on how the model might profitably be developed. Cottrell and Mishra et al. allude to the fact that under- The demonstration of an all hazards capability is not the standing what people do to protect themselves from only hurdle that any explanatory model intended for use hazard consequences cannot be fully accomplished in Pacific Rim countries must negotiate. Another derives without including a social dimension in the analysis. from a need to accommodate the cultural diversity char- The importance of including a social dimension in the acteristic of Pacific Rim communities and the need for process of understanding adaptive capacity derives from risk management strategies to be applied in multicul- the fact that people’s preparedness choices result from tural cities, such as Auckland and Sydney. judgments made about risk and what to do about it in the The question of whether the model can be applied in context of their interactions with others. Community a country whose cultural characteristics differs substan- interaction thus plays a pivotal role in developing and sus- tially from those in New Zealand and Australia is taining the meanings that people attribute to events as addressed by Sagala et al. They discuss the ability of the well as how they decide to respond to events. model described in the Paton et al. article to account the In the next article, de Terte et al. pick up this theme differences in intention to prepare for volcanic hazards and examine how a model traditionally used to inform in communities around the Mt. Merapi volcano in cognitive behavioural therapy, the Five Part or Five Indonesia. Furthermore, by drawing on comparative evi- Areas Model, can be adapted to provide a framework for dence from New Zealand and Japan, they present identifying the person, family and community inter - evidence to support the multicultural applicability of the dependencies that need to be accommodated when model. A demonstration of some cross-cultural equiva- conceptualising resilience. The influence of social con- lence in how people confront natural hazard risk does texts on hazard preparedness is continued in the final not mean that research into culture-specific processes article in Part One of this special edition. should be neglected. Paton et al. explore how a model that examines how In their article, Jang and Wang’s investigation of the personal beliefs, community characteristics and compe- Hakka people residing in Taiwan illustrates how a cul- tencies and the quality of the relationship between turally specific mechanism can influence adaptive communities and civic agencies interact to influence the capacity. They discuss how aspects of community life adoption of preparedness measures for tsunami hazards. derived from mainstream farming practices combined An important aspect of this work lies in it providing an with a belief that people should co-exist with nature empirical demonstration of how the cumulative experi- influenced the development of their ability to respond to ence and interpretation of everyday community and a destructive earthquake in a way that was both adaptive societal life influences how people manage the risk and that led to social growth. posed by natural hazards. While the issues introduced in the preceding articles Part 2 of this special edition continues the explo- will play important roles in facilitating people’s capacity ration of the role of community processes in facilitating to adapt to and recover from hazard events, the sheer scale people’s capacity to adapt to hazard consequences. It and complexity of the events that people will face means also addresses all-hazards issues and includes papers that that, if it is to be as effective as possible, personal and address how cultural factors, at both national and organ- community capabilities and must be complemented by an isational levels, influence adaptive capacity. effective societal response. A disaster is, by definition, an The model introduced by Paton et al. in the final event whose demands exceed the resources available to article in Part 1 of this special edition was originally respond to them. The effectiveness of the societal developed to provide emergency planners with an evi- response to a disaster is strongly influenced by the ability dence-based framework for developing the public of those charged with managing and deploying the avail- outreach component of risk management strategies. The able resources to optimise the use of these resources. The confidence that this sector can have in such a model can development of the competencies to do so is the subject be enhanced by their knowing that it can inform their of the final paper. Dwyer and Owen discuss how factors risk management planning independently of any specific such as coordination, communication and organisational hazard. The importance of the latter derives from the flexibility influence adaptive capacity and performance fact that the Pacific Rim communities generally have to in emergency management operations. contend with several hazards. A model with restricted The articles that comprise this special edition suggest applicability would have limited value. that countries and communities that are already linked The challenge of examining the all-hazards capability by geography may also be linked by some commonality of the model introduced in the Paton et al.