Imagine two cities, both struck by earthquakes of similar magnitude in the same year. One recovers within months, while the other takes years and thousands of people lose their lives. Same hazard, dramatically different outcomes. So what made the one so devastating, and the other relatively more manageable?
The answer lies in a deceptively simple idea: there is no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. You might be doing a double-take right now, and that is exactly the point. While earthquakes, floods, and cyclones are natural phenomena, the disasters they create are not. They are shaped by human decisions, political choices, and deep-rooted inequalities that determine who is protected and who is left vulnerable.
To understand why, we first need to separate two concepts that are often mistakenly used interchangeably: hazards and disasters.
A hazard is a natural physical event (an earthquake, a flood, a cyclone, and so on) that has the potential to cause harm (1,2). Hazards are part of the Earth's natural processes; they have been occurring for millions of years, long before humans arrived. A massive earthquake in an uninhabited mountain range, for instance, is not a disaster - it is simply geology doing what geology does.
A disaster, on the other hand, happens when a hazard meets a vulnerable human community, one that lacks the resources, infrastructure, or social support to withstand and recover from the event (1,2,3). In other words, disasters are not simply natural phenomena. They are the result of human decisions, or the failure to make them.
Scholars and advocacy groups have long argued that the term 'natural disaster' is a dangerous misnomer (2,4). When we call something a 'natural' disaster, we subtly imply that the devastation was inevitable, that nature is to blame, and that there was nothing anyone could have done. This framing lets governments and institutions off the hook for failing to protect their people. Research even shows that framing events as 'natural hazards' rather than 'natural disasters' can reduce fatalism and encourage communities to take proactive steps to prepare, precisely because it signals that action is possible (5).
So let us put this idea to the test with two real earthquakes and two very different stories.
Nepal 2015 v/s Japan 2016
On 25 April 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck central Nepal near the Gorkha District. It killed approximately 8,790 people and injured more than 22,300, destroying around 600,000 homes (6). Entire villages were flattened. Health posts were decimated. Electricity was cut off. And recovery took years for many communities.
Less than a year later, in April 2016, a series of earthquakes struck Kumamoto, Japan. The largest reached magnitude 7.07. Buildings were damaged and landslides caused disruption. But the death toll was a fraction of Nepal's, infrastructure held up comparatively well, and recovery was underway within months.
Both regions sit on highly active fault systems. Both are mountainous, with steep terrain that makes them prone to landslides and other secondary hazards (6,7). So, in order to understand why the outcomes were drastically different, we need to look beyond geology and take into consideration national policy, regional governance, and persistent inequalities.
Preparedness
Building codes are perhaps the starkest illustration. Japan has enforced rigorous seismic building standards for decades, including a landmark revision in 1981 that dramatically increased the earthquake-resistance of structures7. The results were visible in 2016 – newer buildings fared far better than older ones. Nepal, by contrast, established a National Building Code in 1993, but unfortunately compliance was poor. Over 80% of buildings were owner-built without permits or technical guidance, resulting in a physically fragile urban and rural landscape (6).
Early warning systems tell a similar story. Japan employs advanced alarm systems and has institutionalised disaster education. Schools regularly conduct evacuation drills and communities know what to do when the ground starts shaking (8,9). Nepal had no effective early warning system for earthquakes and no culture of response drills. Policies existed on paper, but staff and the public were unprepared to act when the moment to act arrived (10,11).
Community preparedness also differed dramatically. Japan has established a framework called the Machizukuri framework, which is essentially a grassroots 'town-making' movement. Through this, the people had already built strong networks of community engagement and disaster resilience long before the earthquake (8). In Nepal, preparedness was hampered by political instability, lack of community-focused planning, and deep social hierarchies. The caste system, gender discrimination, and ethnic marginalisation meant that many communities were systematically excluded from decision-making and denied equal access to resources long before any disaster struck (10,6).
Recovery
Post-disaster recovery does not happen in a vacuum. It reflects, and often amplifies, the inequalities that existed beforehand.
In Nepal, basic services like water and sanitation were restored slowly. In some areas, external aid took days to arrive. Aid distribution followed 'blanket' approaches that failed to identify or prioritise those in greatest need (10,11). The government's post-disaster cash grant scheme, designed to help families rebuild, effectively penalised the poorest because further instalments were conditional on compliance with earthquake-safe construction standards, which many could not afford. Those most devastated by the disaster were the least able to access the support meant to rebuild their lives (6).
Japan's recovery, by contrast, was more systematic. It integrated sustainable water management and even the restoration of natural infrastructure, such as traditional rice terraces, which serve as natural flood defences in subsequent heavy rains (8). Where Nepal's recovery was marked by gaps and delays, Japan's reflected decades of investment in both physical and community resilience.
This difference in recovery measures cannot be attributed to just luck, or the fact that Japan is a developed country and Nepal is not; such a result stems from choices made years, even decades before the earthquakes struck.
Vulnerability is a Political Choice
It might be tempting to think of disaster vulnerability as simply a matter of wealth: richer countries prepare better, poorer ones do not. However, this approach misses something deeper. Vulnerability is not an accident of poverty; it is produced by political and economic decisions. When governments fail to enforce building codes, when land-use planning allows settlements to grow on floodplains or steep hillsides, when early warning systems go unfunded, when communities are excluded from disaster planning based on caste, gender, or ethnicity – these are not oversights. They are acts of omission, and they determine who lives and who dies when a hazard strikes (2).
As scholars of disaster risk note, labelling an event a 'natural disaster' allows decision-makers to blame nature for failures of governance, concealing what might actually be ignorance, negligence, or deliberate neglect in policy choices (2,4). The economic case is clear: every $1 spent on pre-disaster mitigation saves between $7 and $10 in recovery costs. Yet global funding remains overwhelmingly reactive, pouring into emergency response rather than risk reduction (3).
Climate Disasters are no Different
Everything we have discussed applies equally, perhaps even more urgently, to climate-related hazards.
Nepal is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. It faces intensifying monsoon flooding, prolonged droughts, and increasingly frequent Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) caused by the rupture of glacial lakes as Himalayan glaciers melt due to global warming. These hydroclimatic hazards are made more frequent and more severe by climate change, and their devastating impact is shaped by the same factors we have already seen: inadequate infrastructure, unequal access to resources, and policy failures.
Communities in high-altitude Nepal may have contributed almost nothing to global carbon emissions, yet they face some of the most severe consequences of a crisis they did not create. Meanwhile, the nations most responsible for climate change, which are largely wealthy, industrialised countries, have the resources and infrastructure to buffer their populations from the worst effects. Attributing the varied impacts of a disaster to just nature fails to take into consideration such systemic injustice.
Disasters are a Mirror
When the ground shakes, or the river bursts its banks, or the glacial lake gives way, what we see in the aftermath is not just the power of nature. We see a reflection of our societies: the choices we made, the investments we prioritised, and the people we chose to protect or leave behind.
The 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake did not produce different outcomes because Nepal was unlucky and Japan was fortunate. They produced different outcomes because of decades of divergent investment, governance, and policy, and because of a global economic order that has never distributed risk or resources fairly.
Calling these events 'natural disasters' lets the real causes off the hook. Recognising them as events shaped by human decisions and social inequalities is the first step toward preventing the next one.
Because the hazard may be natural, but the disaster never is.
References
Brown, L. J., & Dastrup, R. A. (2023). Natural Hazards, Disasters, Risk, and Vulnerability. In Canadian Physical Geography Perspectives on Natural Hazards, Climate Variability and Change. University of Guelph.
Chmutina, K., Meding, J. von, & Bosher, L. (2019). Language Matters: Dangers of the 'Natural Disaster' Misnomer. Contributing Paper to GAR 2019. UNDRR. https://www.undrr.org/publication/language-matters-dangers-natural-disaster-misnomer
Katoch, S., & Scholar, R. (2022). Disaster management: Proactive approach in reducing vulnerability to natural disasters by managing disaster risks. International Journal of Geography, 4(1), 20–23. http://www.geojournal.net/
Peek, L., Wachtendorf, T., & Meyer, M. A. (2021). Sociology of Disasters. In Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research (pp. 219–241). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77712-8_11
Vinnell, L. J., Milfont, T. L., & McClure, J. (2023). Natural Hazard Versus Natural Disaster: Does Framing the Event Affect Preparedness Intentions, Attitudes, and Behaviour? Social Psychological Bulletin, 18. https://doi.org/10.32872/spb.8357
Hülssiep, M., Thaler, T., & Fuchs, S. (2021). The impact of humanitarian assistance on post-disaster social vulnerabilities: some early reflections on the Nepal earthquake in 2015. Disasters, 45(3), 577–603. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12437
Torisawa, K., Matsuoka, M., Horie, K., Inoguchi, M., & Yamazaki, F. (2022). Development of Fragility Curves for Japanese Buildings Based on Integrated Damage Data from the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. Journal of Disaster Research, 17(3), 464–474. https://doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2022.p0464
Juwitasari, R., Miyake, Y., Inpin, W., Meesaeng, S., & Dania, M. (2024). Toward Resilient-Communities through Machizukuri on Post-Recovery Disasters: An Analysis of the Social-Ecological Actions in Kumamoto, Japan. Thammasat Review, 27(2). https://doi.org/10.14456/tureview.2024.30
Pica, V. (2018). Beyond the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction: Vulnerability Reduction as a Challenge Involving Historical and Traditional Buildings. Buildings, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings8040050
Hall, M. L., Lee, A. C. K., Cartwright, C., Marahatta, S., Karki, J., & Simkhada, P. (2017). The 2015 Nepal earthquake disaster: lessons learned one year on. Public Health, 145, 39–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2016.12.031
He, L., Aitchison, J. C., Hussey, K., Wei, Y., & Lo, A. (2018). Accumulation of vulnerabilities in the aftermath of the 2015 Nepal earthquake: Household displacement, livelihood changes and recovery challenges. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 31, 68–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2018.04.017