About this book:

"Drought, Floods, and Dispossession" argues that chronic poverty is not merely a consequence of natural disasters but is fundamentally produced by historical inequalities, extractive development, and policy failures that amplify environmental risks. The book critiques the prevalent view of environmental hazards as isolated "acts of nature," instead demonstrating how these hazards become devastating disasters when they collide with pre-existing vulnerabilities embedded in landscapes and institutions. Using a risk science framework (hazard, exposure, vulnerability), it explores how both sudden shocks and slow-onset environmental changes contribute to the perpetuation of poverty globally.

The book traces the historical roots of dispossession, beginning with colonial land tenure systems that fragmented communal lands and marginalized indigenous populations, setting the stage for unequal resource access. It then examines how 20th-century infrastructure, such as dams and levees, often shifted flood risks from powerful urban centers to less influential rural and downstream communities. Chapters on mining and hydrocarbon extraction highlight cycles of "boom and bust," where promises of wealth leave behind toxic landscapes, depleted resources, and persistent poverty for local communities. The text also covers critical issues like groundwater depletion, the vulnerabilities of monoculture agriculture, the pressures on pastoralism and fisheries, and the growing risks in urban floodplains and peri-urban areas.

Throughout the book, the authors detail how relief efforts often perpetuate inequalities, with policy failures in disaster governance, finance, and insurance disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups. It further explores the gendered impacts of disasters, highlighting the hidden costs borne by women and caregivers, and the complex dynamics of climate-induced migration. Critically, the book moves beyond problem identification to propose "pathways to justice." These include valuing indigenous stewardship and rights-based adaptation, investing in robust early warning systems, building shock-responsive social protection programs, and implementing nature-based solutions.

The final chapters delve into the moral and practical complexities of market-based climate solutions like carbon offsets, warning against "green extractivism" that could reproduce old patterns of injustice. It advocates for a comprehensive policy blueprint centered on polycentric governance, reconfiguring financial architecture, enacting legally enforceable rights, and fostering inclusive, participatory planning. Ultimately, the book contends that achieving a safer, more resilient future requires addressing systemic inequalities and prioritizing justice and dignity in all environmental decision-making, transforming environments of insecurity into foundations for collective resilience.

What You'll Find Inside:

• Environmental hazards become chronic disasters when they intersect with histories of inequality, dispossession, and extractive development, turning variability into manufactured vulnerability.
• Colonial land tenure systems centralized control, marginalized customary rights, and laid the foundation for modern resource risk by concentrating wealth and shifting hazards onto the poor.
• Infrastructure like dams and levees often redistributes flood risk downstream or onto marginalized communities, revealing flood control as a political act that protects some at the expense of others.
• Extractive booms—mining, oil, gas, and critical minerals—generate short-term wealth for external actors while leaving lasting pollution, depleted aquifers, and social dislocation that deepen poverty.
• Building resilience requires integrating nature-based solutions, shock-responsive social protection, and rights‑based governance that center Indigenous stewardship, community action, and equitable risk finance.

Who's It For:

This book is intended for scholars, students, and practitioners in environmental history, development studies, disaster risk reduction, and climate justice, as well as policymakers, NGOs, and community leaders seeking to understand the structural roots of poverty and risk and to design equitable, resilience‑building interventions.