By Jorge Rivera

An invited updated version of the post originally published on March 26, 2020, in the COVID-19 Insights Forum*.

“And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic [human] invasion.”

 Joseph Conrad, Hearth of Darkness, 1899

Hope & cooperation or fear & despair: how does humanity respond to slow onset disasters? The COVID-19 pandemic makes this question ever more important. Why are there delays in responding to this deadly virus? Why do countries backtrack on barely effective responses? Research that I have jointly conducted with Viviane Clement and Peter Tashman on adaptation to climate change’s gradual effects can shed light on the dismal response to the pandemic.[*]

Our research indicates that politicians and business executives’ responses to slow onset natural disasters tend to follow typical patterns where the impending acute effects of the disasters are initially unsuspected or worse, ignored. For example, during its early stages, the COVID-19 pandemic generated apathy and was then even characterized as a “hoax.” As the severity of a disaster’s effects becomes harder to ignore, the adoption of avoided easy responses begins to increase. Unfortunately, if the slow onset disasters’ consequences are very severe and societies lack a technological breakthrough solution, then adverse biophysical limits take over and overwhelm societies’ ability to respond forcing retreat and, in the most extreme cases, collapse. In other words, societies tend to exhibit lower response levels at both the lower and upper range severity of slow onset disasters while displaying greater response levels during the medium severity stages of slow onset natural disasters. This typical pattern can be represented by an inverted U-shaped relationship between disaster severity and the level of responses implemented by societies.

We propose that this pattern of response to slow onset natural disasters arises for the following reasons. First, facing an emerging disaster, most top decision makers are oblivious to slow onset disasters cues and those that are aware find it very difficult to overcome the typical social/political/economic forces that favor the status quo. Even if detected, however, these slow-onset disaster cues are seen as not posing a strong enough threat to gain enough attention and catalyze proactive responses. Additionally, the complexity and ambiguity generated by emerging slow onset disasters make it difficult to identify their causes and future trends. Besides the lack of perceived vulnerability, the lack of societal response to emerging slow onset disasters also arises from decision making biases, such as a myopic focus on short term outcomes and illusion of control that spur country leaders to unwarrantedly perceive lower levels of disaster adversity as unimportant for their country’s core priorities.

At the other extreme, when very severe disaster adversity conditions are being experienced, top decision makers display a heightened vulnerability that enhances their support for adopting aggressive responses and bolsters their urgency to act. Also, this higher perceived vulnerability weakens political opposition to implementing aggressive responses. Yet, despite this increased sense of vulnerability, we argue that societies tend to begin abandoning their willingness to respond when facing extreme disaster adversity. This is because governments and other organizations tend to rely on traditional response practices similar to those implemented at the disasters’ medium severity levels. Additionally, citizens and organizations show an increasing levels response fatigue that limits their ability to sustain high alert to the disaster. This fatigue stage is where we are in the USA now, with millions going back to ‘normal’ despite the lack of a cure for the pandemic. The effectiveness of traditional disaster response practices becomes significantly undermined as very high disaster severity progressively imposes extremer biophysical constraints.  Instead, more in-depth, longer-term oriented, and innovative response efforts, beyond routine responses, are needed to develop advanced resilience technologies and capabilities that allow countries to effectively counter more extreme constraints from very severe disaster adversity. The challenge is that developing such advanced resilience capabilities and technologies involves risky change processes and breakthrough innovations that are very difficult to quickly develop and implement.

During the medium severity stages of slow onset natural disasters, the highest response levels are observed because biophysical constraints are not so stiff as to render response efforts too costly or ineffective. Concurrently, a country’s top decision makers begin to fully accept their societies’ acute vulnerability because it becomes difficult to miss, ignore, deny, or misinterpret the increasing threats posed by a fully unfolding slow onset disaster.  This higher sense of vulnerability increases the assessment of the net economic benefits of enhanced disaster response measures. It also leads to the decline of forces initially opposing adequate responses. The increased response levels during the medium severity stages a natural disaster may also arise from opportunities to imitate and/or collaborate with other countries that have already adopted successful and innovative disaster response approaches.

References

[*] See articles on my website at: https://sites.google.com/site/jorgeriveragwu/home

Tashman, P., and Rivera, J. 2016. Ecological uncertainty, adaptation, and mitigation in the US Ski Resort Industry. Strategic Management Journal, 37: 1507–1525.

Rivera, J., and Clement, V. (Forthcoming). Business adaptation to climate change: American ski resorts and warmer temperatures. Business Strategy and The Environment.

*Endorsed by Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), Group for Research on Organizations and the Natural Environment (GRONEN) , Network for Business Sustainability (NBS), Organizations and the Natural Environment Division of the Academy of Management (ONE), Responsible Research for Business and Management Network (RRBM), and Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management (SIM).