Introduction

Haiti, 2004; USA, 2005; Myanmar, 2008; Pakistan, 2010; Thailand, 2011; Philippines, 2013; Brazil, 2014; Caribbean, 2017; Tonga, 2018; India, 2018; Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, 2019; Australia, 2019–2020; Germany, 2021; Pakistan, 2022; Europe and the United Kingdom (UK), 2022; China, 2022; the United States (US), 2023; Libya, 2023; Kenya and Tanzania, 2024; Brazil, 2024; Poland, 2024; Bangladesh, 2024.

In recent decades, different regions of the world have experienced disasters that are increasingly attributable to the climate crisis (cf. IPCC 2021).1 These disasters, though differing in scale and geographical location, share common characteristics. In all these cases, those affected are at varying degrees of risk, both globally and in the place where the disaster occurred.2 In all of these cases, the slippery slope of vulnerability correlates closely with prior marginalization based on race, gender, class, education, and other factors (cf. Méjean et al 2024; Cappelli, Costantini, and Consoli 2021; Belkhir and Charlemaine 2007; Giroux 2006). These disasters are not only ‘non-natural’ because they occur in the context of anthropogenic climate change, but also because they overlap with politically determined preconditions (cf. Dawson 2010, 317). As the human rights activist and actor Danny Glover graphically illustrated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (cited in Akuno 2006, 34),