The Complex Interplay between Everyday Risks and Disaster Risks: The Case of the 2014 Cholera Pandemic and 2015 Flood Disaster in Accra, Ghana

Abstract

Large urban agglomerations in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Accra face multiple vulnerabilities due to overlapping risks. These include everyday risks related to poor quality water and sanitation, to city level air, water and industrial pollution risks and vulnerabilities to natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, storms and pandemics. Some of the bio-climatic disasters may be amplified by climate change. The paper argues that the complexity of everyday risks and associated health conditions suffered principally by the poor are interconnected with disaster risk. It examines these inter-relationships in the context of the cholera pandemic of 2014 and the 2015 flood disaster events, as city-wide events which affected both the poor and the wealthy. The paper reflects on the implications of these events - which are to a large extent socially constructed - for thinking about everyday and disaster risk in an urban context, and for policies to address multiple sets of overlapping risks.