CAMGeorge Wylesol
This idea must die: “Disasters and hazards are natural events”
Dr Max Van Wyk de Vries and Dr Ayesha Siddiqi say the impacts of human activity need to be factored into our understanding of supposedly ‘natural’ phenomena.
Interview:
Illustration:
Published on:
31 March 2026
When a ridge of frozen rock and other debris fell into one of the largest glacial lakes in north-east India in 2023, the impact was devastating.
A tsunami-like wave nearly 20 metres high breached the front of the lake, sending 50 million cubic metres of water – almost half the lake’s volume – downstream, and causing cascading floods that killed 55 people and washed away a massive hydropower dam.
On the face of it, this was a natural hazard that ended in disaster, but that term ‘natural’ is problematic and, we believe, needs to be refined. It’s also important to differentiate between hazards and disasters. We try to avoid using the term ‘natural disaster’ in general, as the word ‘natural’ implies a level of inevitability.
Disasters are what happens when a physical event, like a landslide, intersects with certain human conditions, such as systemic inequality.
Of course, it’s possible that the physical event doesn’t lead to a disaster. The concept of a ‘natural hazard’ is a bit more complicated.
We tend to think of hazards as the physical event, like the El Niño phenomenon or the South Asian monsoons.
Most definitions specify that there’s no human involvement in the process.
In traditional disasters research, physical scientists have tried to understand these hazards, whereas social scientists look at the human vulnerabilities that can lead to disasters.
It’s true that some natural hazards fit the original definition of the term.
The process that generates most earthquakes is a geological fault deep below the surface, with little or no impact from human activity.
We believe that all hazards are multihazards: frequently occurring together and modified by human activity. Rather than investigating hazards in isolation, we explore the way they interact with each other and the way their impacts add up
Many other hazards, however, have been modified by humans to some degree.
This includes all extreme weather events, and many geological hazards as well.
For instance, some earthquakes are caused by fracking, or even by the melting of ice sheets.
There are also times when the hazard is related to particular social dynamics.
For instance, a landslide might be spurred on by particular forms of unorganised settlement – people being forced to live in places that aren’t suited for human inhabitation, for example.
In most cases, it isn’t useful to draw a line between ‘natural’ and ‘human-made’, because most hazards in today’s world involve some combination of the two.
Here at Cambridge, we do a good job of bridging the gap between the classic physical science and social science approaches.
We believe that all hazards are multihazards: frequently occurring together and modified by human activity.
Rather than investigating hazards in isolation, we explore how they interact with each other and the way their impacts add up.
For instance, that 2023 glacial lake outburst flood wouldn’t have occurred had climatic warming not created the lake in the first place.
It’s also likely that the floods would have been less severe downstream had there not been some manmade infrastructure in the valley.
So there are a lot of things that humans can do to the Earth’s surface or atmosphere, which will affect the type of multihazard cascade you get.
It gets more complicated still when you consider the ways people understand hazards outside of a western context.
Take the situation during the Pakistan floods, when a lot of people were evicted from their homes because they were living close to a natural drain.
Every time it flooded, their homes were flooded, so the state said it was going to bulldoze those houses and move people elsewhere.
However, it subsequently became clear the land was going to be privatised and sold to a big developer.
For people in this context, floods are not simply about water.
They’re also about how the state neglects them, and how the language of ‘natural’ hazard is used to create certain market-oriented or state-related objectives.
Disasters are frequently understood through a moral lens, not just as a physical something that happens in the physical environment.
The term ‘natural hazard’ remains part of scientists’ everyday vocabulary, and it’s also used by people on the ground experiencing these things.
But it should be used carefully and contextually, recognising that geological and meteorological processes can often be influenced by, or interact with, human activity.
No definition can capture everything, but any discussion of hazard and disaster must include the scale of human involvement in what was once seen as a purely physical phenomenon.
Only then can we act to change policy, better understand hazards, and reduce the risk of so-called ‘natural’ disasters having a devastating impact
Dr Max Van Wyk de Vries is Assistant Professor in Natural Hazards, and Dr Ayesha Siddiqi is Associate Professor in Human Geography. To find out how you can support this vital research, please contact Diane.Rhodes@admin.cam.ac.uk
Share this page
