Can natural disasters ever be good for us?

That sounds rediculous. And in the short term it is rediculous. People die in disasters. That can never be good. In Myanmar we will not know the total death toll from Fridays earthquake for days if ever In poor countries many more people die in disasters than in richer countries. That is one very clear fact, even if it can best be thought of as a stylized fact. We are appalled and appropriately so by the death toll in Hurricane Sandy--106 in the US. But Hurricane Nargis in Myanmar took at least 200,000 lives. Those storms were of about equal intensity. There are a host of reasons for these differences. There was inadequate warning for Nargis, something we are much better at than in poorer places. The evacuation away from the coast in Sandy was very effective in saving lives but much more difficult and ineffective in the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar. The Sandy evacuation was so effective that many of the deaths occurred inland well away from the storm surge. Many of those who died in beachside houses had chosen not to evacuate. Maps showing where fatalities were located make that clear.

That certainly doesn't sound like something that is good for us, rich or poor. The UN and numerous NGOs have specific objectives in Disaster Risk Reduction DRR all based on the very reasonable notion that disasters are to be avoided. We are often told to protect wetlands and plant mangroves to attenuate the effects on hurricane storm surge, although neither is very well quantified, Very dense and very extensive mangrove forests are required to have a significant effect, something that is not plausible in places where coastal regions have seen urban development, as is the case in many parts of the world from the riches to the poorest.

Peri-urban slums often extend into coastal waters like the Makoko floating slum in Lagos, Nigeria. It is actually not floating, the dwellings are built on stilts. Luckily, that part of the world doesn't experience hurricanes, nor will it in the future.

The Mokoko floating slum on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria.

In fact, it it were prone to hurricanes a slum like Mokoko probably could not exist. It would have been descimated too often to be viable as a place to live no matter how poor and how few options were available to residents.

Wouldn't it be "good" in some sense if hurricanes did come to Lagos and made it impossible for people to live in Mokoko? Does the lack of hurricanes permit such a place to exist? Wouldn't the slum dwellers just go somewhere else? Yes, most likely they would. But would they be better off if they did?

What makes Mokoko exist is poverty. They are there bcause they are poor, they are not poor because they are there. But the two are reinforcing.

Creative destruction ?

That's the idea you hear about most. It originates with Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian political economist. He was writing about economics and business cycles and never once mentioned natural disasters. But the idea has been taken up by scholars studying disasters. THe idea is simple enough. Disasters--setting humans aside--primarily destroy physical capital, meaning manufactured capita. Roads, bridges, buildings, factories, schools, government offices, sea ports, air[ports etc. They are capital shocks. Sadly, loss of life is rearely a strong determinant of disaster consequences.

Now, a lot of capital has been lost and needs to be recovered. In poorer places the capital that has been lost may be old and decrepet and not be very productive. Not all capital is equally productive. The 10 million dollar home of a wealthy person is not as produstive as a 10 million dollar factory employing tens of people producing useful things. So, if inefficient unproductive capital can be replaced with more efficient, better capital assests then the effect in the longer term could be positive. Creative destruction.

Has this happened? Rarely. More often disasters are a setback to development.

I'l provide an analysis of the earthquake in Myanmar when I can get a better sense of the situation is there.