ABSTRACT
This final chapter draws together lessons from the authors’ research of the Haitian 2010 earthquake disaster and makes recommendations in the global context of disaster response and recovery. We stress in particular the importance of Haitians’ voices being heard through their narratives of survival. The issues of religion, learned survival strategies, access to education and good governance are highlighted as having significant applicability globally for enhancing hazard awareness and reducing disaster risk. Because the authors conclude that the causes of the Haiti earthquake disasters were human and not natural, they recommend the importance of a practical theology that can drive structural transformation through addressing structural evils that hold countries to ransom every time a natural hazard strikes. They challenge traditional evangelical perspectives that risk perpetuating too great an acceptance of disasters while permitting structural evils to persist and which do not hold the evidentially guilty to account. Finally, this chapter serves as a plea for the term “natural disasters” to be dropped altogether from the disaster lexicon.
