ABSTRACT
The ethics of disaster risk reduction (DRR) including climate change adaptation (CCA) is ever-changing and often apparently contradictory, depending on the ethical theories one considers. DRR including CCA involves three main schools of ethics: consequentialism, which looks at the outcome; deontology, which is interested in the intention; and the contrarians who investigate the 'ecology' of human relations and how we enter into contracts with each other. Responsibility and blame in DRR inclusive of CCA can be considered from the point of view of who is responsible/blameworthy for climate change and who is responsible/blameworthy for not taking any action when anthropogenic climate change modifies the realms of DRR. The intergenerational problem of climate change and DRR including CCA is the issue of the temporality of the actions that outlive ourselves and ripple into future generations. It is generated by the Earth phenomena operating over periods longer than the life expectancy of individuals.
