ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the existing literature on how we understand poverty and how poverty increases exposure to disasters. It addresses what being in poverty actually means in terms of lived experience and measurement. The chapter explores the literature on poverty, risk and vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation and governance as they relate to disaster reduction, relief and rehabilitation. Poverty is a complex and socially situated phenomenon. Measuring poverty, or identifying the poor, in a meaningful way, in context and across cases, remains a challenge for development practitioners and academics alike. Income poverty is designated as the failure of a family or household, as opposed to an individual, to meet a collectively agreed threshold. Hurricanes, and their Asian counterparts, cyclones and typhoons, are not new phenomena. Risk is a potential as opposed to an actual condition. Resilience is a complex and contested term, not least because it is socially situated and culturally determined.
