NPAT Common 2020 QP3

Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow.

Popular reporting about disasters in poorer and developing countries usually begins with the spectacle, and focuses on post-event relief and reconstruction operations. These accounts follow a straightforward narrative: they acknowledge the absence or failure of early warning systems, and explain that the affected society was vulnerable to natura l hazards because of developmental failures, outdated scientific expertise and political resistance to global best practices. Having established the problem and its likely causes, media coverage shifts to describe the efforts of the ' international community' in coordinating the flow of aid, knowledge and technology into the affected region. Finally, reports quote foreign leaders and experts proclaiming that much of the damage could have been avoided by investing in social resilience and empowering civil society to counter governmental inefficiencies, neglect, con-uption and arbitrnriness.

These accounts - drawing a direct relationship between developmental and technological deficiencies, the state's legitimacy to govem, and its moral obligation to seek foreign assistance - highlight the insight that political legitimacy is historically a function of scientific knowledge and expertise ... Victorian colonisers argued that ·savages', unable to master natural hazards, needed colonial rule for their own protection. In our time, governments play the same hand when they chamcterise migrnnts and refugees as unintelligent, disease-ridden and morally tainted swanns that threaten natural resources, dishonour national values and compromise citizen's prosperity and wellbeing. Problems of nature cannot be meaningfully distinguished from the problems of society - to claim authority over the one is to take responsibility for the ()ther. ..

After the earthquake (in 2010 in Haiti) national rescue, re lief and recovery operations were overwhelmed by the involvement of the US and the international community ... disaster-relief operations began by treating the Haitian government as incompetent and untrustworthy ... Virtually all international disaster-relief aid was spent on foreign institutions and experts ... The UN, in tum, trusted its own agencies, foreign NGOs and corporations to attend to restoring public utilities and services ... In April 2011 , 40 Haitian social organisations chastised the IHRC for extending centuries of coercion and dependence - a call-back to colonial discourses that justified benevolent dictatorships by claiming scientific and thus moral superiority over subjugated people and their resources.

On 28 September 2018, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi suffered a 7.5 magnitude (Richter seismic scale) earthquake . ... In the aftermath, media commentary examined the crisis from two perspectives: first, it investigated the state's technical competence to handle preparedness and hazard mitigation. The answer, predictably, focused on the mismanagement and subsequent fai lure of the country's early warning system. Second, the commentary scrutinised the legal and political rationale underlying relief and recovery decisions: did Indonesia - as it had in the past - refuse foreign relief workers, aid and expertise in a show of sovereign authority?

Sub Questions

Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow.

Social media, magazines and shop windows bombard people daily with things to buy, and British consumers are buying more clothes and shoes than ever before. Online shopping means it is easy for customers to buy without thinking. Major brands offer such cheap clothes that they can be treated like disposable items.

In Britain, the average person spends more than£ 1,000 on new clothes a year, which is around four per cent of their income. That might not sound like much, but that figure hides two far more won-ying trends for society and for the enviromnent: a lot of the consumer spending is via credit cards. British people currently owe approximately £670 per adult to credit card companies. Not only are people spending money they don't have, they're using it to buy th ings they don't need. Approximately 300,000 l(lnS of clothing a year goes into landfill sites. Clothes donated to charities often don't sell and so are either thrown away or are sent abroad, causing economic and environmental problems.

Lately, a different trend is springing up in opposition to consumerism - the 'buy nothing' trend. Tl originated in Canada in the early 1990s and then moved to the US, where it became a rejection of the overspending and overconsumpti(ln of Black Friday and Cyber Monday during Thanksgiving weekend. On Buy Nothing Day people organise various types of protests and cut up their credit cards. Throughout the year, Buy Nothing groups organise the exchange and repair of items they already own.

The trend has now reached influencers on social media who usually share posts of clothing and make-up that they recommend for people to buy. Some You Tube stars now encourage their viewers not to buy anything at all for periods as long as a year. Two friends in Canada spent a year working towards buying only food. For the first three months they learned how to live without buying electrical goods, clothes or things for the house. For the next stage, they gave up services, for example haircuts, eating out at restaurants or buying petrol for their cars. In one year, they'd saved $55,000.

The changes they made meant two fewer cars on the roads, a reduction in plastic and paper packaging and a positive impact on the environment from all the energy saved. If everyone followed a similar plan, the results would be impressive. But even if you can't manage a full year without going shopping, you can participate in the anti-consumerist movement by refusing to buy thi ngs you don't need. Buy Nothing groups send a clear message to companies that people are no longer willing to accept the environmental and human cost of overconsumption.

Sub Questions