“The PAR model (described in an analytical framework (Blaikie et al., 1994, Wisner et al., 2003) identifies a disaster as the outcome of, on one side, natural hazards, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami, and on the other, a progression of driving forces which shapes the degree of people’s vulnerability to these hazards. These driving forces, which are primarily socio-economic and political, determine the extent to which people can protect themselves and recover from the occurrence of a “natural” disaster. These slower acting, often insidious and tacitly acknowledged, aspects of political and economic life which shape people’s vulnerability are brutally exposed upon the sudden onset of a natural event, such as a tsunami, but can also include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wild fires, riverine and coastal floods, and storms. So people’s vulnerability and ecosystem vulnerability are shaped by long term and slow acting processes…. until a sudden event occurs, the impact of which is partly determined by long term processes which produce vulnerability of people and ecosystems”. (Blaikie, The Indian Ocean Tsunami, 2005)