The transition from a response-based paradigm to an anticipative, prevention-based approach remains a stubborn challenge in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Whilst the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has advocated the latter since the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction in the 1990s, many countries have been slow to move from a response-focused approach to a preventative one. International policy guidelines have successfully informed the national DRR policies in various countries; however, their further translation down to the regional and local level is full of complex political challenges, exacerbated in many areas by an increased frequency of disasters. In this paper we explore the case of India, using the example of landslide risk management. Through an analysis of the evolution of landslide risk governance during the last two decades in two hilly regions – Darjeeling in the Himalayas and the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats – we demonstrate that while the national government appears to have made considerable efforts to move in line with the UNDRR approaches, the eventual outcome of these efforts at the regional and local level is largely an incremental improvement on the existing DRR approach and not a paradigm shift in understanding and addressing disaster risk. We argue that overcoming these issues requires attentiveness to a situated understanding of disasters and institutions at the local level, and not treating apparent gaps between policy and action as functional challenges to be overcome with new science from national level.

从基于响应的范式过渡到基于预期的、基于预防的方法仍然是减少灾害风险 (DRR) 的一个顽固挑战。虽然联合国减少灾害风险办公室 (UNDRR) 自 1990 年代国际减少自然灾害十年以来一直提倡后者，但许多国家在从以响应为重点的方法转向预防方法方面进展缓慢。国际政策指南已成功为各国的国家减灾政策提供信息；然而，将其进一步转化为区域和地方层面充满了复杂的政治挑战，而且在许多地区因灾害频率的增加而加剧。在本文中，我们以滑坡风险管理为例探讨了印度的案例。通过对过去 20 年两个丘陵地区（喜马拉雅山的大吉岭和西高止山脉的尼尔吉瑞斯）滑坡风险治理的演变进行分析，我们证明，虽然国家政府似乎已经做出了相当大的努力来与UNDRR 方法，区域和地方层面这些努力的最终结果在很大程度上是对现有 DRR 方法的渐进式改进，而不是理解和应对灾害风险的范式转变。我们认为，克服这些问题需要关注对地方层面的灾害和机构的定位理解，而不是将政策和行动之间的明显差距视为需要通过国家层面的新科学克服的功能性挑战。