The book provides insights into community narratives concerning life in the face of creeping calamities through a case study from the Colombian Andes. It sets out to make sense of the lived experience of disasters that are slowly unfolding as well disasters that have not yet occurred.

Reidar Staupe-Delgado is an Associate Professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellow (MSCA-IF) at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research interests revolve around disasters, health emergencies and broader social problems, with a particular focus on slowly manifesting disasters.

Foreword by JC Gaillard Part 1: Context 1. Introduction: life in anticipation of slow calamity 2. Aponte: political, geographical and community context 3. The phenomenon: the natural hazard and its characteristics: some reflections Part 2: Experiencing slow calamity 4. Making sense of the hazard: interpretations of the phenomenon 5. Living with a slow calamity: disruption and continuity in the face of creeping destruction 6. The ancestral land: territory, community and resettlement Part 3: Reflections 7. Living in anticipation of impending calamity: towards an analytical notion 8. Concluding reflections