DI Digest Idea 1 Nov 97

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LitScan
TrendWatch

1.	Natural Disasters - How Natural?
	Floods devastate Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. After drought, famine and civil war, now Somalia is under water. Last April floods came home to IISD, when the city of Winnipeg, the province of Manitoba and upriver US states battled the rising waters of the Red River. Even Iceland had floods in 1997 - when a volcano melted a glacier. Earthquakes, droughts, avalanches, tsunami, mudslides, tornadoes. Natural disasters, right? Well, no. While the trigger event is usually a natural and often unpredictable event, the human disaster which follows is largely the result of our own actions. We degrade our environment to make it more prone to disasters; we destroy ecological absorptive capacity so that these natural trigger events are magnified. Spill a jug of water on a table top covered with a sponge, and the water is absorbed. Remove the sponge, and water races into someone's lap. That's what we do with our environment. Cutting watershed forests and draining riverside wetlands weakens nature's sponge effect, and magnifies heavy rainfall into floods. Removing coral and mangroves magnifies the effect of coastal storms and tsunami. Degraded, low-humus topsoil can no longer withstand drought. All these actions reduce nature's absorptive capacity. Not smart. And as well as making our environment more disaster-prone, we make our communities unnecessarily vulnerable. How? We build cities on flood-plains. Subsistence farming with its hundreds of varieties of crop plants, some of which will thrive in almost any conditions, is replaced by a few high-yield varieties of rice or wheat which fail completely each time there is a drought. Who suffers most from these human-induced disasters? All too frequently it's the poor. A hurricane hits the Philippines. Heavy rainfall in the mountains, but the forest-sponge has gone. So flash floods pour down the valleys, into the coastal cities and squatter settlements on the river banks and the steep-sided ravines are washed away. Apart from the possible effects of global warming (see TrendWatch), there is no reason to believe trigger events are increasing. But with environmental mismanagement magnifying these events, and poverty and non-sustainable development increasing our vulnerability, human disasters are certainly on the rise. According to the Swedish Red Cross, the numbers of 'natural' disasters increased between the 1960s and 1970s by over 50%. And the body count went up fivefold. These trends seem to be continuing. How are we reacting to all this? Predictably, some might say. We continue to cut watershed forests, drain riverine wetlands, build homes on coastal barrier islands. We spend millions on high-tech weather forecasting - and undermine the ability of communities to cope with drought and floods. Take the Bangladeshi Flood Action Plan (FAP). More dams and dikes - and nice fat contracts for foreign construction companies. What about traditional Bengali coping mechanisms, like ducks (which can swim) rather than chickens (which drown), or houses designed so that family and furniture can perch on the roof when the floods come? Intensive criticism of the FAP brings the hope that more sustainable solutions are in the offering. [human actions magnify natural disasters]
	*helplessness myth -* The concept still popular among the more traditional relief agencies, that after a natural disaster thousands of shocked people sit around waiting for help. Used to justify TV fundraising, airlifts of inappropriate housing and presidential morale-raising photo-ops.
	Anders Wilkman and Lloyd Timberlake. Natural Disasters: Act of God or Acts of Man? EarthScan, London: EarthScan; Swedish Red Cross, 1984. Tahmina Ahmed and others. Rivers of Life (an NGO critique of the Flood Action Plan). London, UK: Panos Institute and Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, 1994.
*Virtual Ideas*	Info on natural disasters around the world