In this unit, we look at trends in hazards in the context of other global changes, both environmental and societal. Our discussion is divided into three sections.  In the first section, we look at the trends in the number of natural and technological disasters; in the second, we discuss problems with the data that underlie these trends; and in the third section, we look at human disaster proneness. Together these sections provide a complex picture of the changes in hazards and their impacts, and they prepare us for the third unit that focuses on responses to disasters and hazards.
 
 

Trends

 
    Are things getting better or worse? Is the world becoming more disastrous? Let’s begin by looking at the number of disasters. Disasters, of course, are not the only indicators of hazard trends, but they are more easily measured than others. We need to remember that what is considered a “disaster” is defined by humans.  In addition, disaster definitions change frequently and are not consistent from nation to nation, or from one government agency or insurance company to another. We will discuss these data issues further below.

    Using United Nations data, we find that the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters steadily increased during the last 30 years with a noticeable peak in 1991, the worst year worldwide for disasters in decades. The less-developed countries suffered about 97% of these disasters and account for about 99% of the deaths attributed to natural disasters (UNEP 1993). While numeric estimates of mortality and injury are often questionable, the loss of life from natural disasters is enormous (Table 5). Tropical cyclones and earthquakes are natural hazard events with the most fatalities (see Focus Issue 2).
 

    Economic losses from natural disasters have tripled over the last 30 years and are greatest in the developed world. During the 1960s, for example, disaster losses were estimated at $40 billion; by the 1980s these losses had risen to $120 billion. In the first half of the 1990s, cumulative losses were already beyond $160 billion. Losses from Hurricane Andrew ($30 billion and still rising) and the Northridge earthquake ($30 billion) make these the most disastrous events to affect the United States. In Japan, losses from the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake are running at $50 billion (Domeisen 1995). It is paradoxical to note that economic losses from two of the top ten natural disasters since 1945 occurred in the beginning of the 1990s (Table 6), the start of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR, see Focus Issue 3).
 

    Some people view industrial accidents rather fatalistically as unavoidable by-products of economic development. Others simply dismiss them as unintended “side effects” of technical processes that will be avoided in the future thanks to technological progress. Edward Tenner goes a bit further and calls them “revenge effects” -- results of technology interacting with real people and real environments (Tenner 1996; see also the classic work by Charles Perrow 1984). And yet others, like the quite radical German sociologist Ulrich Beck, think of industrial disasters as the failures of an industrial-capitalistic complex, as the results of “institutionalized neglect” (Beck 1995, 86), that undermine the vitality of industrial society.

    Whatever outlook one takes on technological hazards (which eventually become industrial, health, or consumption hazards), they seem to be less catastrophic than natural hazards in terms of lives lost from single events (Table 7). This claim can probably not be upheld for chronic technological hazards that hurt or kill thousands of people every year but which are much more difficult to show statistically and demonstrate causally (car driving, smoking, and air pollution are excellent examples). Even single events often do not result in immediate fatalities, but pose long-term threats to human health and ecosystem stability. Of course, to relate any of these long-term effects back to a single cause like a toxic materials spill, a nuclear accident, or water pollution is very difficult. Most human and ecosystem health problems have multiple causes, depend on susceptibility and resistance, and have great geographic, ecological, and individual variation in whether, how, and when such problems arise. Our limited understanding of nature-society interactions and our methodological and technical inability to detect cause-and-effect connections prevent us from completely documenting the entire range of technological hazards to people and the environment.
 

    Many industrial accidents are associated with energy production and distribution such as oil tanker accidents (Exxon Valdez or Aegean Sea) and intentional spills (Persian Gulf conflict in 1991), an observation that links hazards again with global economic and climatic changes. Chemical disasters have steadily increased since the 1960s with a decline in industrial accidents during the 1990s. As was the case with natural disasters, two of the top industrial disasters occurred in 1992 -- the mine explosion and gas leak in Zonguldak, Turkey, and the sewer gas explosion in Guadalajara, Mexico, which killed 210 people.

    To summarize, natural disasters are more prevalent in the less-developed countries where increasing urbanization and environmental degradation cause people to be more vulnerable to the impacts of natural events.  In addition, developing countries often lack the technological know-how or facilities to warn and rescue populations at risk before disaster occurrence.  Southern and eastern Asia have the greatest fatality rate from natural disasters, with Bangladesh topping the list of individual countries.

    The risk of industrial hazards, on the other hand, is greater in developed nations because they simply have more industrial facilities. On the other hand, as Table 7 indicates, more industrial disasters have occurred in the developing countries. This again points to a complex set of interacting factors like populations at risk, safety standards, warning systems, functional precautionary measures, and effective emergency response strategies.

    Independent of region or type of hazard, disasters seem to be increasing over time, especially during the past decade. While global environmental changes may or may not play a role in these trends, it is possible to conclude that the major cause for this increase is that greater numbers of people and more valuable property are at risk and are affected by hazard events. Having arrived at these preliminary conclusions about disaster trends, we will now look at the availability and quality of data about hazards and disaster events and how this requires us to be cautious in making bold statements about global disaster trends.
 
 
 

Data Constraints

 
    A number of problems with data restrict our understanding of the broad patterns of hazards distribution and society’s responses to them. While some international comparative statistics exist, we must question their completeness and reliability.  Inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and omissions in reporting and record keeping are among the most common problems that affect the value of information (see Focus Issue 4). Often the most basic data on disaster events such as location, magnitude, and duration are missing, incomplete, or withheld for national security purposes. Measuring the impacts of disasters poses even greater problems. Most data bases concentrate on three main criteria:  mortality, number of people affected, and damage estimates (usually in US$). Each of these indicators has a bias in data collection. For example, most of the damage estimates are made in local currency and then adjusted to the US dollar standard. Fluctuations in exchange rates and inflation from year to year often render these estimates meaningless, especially in  determining long-term trends. None of the national or international statistics take human perceptions of hazards into account, thus giving only a very rudimentary picture of the events. If we were to use other than official data sources to make up for this absence (i.e., reports in the news media), we would most likely obtain a colorful but also biased insight into the world of hazards. Media tend to focus on the high-mortality, high-loss events in developed or at least physically accessible countries. Finally, for any trend analysis we encounter the additional problem that records have not been kept consistently and often exist for only the most recent years in many countries.

    The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) maintains a disaster data base but reports only those disasters with at least 30 immediate fatalities. In addition to the UN, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Brussels, Belgium and the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance also maintain global data bases on natural disasters (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 1995). Clearly, all of these efforts focus on disasters arising from single extreme natural events. Rarely are multiple origins considered (e.g., a severe winter storm with high winds, snowfall, ice, and coastal flooding) or hazards arising from more chronic conditions such as drought (which could facilitate a famine disaster or forest fires).

    Human-induced hazards are increasing in importance, yet relevant global data are hard to find. Oil spills, chronic toxic contamination, and pollution are good examples. Industrial accident data are collected (the OECD data bases are among the best), as are statistics on oil spills (International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited, Oil Spills Intelligence Report), and nuclear accidents (International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA).  Data on the transboundary movement of hazardous waste is difficult to acquire because of the lack of international agreement on what constitutes hazardous waste. One attempt to remedy this situation is the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Disposal (1989) which sets up obligations to minimize waste amounts, toxicity, and transboundary movement (WRI 1992). This agreement comes closest to a universal definition by providing a list of regulated categories of hazardous waste. Let’s not forget, however, that in a number of cases the nature of a shipload of waste is quite clear but issues of secrecy overshadow its proper declaration and safe handling. Other sources of data on toxic materials include UNEP's International Register of Potentially Toxic Chemicals (IRPTC) and the APELL (Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at Local Level) Programme (Tolba et al. 1992).

    Unfortunately, basic data on the range and extent of hazards has not kept pace with the needs. Detailed information on the human occupance of hazard zones and on human adjustments to hazards is generally available only at a local level. We can monitor and even model the physical systems response to hazards and ultimately assess the biophysical impacts at both the global and local levels. There are, however, few global data bases on human occupance and societal adjustments to environmental hazards which would allow us a better understanding of why and how people live where they live, and which -- ultimately -- could be combined with the biophysical impact models to gain a more complete understanding of nature-society-technology interactions. Moreover, the problems that affect the reporting of disaster and hazard data also affect the capturing and reporting of other social data, thus leaving us with unreliable information about many world regions and further hampering our efforts to assess the social consequences of environmental hazards.
 
 

 

Disaster Proneness

 
    In 1990, United Nations Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO) produced its first assessment of the vulnerability of nations to natural disasters. Working within the framework of economic impacts caused by natural disasters, UNDRO created its disaster proneness index for individual countries (see Figure 1). The index provides a measure of the total economic effect of disasters over a 20-year period as a percentage of the total annual GNP. Only significant disasters, defined as those causing financial damages assessed at more than 1% of the country's annual GDP were included (UNEP 1993). While preliminary in nature, fraught with all types of assumptions, and bound by the data constraints mentioned earlier, the disaster proneness index does provide some global comparative statistics on the vulnerability of countries to disasters.

    Not surprisingly, some of the most disaster-prone countries are those with hazards with frequent recurrence intervals (such as tropical cyclones) and "hits" during the last 20 years (the period of study). Thus, Caribbean countries such as Montserrat, Dominica, and St. Lucia and the Pacific island nations of Vanuatu and Cook Islands rank among the top ten. Other countries had only one disastrous event during the last 20 years that inflated their ranking on the index. Figure 1 maps the disaster-proneness of countries. In addition to the island nations mentioned above, Central American nations (El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua), Sahelian countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mauritania), and Asian countries (Bangladesh) are the most disaster-prone. The inverse relationship with national wealth comes as no surprise: not only are these nations the most disaster-prone, they are among the least able to respond in the aftermath of a disaster and to mitigate the impacts of future ones.

    While suggestive of some general patterns, the disaster-proneness index does not measure those factors that cause the increasing vulnerability of countries to hazards. We know that urbanization, industrialization, and technology all influence the types and level of impact of hazards on places, often making local residents more vulnerable to hazards. Rapid urbanization, especially of megacities in geophysically dangerous regions (like Miami, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Cairo, Lima, or Shanghai), leads to a concentration of people in ever more marginal areas such as hillslopes or in coastal floodplains. Coincidentally (but not accidentally), these areas are often less developed, without proper infrastructure, far removed from emergency response institutions, and occupied by the poorest members of the population (Blaikie et al. 1994).

    This kind of pattern is not replicated equally worldwide. In some older North American cities, for example, as the city center is abandoned by residents for the greener, less crowded outskirts of town, new hazard mitigation techniques are implemented in the expanding suburbs only. Conversely, other cities respond to threats with hazard-sensitive designs within their centers but lack the same attention to their periphery, such as in Mexico City with its ever expanding squatter settlements. Often, hazard mitigation and disaster reduction strategies simply don’t keep pace with the sheer volume of new arrivals of people in the megacities (Mitchell 1995). The Kobe earthquake seems to indicate a similar center-periphery pattern. Tokyo, the capital of Japan and one of the world’s most important financial centers, has been the focus of extensive earthquake mitigation activities while large cities nearby that are equally at risk from seismic hazards have received fewer resources to implement the necessary construction and engineering changes to protect themselves from structural collapse.
 

Key:  White = Unranked;  Light gray = 1-24;  Dark gray = 25-49;  Black = 50-73.

Source:  Cutter, Susan. 1996.  Societal vulnerability to environmental hazards. International Social Science Journal 48, 4.  Oxford, UK:  Blackwell Publishers, p. 525.  © 1996 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers.  Map has been redrawn for this on-line publication.

    Clearly, the spread and growth of industrialization not only creates goods for the marketplace and lures people into urban centers, but also generates unwanted waste byproducts, such as air pollution and contaminated water. These more chronic and less visible hazards are nonetheless parts of the hazardscape of people living in places at risk from more dramatic hazards. Moreover, industrial wastes are being shipped across the globe, mostly from developed countries to developing nations. The import of hazards from elsewhere results in recipient populations being placed at even greater risk, while also endangering those along the travel path of waste (Puckett 1994).

    What this amounts to is that population pressures, poverty, political-economic relations between and within nations, as well as ethnic and gender relations (see Focus Issue 5) influence the degree of vulnerability of certain segments of the population. Generally speaking, the poorest populations of developing countries are most susceptible to the impacts of disasters once they occur. Bangladesh, with the crowding of its landless poor onto small offshore islands for farming, is a case in point. These people are more vulnerable to storm surge from cyclones, less able to make adjustments because of their poverty, and least likely to receive adequate early warnings since warning systems and communication infrastructure aren’t present. These spatial and temporal dimensions to biophysical and social vulnerability are not fully understood and have not been incorporated into the U.N.’s disaster-prone index although they are critical to understanding why some countries and certain populations within them are disproportionately affected by hazards.

    And yet, even without a good understanding of the interplay of biophysical and societal vulnerability, it seems clear that societal trends are important in determining the outcomes of hazards. Hazards and global change experts thus now maintain that even if global environmental changes did not materialize, e.g., if storms did not happen more frequently or hurricanes did not intensify, we could still see worsening disaster trends in terms of losses of lives and property. Those already disadvantaged in society would likely be the people hit hardest and at the same time least able to recover from disastrous events.