Global Change and Environmental Hazards

Unit 3: How Do Societies Respond and Adjust to Environmental Hazards?
Background Information

Introduction

Given the enormous complexity of nature-society-technology interactions and the rather bleak trends in both disaster occurrence and societal vulnerability to hazards that we have discussed so far, shouldn’t we simply "throw in the towel" and let nature and societal developments take their course? To us as individuals, things often seem to be getting worse and worse, and we don’t seem to be able to put the brakes on these global physical and social processes anyway.

It would be a sad outcome, indeed, if we ended this module on such a pessimistic, even fatalistic, note. Such an attitude would dismiss entirely the fact that throughout human history, societies the world over have shown great ingenuity in adapting to their environments. It would also overlook the reality that humans are active creators of, and collaborators in, their living circumstances. We have contributed to the hazardousness of our environments as well as to the many efforts at maintaining and increasing our safety: we have workplace safety standards; we have structural and non-structural tools to protect ourselves from floods; we continue to improve our ability to forecast and warn of approaching hazards like tropical storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions; we have emergency response institutions; we have public and private insurance; and the idea of preventing environmental harm (the precautionary principle) is becoming increasingly widespread as the yet-unknown impacts of global climate change loom on future’s horizon.

Clearly, we have a long way to go if we want to reverse current disaster and vulnerability trends. In particular, we will have to spread our successes in mitigation much more evenly within and among nations. Some people hope that the IDNDR, along with the threat of global change, may actually translate into a strong momentum to improve disaster mitigation. Using that stimulation ourselves, we focus in this last unit on the basic question of what can be done to respond to and mitigate hazards, global environmental and societal changes notwithstanding. We begin in the first section with a look at the different phases of responding and adjusting to hazard events. The next three sections then discuss in greater detail the three fundamental ways of reducing the impacts from disasters -- modifying the hazard, reducing human vulnerability to them, and sharing the losses. Just as people perceive and experience hazards differently, we must also discriminate among people in their ability to adjust to hazards. In the final section, we will see again that in this complex interplay of humans and their natural environment there are no simple answers to the question of how best to respond to hazards and lessen their impacts.

Societal Response and Adjustments

The study of societal responses to hazards ranges from what people do in the immediate aftermath of an event and in the long term, to how, when, and why they respond. Response can also be more narrowly defined to mean just the immediate action after a disaster (as is done below). The following discussions are primarily about the "what and when," focussing on emergency response and long-term mitigation. Interesting work at the hazards/global change interface on societal learning, delayed and foregone responses, and responses to creeping/chronic hazards is not discussed here but ultimately contributes to a fuller understanding of effective societal adjustments to hazards.

When a disaster strikes, the immediate societal adjustments are to rescue the survivors and re-establish the lifelines (water, electricity, sewage, communication) to the ravaged community. These relief operations include medical supplies, food, shelter, water, and power. Often, such emergency response and relief operations are within the capabilities of the affected country. In some instances, however, the disaster is too large for the individual country and international relief efforts are mobilized by relief organizations such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent and through cooperative arrangements within the United Nations (U.N. Disaster Relief Organization or UNDRO).

Once the lifelines are re-established and the crisis period is over, the recovery phase begins. Recovery adjustments (like sheltering, clean-up, repairs, treating injuries, assuring order and safety from criminal behavior during emergency situations) are temporary in nature and provide for a return to normalcy after an event. The use of temporary shelters during the recovery period gives way to building permanent structures during the reconstruction phase. Throughout the recovery and reconstruction phases, hazard mitigation continues. (Focus Issue 6 describes this phase eloquently.)

Mitigation is a general term used to describe a wide range of methods for disaster loss reduction that goes on before, during, and after a disaster. Some mitigation options are structural, meaning they affect the material construction or organization of something (e.g., the use of steel-reinforced construction materials in seismic areas or the use of elevated pilings in flood-prone areas). Other mitigation strategies are non-structural and involve land use planning and management, insurance, and pre-event preparedness (the establishment or reinstallation of warning systems).

Focus Issue 6: An Earthquake Strikes Campus!

On the morning of January 17, 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck the Los Angeles area. The quake was centered near the city of Northridge. The Northridge campus of California State University sustained $350 million in damages. Every major building on campus was closed. Many buildings, including the library, were extensively damaged. A campus parking garage collapsed. The central core of the campus was virtually shut down by the quake. Ann Dittmer -- a geography graduate student at CSU Northridge-- spent the month following the earthquake caring for her mother who had broken her hip in the quake. When the school reopened in February she returned to campus and was shocked and amazed by what she found. Here is her report.

     I knew things were different when the normally bustling student parking lot was not full. I soon discovered that much of the campus had moved to the northern boundary of the college. The athletic fields and parking lots were converted to temporary campus headquarters housed in large white tents and classroom trailers. Many trailers had been set up to begin classes, yet many class groups were left homeless. For those with designated places to go, maps helped a little. Information booths were set up to help students find their classes, but often the people staffing the booths were as confused as the students. Some instructors held up signs trying to corral their lost students. Many trailers had no identification on them. The din of construction equipment added to the confusion.
     It was both reassuring and disconcerting to find the geography department in a parking lot. We had no tent or trailer. One professor's blue van served as the makeshift command center. A hand-written sign claiming geography's territory was taped onto the side of the vehicle. Classes were held under trees, on parking lot asphalt, or canceled altogether. Classrooms and departments moved constantly, giving the campus a nomadic feeling. The geography department van disappeared for a week, moved to the east side of campus, and finally returned to its original spot.
     The shuffling of classrooms and departments was both overwhelming and exciting. Students and professors showed incredible resilience and adaptability under those stressful conditions. A climatology lab was relocated to a professor's living room. An Internet class was forced to work without computers for half the semester. There were no maps available for the map interpretation class. The library was closed and students had to use libraries at other campuses in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Without central meeting areas, students who had before studied and socialized on campus now came on campus for classes and left. Later in the semester we were allowed back into our building to use the computers. The hallways were sealed off and thin blue chalk lines marked where X-rays had been taken to check the building’s internal structure for damage. The exposed cracks in the plaster walls reminded me of the nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty.
     Many memories of the earthquake's impact on the CSU, Northridge campus linger in my mind: the heat of the trailers before air conditioning arrived; the rain that turned fields into seas of mud; the constant drone of generators used to power the campus; the loss of Spring Break; the maze of raised plywood walkways that connected what seemed to be acres of trailers.
     Since the Spring of 1994 the campus has slowly begun to return to normal, but some departments and classes are still housed in trailers. Several major buildings are still closed, and the collapsed parking garage is now a grassy field. Some offices, personnel, and students are still displaced, but the campus has settled into a routine, working and studying around the inconveniences. It was devastating to have the campus torn apart by an earthquake, but it was inspiring to see the way students, faculty, and administrators responded to the crisis.

There are three main avenues for reducing losses from environmental hazards. These are broadly defined as modifying the hazard event, reducing human vulnerability, and sharing the losses. Depending on the hazard, any or all of these loss reduction strategies may be employed. In the following three sections we will look at each of these.

Modifying the Hazard

Modifying the hazard itself is the most problematic strategy for hazards loss reduction because we ultimately cannot control the physical forces of nature, although many societies have tried (and continue to try). Building dikes and seawalls to hold back the sea as the Dutch have done works for a limited time but in many cases has caused detrimental effects down-drift from the dike or seawall, actually aggravating the processes that such measures were meant to stop (i.e., beach erosion, flooding, and storm surges). If sea levels rise as a consequence of global warming, these dikes may also not be high enough to hold back the sea in future years. Beach nourishment (i.e., sand replenishment) is often used to maintain beaches along the US east coast, but beach erosion is commonplace and no matter how much sand is placed on the beach, it will eventually be lost. Under current projections of climate change, rising sea levels will accelerate coastal erosion.

Other hazard modification schemes have been attempted with more or (all too often) less success. These include cloud seeding experiments in the 1950s and 1960s to prevent the development of extreme low-pressure systems that cause high winds, severe downpours, and hail; flood abatement and diversion strategies; manipulation of surface and groundwater to induce small-scale seismic events to prevent the build-up of large physical strain, or to reduce frictional resistance within rocks in seismic zones; cooling, barring, or diverting of lava flows; and excavations, mass fillings, and drainage of soils and rocky substrates to prevent mass movements (selected from Smith 1992). Large-scale geo-engineering projects -- viewed by some as rather fantastic ideas -- have been proposed recently in the context of mitigation strategies for global climate change. These include replenishment of stratospheric ozone by shooting ozone into the stratosphere and the construction of huge space mirrors to reflect solar radiation back into space, thereby reducing solar input to the atmosphere and thus the warming of global temperatures.

For hazards originating in social and technological systems, the obvious strategies to reduce such threats in the first place are conflict resolution, ensuring social equity, improving on the safety of technologies or their usage, or doing without a product that has potentially hazardous effects. Not exclusively, but often with reference to technological hazards management systems, this type of modification is known as prevention. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, such as modifying the technology, preventing initiating events, or preventing outcomes. Modifying the technology could include a ban on the use a particular product (e.g., chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are suspected carcinogens and destroy stratospheric ozone). Preventing initiating events normally involves the use of redundant safety systems such as the secondary cooling systems found in most nuclear power plants. Even the best designed systems fail, however, as happened with the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979. Preventing outcomes includes a range of technological and design decisions that reduce contaminants at their point of origin such as scrubbers (which reduce the emissions of sulphur dioxide, a key contributing agent in causing acid rain) and other pollution prevention technologies.

As past experience with modifying environmental hazards has shown, the actions taken to prevent or lessen one hazard can actually create new hazards further down the line, in other geographic areas, in different ecological subsystems, or at a later point in time. Replacing certain CFCs with other CFCs and halons is an example. We do not know the environmental impacts of these replacement chemicals, but some have already proven to be even more destructive to the ozone layer than their predecessors. Along these same lines we need to ask what the environmental consequences of large-scale interventions like space mirrors would be. While a number of hazards probably can be modified and lessened without major rethinking of our interactions with nature and technology, other hazards (regardless of their origin or magnitude) may require a new ethic about living with nature and the use of technology. The past holds many lessons to remind us to be more cautious and to consider a long-term systems perspective in attempting to "manage" the environment and ourselves. For hazards originating in the social arena where preventive measures need to address conflicts, equity issues, and the allocation of rights and responsibilities, it seems we may need an even more deeply self-reflexive and cooperative spirit, something -- as we all know -- that is very hard to realize. Focus Issue 7 illustrates for one category of hazards how we have to rethink mitigation strategies and the ways in which we interact with the natural environment.

Reducing Human Vulnerability

Reducing human susceptibility to the adverse consequences of hazards/disasters is another way to decrease losses. This is the area where mitigation efforts are best applied. Strategies aimed at reducing vulnerability can be preventative or response-oriented, structural or nonstructural. As a preventative measure, for example, buildings can be made safer (e.g., improving engineering standards to make them more earthquake-resistant; enforcing building codes to heighten wind resistance, and elevating buildings or parts of buildings above flood stages). We can also reduce our vulnerability with non-structural pre-impact options such as emergency planning and preparedness. The development of better forecasting and warning systems drastically reduces the impact of some natural disasters on society (e.g., the losses of lives from hurricanes in the US). Combined forecasting and warning (and if necessary evacuation) systems are successful in lessening the impact of sudden onset, major life-threatening hazards such as floods, hurricanes, and tornados. We now have sophisticated radar-based forecasting systems for hurricanes and tornados that enable emergency managers to advise the public in a timely manner to get out of harm's way and/or take precautions.

Other pre-impact mitigation strategies for vulnerability reduction include land use regulations, planning, risk and hazards laws, and international treaties for hazards reduction and control (see Focus Issue 7 for a particular type of hazard that necessitates international treaties). In the US, pre-impact mitigation strategies include measures such as zoning ordinances and setbacks in coastal areas or floodplains to prevent people from building in highly vulnerable areas near the water's edge. In the United States, risk and hazards laws are intentionally designed to prevent human exposures and harm (Kirby 1990). Provisions included in the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Water Act, among others are all considered mitigation strategies for reducing pollution impacts. Also a large number of rules overseen by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are designed to ensure the safety of the workplace and the safety of food, food additives, and drugs respectively. Finally, there are quite a few international treaties for hazards reduction and control, ranging from the 1972 London Convention on Biological and Toxic Weapons to the 1989 Basel Convention on the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes to the 1992 Climate Change treaty (Cutter 1993). As many unfortunate examples of evasion of these laws by individual firms or nations indicate (Puckett 1994; Dowie 1996), legislation must be followed by compliance monitoring to ensure their effectiveness.

Response-oriented mitigation strategies to decrease human vulnerability are those that allow people to react more quickly to a disaster such that its impacts can be contained in space, time, and to a minimal number of affected sectors and populations. Regular training for emergency response personnel like fire fighters, state or federal emergency agents, Red Cross volunteers, or the US National Guard fall into this category of measures. Establishing well-coordinated emergency and evacuation plans work toward this end as well. Finally, streamlining and simplifying the bureaucratic procedures to apply for disaster assistance and low-interest loans to rebuild after a disaster have proven to be effective in helping disaster victims get on the track to recovery.

Focus Issue 7: Unstoppable? -- The Transboundary Nature of Hazards

     It is common to think of some natural hazards as being place specific -- San Francisco and earthquakes, Jamaica and hurricanes, the Philippines and volcanoes, and so on. Technological hazards, while not unique to any one place, may still be place-based. The effects of these events and the responses to them are usually localized, although some assistance may come from international sources. Some hazards, however, defy delineation by location. Hazards, such as acid rain or the nuclear radiation emanating from a disastrous accident at Chernobyl in 1986, have initiated risks that could not be stopped at political borders and hence have come to be known as transboundary hazards. Central to the issue of transboundary hazards is how to handle risks that are generated at one place, but have effects felt at another (Cutter 1993).
     The event at Chernobyl, Ukraine on April 25, 1986, was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history to date. More than 1,000 square miles surrounding the facility were contaminated following the explosion. The resulting radioactive fallout was spread across Europe, hundreds of miles from its source. At issue in instances like this is how people can respond to risks from areas over which they have no control (Gould 1990). The Chernobyl accident and concerns about acid rain prompted some changes in the international arena to define who is responsible and who should take steps to prevent their occurrence. Unfortunately, the vagaries associated with determining responsibility makes many cases difficult to prove.
     On a larger, global scale, one can also look to ozone depletion, deforestation, and global warming as transboundary threats. The use of CFCs predominantly in the industrialized northern hemisphere caused the loss of ozone worldwide. The unbridled cutting of vast parcels of rainforests in South America and Southeast Asia (mostly for the profit of multi-national corporations and local elites in developing countries) happens at the expense of global biodiversity, climate, and, of course, local people, native groups, and a cultural heritage from which we all benefit. The threat of global warming is brought about mainly by fossil fuel use in both developing and developed nations. Because the highly industrialized nations of the North are the largest contributors to total global carbon emissions, clearly what we do here can and does affect others there.
     The very nature of hazards and global environmental change requires that we pay serious attention to present and potential transboundary hazards. Global change issues such as global warming or stratospheric ozone depletion may be the largest transboundary hazards we will need to face. What they highlight -- besides the difficult scientific and legal aspects -- are most challenging ethical issues of responsibility and equity. It is through joint international efforts, using treaties as change mechanisms (which include goals, effective implementation, and enforcement mechanisms) along with local, individual diligence at creating safer environments, that transboundary issues might be resolved.

QUESTIONS:

Who should be responsible for overseeing the management of transboundary hazards -- the "causing" country, the affected country/ies, both, or an unaffected third country (if available)?
We can’t turn back the clock and simply stop all the activities that carry with them transboundary hazards. But can we do something to decrease the risk from such hazards?

Sharing the Losses

Insurance is the most widespread method of sharing the losses, especially in the United States and other developed nations. The basic idea is that many people pay a premium into a fund that will be paid out to those (presumably a smaller number of insurance holders) who have suffered losses from a disaster. Thus, many pay a comparatively small sum of money (in effect a "loss" of income) so that in the relatively unlikely case of a major loss from a hazard event, they don’t have to foot a financially devastating bill alone. Yet, homeowners who could obtain hazard insurance (for example, against earthquakes) frequently refuse to purchase it because they figure the yearly cost for the insurance is significantly higher than the risk of loss (Palm 1990). Unfortunately, increasing numbers of people are proven wrong in devastating ways. In certain instances, homeowners and businesses are required by law to obtain insurance or else they are not able to develop a piece of land or to obtain a mortgage or bank loan on their property. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program requires developers to comply with certain basic building standards that are designed to reduce the risk of damage from floods and storms.

After a series of enormously expensive disasters over the past ten years in which the national and international insurance industry suffered several billion-dollar losses, the industry is now grappling with how to continue coverage in particularly vulnerable areas and how to recover past and limit future losses from disasters (Adams 1992; Blanton 1993; Coakley 1993; Greenpeace 1993; Marley 1993; Linden 1994; Navarro 1996). Insurers see the writing on the wall; the potential effects of global warming (more frequent, more intense, or more widespread storms; sea level rise; heat waves and droughts; and widespread disease) have major insurance companies convinced that global change is here (Wilford 1993; Insurance Institute for Property Loss Reduction 1994; Deering 1994; Flavin 1994; Gordes 1996). Sea level rise, for example, would alter current floodplain delineations as the inland extent and frequency of flooding are expected to change, which would in turn would affect insurance coverage and rates.

At the heart of the insurance industry’s dilemma is whether to cut losses for the industry by limiting the number and extent of policies. In the case of major disasters, many insurance claims could result in the bankruptcy of the insurer, which in turn would result in losses for both the insurance industry and the individuals (with coverage on paper). Therefore, it is in the interest of both the insurers and the insured to find solutions that enable the industry to withstand the hazards posed by global change.

Economic incentives are an increasingly effective tool for managing technological risks, especially in the United States. Differential fee structures (i.e., fees for accepting locally generated versus non-locally generated waste) is one such mechanism. The intent of differential fee structures is to make it financially unattractive and thus more difficult simply to "get rid" of a hazardous material. Ultimately, this should lead to the reduction of hazardous materials at the source. Other economic incentives include "polluter pays" pollution prevention programs that start with the use of the private market to reduce risks. Consumer boycotts and consumer-driven demand for "environmentally friendly" products are additional market-driven strategies for sharing losses and reducing vulnerability that work by forcing businesses to offer "greener" and safer products.

Governmental relief operations authorized by disaster declarations is another way to mobilize the disaster response community and spread the financial and logistical burden across larger budgets and a larger number of people who can lend a helping hand, thereby facilitating immediate recovery for the affected communities. Internationally, the efforts of the transnational aid community such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies, Oxfam, Caritas Internationalis, Catholic Relief Services, World Council of Churches, Save the Children, UNDRO, and other agencies help share the burden of loss from the affected communities to the global community. In 1993, for example, more than US$3.2 billion was spent worldwide on humanitarian assistance by members of OECD (IFRC 1995).

Lastly, the use of the judicial system to seek monetary compensation for damages incurred from risks/hazards imposed on a person or community by others is yet another strategy for loss sharing in which "victims" are remunerated for the sins of industry or government. This, of course, assumes that all people have equal access to the judicial system and that they are treated with equal justice by arbitrating institutions, an assumption that is frequently challenged by political reality in both non-democratic and democratic societies.

Differential Adjustments

While the range of potential adjustments to hazards has increased over time, individual access to adjustments is more restricted now than in the past as a function of social class, income, gender, and life circumstances. Increasingly, nations and societies are more polarized between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, and divided by ethnic divisions or subcultures. The split between the "haves" and the "have nots" is widening within and among nations. Ultimately, the ability to respond to environmental hazards is constrained by these divisions.

Poverty and environmental degradation are often linked in creating an impoverishment- degradation spiral (e.g., Mellor 1988; Kates and Haarmann 1992; Watts and Bohle 1993). The driving forces behind environmental degradation are development/commercialization along with population growth and poverty. Natural hazards accelerate this process by destroying development efforts, disrupting social communities, consuming enormous amounts of money otherwise available for sustainable resource use and development, and restricting the use of remaining natural resources. Socioeconomic status plays a major role in individual and group opportunities for adjustments to these deteriorating conditions and in the recovery from hazards. Poverty restricts one's ability to maintain the simplest of adjustments (e.g., protective works) because of a lack of skill and sometimes labor to undertake the improvement, a lack of needed inputs for rebuilding, or a lack of access to education and thus knowledge of public programs for recovery. Without capital or power, poor people who often live on marginal lands to begin with, eventually get displaced from them, and begin a migratory odyssey as environmental refugees. In many countries, these refugees are mostly women and children, two subgroups who are often the least able to adjust to environmental hazards (Cutter 1995).

As discussed earlier, urbanization is one of the key processes that influence vulnerability to environmental hazards. Not only are the world's megacities becoming more populated, they are also situated in some of the most hazard-prone areas of the world -- along coastlines and in seismically active areas (Horlick-Jones 1995; Mitchell 1995; Nicholls 1995). Air pollution, toxic chemical contamination, and poor water quality add to these areas’ already difficult problems (Parker and Tapsell 1995). The elderly and children are most susceptible to air pollution episodes, be they in cities in the developing or developed world. Los Angeles, Mexico City, Beijing, Seoul, and Cairo fail to meet more than half of the World Health Organization's standards for air quality. Lead contamination is on the rise in cities in the developing world as the use of motor vehicles using lead-based fuel rises (lead -free gas is often more expensive). Furthermore, gentrification of older downtown city areas (a complex process involving inner city revitalization, housing stock renovation, and a concurrent displacement of lower-income residents by higher-income people) is exposing a new group of people to lead contamination, previously associated only with poor minorities. Societal trends like these require further exploration by hazard geographers (for a summary see Table 9 below).

Table 9: Contextual Factors Affecting Human Responses to Hazards/Disasters

Population

Economic Systems

Cultural Values

Built Environment

Social Diversity

Political Systems

Conclusion

Hazard reduction, as this unit has illustrated, is an achievable goal, yet at times will require profound changes in society. Table 10 lists ongoing social trends that either lessen or aggravate the impacts of hazards on society, though some of them may be seen as double-edged blessings; they can reduce or aggravate hazards, as for example, reliance on complex technological systems or migration. Strengthening the trends that lessen impacts and reversing those that aggravate them amounts to an enormous challenge. Geotechnical solutions (levees or seismic "proof" buildings) will provide some short-term relief, but may well exacerbate hazards in the future. Ultimately, nations must address why people live in hazardous environments in the first place, how they respond and adjust to environmental hazards, and what types of mitigation programs are appropriate and acceptable by the people for whom they are meant at the local and national level. Hazard reduction strategies will vary from region to region depending on the range of hazards that affect local places, people’s resources and access to them, and the opportunities that exist in any one case to integrate hazard mitigation with other development and planning efforts.

Table 10: Social Trends Affecting Environmental Risks and Hazards

Adapted and extended from Showalter et. al. 1993. *Natural hazard trends in the United States: A preliminary review for the 1990s.* Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center: University of Colorado at Boulder. ©1993 Natural Hazards Research and Applications Center. Pamela S. Showalter, William E. Riebsame, and Mary F. Myers.
*Lessening the Impacts* improved building technology better detection and warning systems improved health care systems improved environmental regulations environmentally sound development better understanding of risks and hazards improved educational opportunities	*Aggravating the Impacts* increased occupancy of hazard zones aging populations aging infrastructure increasing populations urbanization migration industrialization resource exploitation increasing poverty reliance on complex technological systems

While disasters capture our immediate attention when they happen, we must understand that hazards are in fact a part of our daily lives in order for hazard management to be effective. It is not only the extreme events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or mine explosions that we need to prepare for or avoid. We must instead take precautions from those hazards that are more prevalent, less visible, and less drastic, but still existent, hazards that we experience every day that involve the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.

After all, what affects us daily creates the circumstances from which we face the unusual; likewise, what we do every day, creates the kinds of situations that can become so very hazardous to us. Both affect what appears to us as a hazard, how we perceive it, how vulnerable we are to the hazard, how severe the impacts of it will be, and finally how able we are to adjust to it. This brings us back to where we started: hazards don’t occur in a societal vacuum, and they are never balls (dropped accidentally by God or nature) onto a level playing field.