In the last decades more than two billions people have been affected by disaster. The loss of lives and livelihood is immense, and the economic effect on a country’s development is considerable. Economic losses attributed to natural disaster have risen to more than 100 millions US dollars per year in the last few years from only one billion dollars per year in the 1960’s according to the natural hazards report, about 40 to 50 billion at the start of 1960’s.
Nearly three-quarters of these losses result from storms, floods and drought. While there is evidence that disaster losses can be attributed to climatic and environmental change due to human actions, rising population number and migration to areas at greater risk is contributing to the ever increasing loss of life and livelihood in the frequency of disaster, particularly in the last decades.
Disasters are routinely divided into natural and man-made, although complex disasters, where there is no single root cause, are more common in developing countries. A specific disaster may spawn a secondary disaster that increases the impact.
A natural disaster is the consequence of; when a potential natural hazard becomes a physical event (e.g. volcanic, eruption, earthquakes, and landslide …) and this interacts with human activities. Human vulnerability, caused by the lack of planning, lack of appropriate emergency management (disaster management) or the event being unexpected, leads to financial, structural, and human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability”.
Disasters having an element of human intent, negligence, error or the ones involving the failure of a system are called man-made disasters. Man-made hazards are in turn may be categorized as technological. Technological hazards are results of failure of technology, such as engineering, infrastructures failures, transport accidents or environmental hazard. Green house gasses which are producing by human activities which is a major cause of global warming. This has a dramatic direct and indirect effect on the every components of ecosystems specially water resources. However we exactly don’t know how global warming will affect water resources, it is clear that water resources are already stressed. Some areas are badly flooded because of heavy rain and some places are suffering from drought because of less raining is an everyday hot news in the world, which are reasons of current instability of water regimes and it is serious impact and proved evidence of global warming. Due to production of greenhouse gasses and other human activities and that all are caused for a natural and man-made hazard. And flooding is prevalent in every corner of the world today.
As mentioned above that disasters are unwanted event and it has many kinds and it will happen every where due to geographical, geological location and ever increasing human population and their activities. What is very important that how we can manage global and ecological disaster, specially flooding?
Hope the Blogger participants will share their understanding, ideas and experiences.
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6 comments:
Responding to Yamin's Article:
"Around 5 million people, in 2 million properties, live in flood risk areas in England and Wales.We can't prevent flooding entirely, but what we can do is manage floods, which means reducing the likelihood of them occuring in the first place, and minimising impact.Changes in our climate, such as more severe storms and wetter winters, will increase that risk"(http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/).
"Through flood risk management, we can reduce the probability of flooding from rivers and the sea through the management of land, river systems, and flood and coastal defences. We also work to reduce the damage floods can do through effective land use planning, flood warning and emergency responses"(http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/flood/).
But this is not only the case all over the world.The South Asian countries are the most hit by flood and alike othre environmental disasters.And we also lack technologies and resources to manage the aftermath.
Floods can also occur when rainwater collects on the ground and cannot find a source to drain into. A typical example is surface water run-off (for example, if you are located at the bottom of a hill or slope of ground). Localised flooding mainly happens when the ground cannot absorb any more water in a particular area, or if sewers and underground drains become blocked or cannot cope with the excess water trying to drain into them.
On the other hand drought is a period or condition of unusually dry weather within a geographic area where rainfall is normally present.Drought usually results in a water shortage that seriously interferes with human activity. Water-supply reservoirs empty, wells dry up, and crop damage occurs. Its seriousness depends on the degree of the water shortage, size of area affected, and the duration and warmth of the dry period.In many underdeveloped countries, such as India, people place a great demand on
water supply. During a drought period there is a lack of water, and thus many of the poor die.Although drought cannot be reliably predicted, certain precautions can be taken in drought-risk areas. These include construction of reservoirs to hold emergency water supplies, education to avoid overcropping and overgrazing, and programs to limit settlement in drought-prone areas.We can take one example as the Southern Africa Development Community monitors the crop and food situation in the region and
alerts the people during periods of crisis (Team 16132, Google Search on 21/08/2007).
Again the profound climate change consequences are upon the people in developing countries.The question now is not whether the climate changes but what to do about it.The answer is clear. We need to cut the emissions of
greenhouse gases.We also strictly need to assess the implications of the changes.
Although drought cannot be reliably predicted, certain precautions can be taken in
drought-risk areas. These include construction of reservoirs to hold emergency water supplies, education to avoid overcropping and overgrazing, and programs to limit settlement in drought-prone areas.
So the account of natural disaster is an unavoidable everyday event throughout the world nowadays.But we can make a change if we are determined to.
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In response to Yamin, Akompab says,
A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard which moves into active phase as a result affects human activities (Bankoff et al 2003).A disaster therefore occurs when a hazard meets vulnerability. Natural disasters can be classified as geological, hydrological or climatic. Geological disasters include earthquakes, landslides, lahars, volcanic eruption, hydrological disasters are floods, tsunamis, sieche and climatic hazards include hurricanes, typhones, tropical cyclones (Wisner et al 2004)
The effects of natural disasters, cause enormous impacts on the environment and society. This may include loss of life and property including infrastructure, loss of ecological diversity, the introduction of disease which may be fatal and a general destruction of the economy. Considering the above effects, it is important that the proper management of disasters be put into place.
Disaster management involves addressing and event that has the potential to seriously destroy the social fabric of the community.This implies that, a whole of government approach to using community resources to fight the effects of an event and assumes the community will be self sufficient for a period of time until the situation is stabilized.
According to Mistroll (2005), five key elements are involved in disaster management. These include; harzard identification and risk assessment, applied research and technological transfer, public awareness by training and education by community training and local broadcasting, generating leadership and coordination, mobilize resources including communication and rehabilitation and post disaster construction.
It should be noted that, the management strategies varies for each natural disaster. This involves prevention, preparedness, and relief. For example in floods management, prevention includes land maps and local rainfall measurements and mapping of flood damage and extends of floods (Rao 2003)
Therefore as a continuation of the paradigm shift process a comprehensive disaster management programme have to be designed to mitigate the effects created by these disasters.
In response to Yamin, GLOBAL DISASTERsal ,In one way,when the natural system is exploited in different ways by the human being..Its a more or less like a reaction to the previous action. However some disasters are unavoidable, eg:earth quackes, Tsunamis.. But to reduce the unpleasant bad effect ,nature itself plays an incredible role in several ways.If we keep the balance in using natural system.
With this increasing trend of global disaster, It has been clearly experienced that ,even world leader countries are helpless., mostly thsee are beyond the human control. However Disaster management is one of the top prioritize global topic in world environment.
In Disaster management. program, Each year the U,S, government provide billions of dollars in aid to regions impacted by disasters,These may include severe thunder storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis ,buzzards ,flooding, volcano ash plumes ,wildfires and earthquakes.
According to the NASA, community planners need to access to the most accurate and timely environmental information that is available to help them responde to these extreame events. They need to know how vulnerable their jurisdictions are to any of these phenomena in order to plan for proper response.They also need advanced warning to know when extreame weather events will occur ,so that they can minimize their impact on society.(NASA-science,July.2005)
Correct forcast and predictions of natural phenomena are vitally important to allow for proper evacuation and damage mitigation strategies.
Specially earth science based solutions are needed to improved decision support systems. These systems are being developed to address human life and property damage, meet the requirement of planners, early warning systems, first responders and contribute to impact assessment, risk communication, mitigation and implementation of relief efforts.
Ultimate task should be a more holistic approach to coordinate the world to be the strengthen enough to face to these incidenc
Ultimate task should be a more holistic approach to coordinate the world to be the strengthen enough to face to these incidenc with the least damage .
In response to Yamin's question focusing on how to better manage flood disasters, a new paradigm for some developing countries has become well established in the past few years (and many developing countries are also following suit). This new paradigm is referred to as "living with flood" as opposed to managing or controlling flood.
In the flood prone country of Bangladesh, after many attempts to control the rivers, the notion of "living with floods" has lead to a concept known as "flood proofing." In flood proofing, individual homesteads, and in some cases, whole villages are raised above flood levels, allowing floods to pass (RTI and EGIS, 2000). Flood proofing is a cost-effective alternative to river bank protection that has proven to be both costly and failure prone. The fields also benefit from the periodic flooding, which stimulates the release of nutrients(World Bank, 2003). http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESSD/ardext.nsf/11ByDocName/ControllingorLivingwithFloodsinBangladesh/$FILE/BANGLADESH_final_format.pdf)
The Mekong delta in Vietnam is another area where "living with flood" concepts are taking hold. There, “Living with flood” is understood as the integrated solutions for adaptation" including human life and property (Tuan, et al, 2007). In the Mekong, they are now concerned with the environmental impacts of protection works and are exploring less harmful interventions in a more holistic context.
In the Netherlands, they have broadened the approach to "living with water", and this includes broad spatial planning related to water resources and flooding (http://www.levenmetwater.nl/text_templ?mm=4&sm=26). In some cases, they have decided to float their houses, which is perhaps the ultimate adaptation to climate change related flooding. (http://www.ecoboot.nl/artikelen/floating_houses.php)
A better understanding of meteorology, flooding, drainage, and water resources is allowing improved warning systems and guiding creative solutions to the "living with floods" paradigm. As they say, it's always good to get to know your neighbors; it makes it easier to live with them. Flooding is the new neighbor that many countries now have to learn to live with.
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