Disasters Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Disasters Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

A disaster is a serious disruption of society that causes human suffering, and damage to built and natural environments so extensive that the affected communities cannot recover through the use of their own resources. Disasters have traditionally been divided into two groups: natural and man-made. They can also be classified according to their speed of onset, as either sudden or slow.

Man-made disasters are the direct consequence of human action and involve some aspect of human intention, negligence, or error. Technological disasters include transport, industrial, and structural accidents. Two of the greatest man-made industrial disasters occurred in the 20th century: the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984 and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Man-made disasters may also include ecological disasters in which human actions damage ecosystems, often in a way that threatens human communities, and disasters caused by wars and civil conflict.

Natural disasters occur when a vulnerable community suffers casualties or damages from a natural hazard. These are normally-occurring events in the environment which have the potential to harm human communities. They can be divided into meteorological and hydrological hazards (cold waves and heat waves, extreme storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, flood), geological hazards (earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, volcanoes) and biological hazards (epidemics and infestations).

Natural or Man-Made?

The distinction between natural and man-made disasters has become increasingly blurred as it is recognized that there is a strong human component in all disasters. Some hazards are clearly “natural,” such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcanic eruptions. Their negative impact on communities, however, can be aggravated by human actions. An earthquake can trigger a disaster only if communities are built in seismic zones and if building construction is not adapted to earthquake activity. The loss of lives and property and the social dislocation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 was exacerbated by a range of human actions. The primary aggravating factor in the losses suffered in New Orleans, for example, was the historical development of large sections of a city in an area two meters below sea level.

Other disasters can be the indirect consequence of human action. Flooding can be caused or intensified by deforestation and the destruction of wetlands. Droughts and the famines that follow them are caused by global variations in climate but also by deforestation, overgrazing, and the excessive use of rivers and aquifers for irrigation.

Disasters have social and environmental consequences. The direct economic costs of a disaster are generally measured in the number of casualties and the expense of re-establishing property and infrastructure. The intangible social costs include the disruption of societies caused by the exodus of evacuees from a disaster zone or intensified competition for limited resources.

The poor and disenfranchised in a community are more likely to suffer the adverse effects of disasters because they lack the resources to effectively prepare for them or recover from them. Similarly, wealthier countries have more resources with which to respond to disasters within their borders than do developing countries. Disaster impact comparisons based on insured losses can be misleading, as poorer nations have less infrastructure and capital exposure. Slowonset disasters, such as drought or famine, sometimes do not appear in such analyses at all.

The ecological losses that can result from disasters, such as the destruction of habitats or the loss of wildlife, are not easy to quantify and are seldom factored into impact studies of disaster events. Disturbance ecology teaches that floods, fires and other natural disruptions are essential to the dynamics of ecosystems. Naturally occurring fires are part of the life cycle of forests and maintain a vigorous biodiversity. River ecosystems require periodic flooding to remain healthy. The natural capacity of ecosystems to withstand or even thrive after such natural disruptions can be severely diminished by human actions. Degraded forests are more prone to fire and insect infestation. Removing wetlands, dunes, and mangroves from coastal areas increases the damage caused by ocean storms and tsunamis. Eroded hillsides are more vulnerable to flooding.

One of the prime reasons why statisticians show an increase in the number of disasters in recent decades is the massive increase in human populations living in hazard areas. Global warming may also increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and cause increased flooding and ocean storm surges, as well as fatal heat waves. Recent research suggests a possible correlation between sea surface temperature in the key areas of cyclone birth in the North Atlantic and the annual intensity of cyclones.

Bibliography:

Janet Abramovitz, Unnatural Disasters (Worldwatch Institute, 2001);
Mark Pelling, , Natural Disasters and Development in a Globalizing World (Routledge, 2003);
Ted Steinberg, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford University Press, 2000).