The 20th century, especially in the second half, has been one of rapid
change in the Earth's environment. The impact of humans on the physical
form and functioning of the Earth have reached levels that are global in
character, and have done so at an increasingly mounting speed. 20 years
ago the environment was seen as posing a threat to the future of
humanity as death rates from natural hazards had increased dramatically
since the turn of the century. The Earth though has always been plagued
by natural disasters. Now, with the world population growing at a rapid
rate more people are living in hazard prone areas. Events which may
have gone unnoticed previously, only become hazards when there is
intervention with humans and their lifestyle. With the discovery of the
ozone hole in the 1980's attention was now more focused on the threat
humans were posing to the environment. With scientific evidence to back
up pessimistic predictions of our future, most people, through media
coverage, political pressures and general concern now see the
environment as being truly threatened by human progress and in
desperate need of help. Natural hazards have been defined as
" extreme geophysical events greatly exceeding normal human
expectations in terms of their magnitude or frequency and causing
significant damage to man and his works with possible loss of life."
(Heathcote,1979,p.3.). A natural hazard occurs when there is an
interaction between a system of human resource management and
extreme or rare natural phenomena (Chapman,1994). As McCall, Laming
and Scott (1991) argue, strictly speaking there is no hazard unless
humans are affected in some way. Yet the line between natural and
human-made hazards is a finely drawn one and usually overlapping.
Doornkamp ( cited in McCall et al, 1992) argues that many hazards are
human induced or at least made worse by the intervention of humans.
In the 1970's, natural hazards were an important subject of topical study,
as the nature of their impact on human populations and what they valued
was increasing in frequency at quite a rapid rate (Burton, Kates, White,
1978). During the 75 years after 1900 the population of the earth
increased by a staggering 2.25 billion people. People who needed land
on which to live and work. As the population rose people were dispersed
in more places and in larger numbers than before. The predominant
movement of people being from farm to town or city (Burton et al,1978.).
It is this growing world population, Burton et al (1978) suggest, that is the
main reason behind why hazards are increasing and were seen to pose
such a threat to humankind in the 70's. While the average number of
disasters remained relatively constant at about 30 per year, death rates
climbed significantly. As the growing world
population requires the cultivation of land more prone to hazards, more
people and property are thus exposed to the risk of disaster than ever
before, and as Stow (1992) argues, the death toll inevitably rises. An
example that shows the concern that humans faced from the environment
can be exemplified by the Bangladesh cyclone of 1970, which killed
approximately 250,000 people. Although part of the reason for so many
deaths can be put down to a then poorly understood process, land-use
can also be implicated. Because of a rising population, land in
Bangladesh was reclaimed by the government and held against the sea.
People in large numbers were then encouraged to occupy the area. An
area which turned out to be one of great risk. Major disruption was
inevitable Burton et al (1978) argue whenever population was in the path
of such forces. Had reasonable measures been taken in advance of the
storm, the material damage, loss of life and social dislocation could have
been seriously reduced. In the 1990's we live in an information age.
Today we have remarkable monitoring and predictive capabilities for
natural hazards. The use of advanced telecommunications and
emergency management, together with the exploitation of geographic
information systems in hazard mitigation has greatly reduced the extent
to which natural hazards are seen as a threat to people in the 90's
(Chapman et al, 1994). Loss of life and property from natural disasters
continue to rise though as the population of the world rises and puts more
demands on the environment for land resources. White (1974) argues
that environmental risk may be considered to be primarily a function of
the value systems of a society. How dangerous a natural hazard is, is not
measured in absolute terms but in how dangerous it is perceived to be.
20 years ago, technology hadn't advanced to the level at which natural
hazards could be properly understood and prepared for (Perry,1981).
Chapman (1994) argues that in technologically advanced societies we
have " greatly accepted the hazards inherent in the comforts of life that
technology provides and learned to live with hazards." (p.156).In the
1970's, using Heathcote's (1979) definition, "normal human expectations"
were lower than they are today therefore causing such concern for the
environmental threat to humans. 20 years ago it was the spectacular,
rapid onset, intensive hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, cyclones
and floods that caught the media headlines and caused concern for the
future of humankind from the environment. Today it is the slow onset,
pervasive hazards that have caught the attention of the whole world, and
in the long term pose more threat than the intensive hazards
(Chapman,1994). Space exploration has given us an awareness that it is
human activity that is contributing to this long term threat and the future of
the planet as a whole (McCall,1992). It has been suggested that when
the history of the 20th century is written, environmentalism will be judged
to be the single most important social movement of the period
(Brenton,1994). While the threat from humans to the environment has
been an issue for some time, the conflict has been sharpened by the
emergence of new concerns; ozone depletion, global warming, loss of
biological diversity and the destruction of the rainforests. Prior to the late
20th century the main insults to the environment were evident, people
could see smog and pollution and notice animals missing from the
forests. These new issues involve a new type of danger to the
environment (Suzuki,1990). Dangers which are much less visible and
often will not materialise for years to come. It is primarily because of
scientific predictions that we know about them and without science would
have probably gone largely unrecognised until it was too late for action to
be taken (McKibben,1989). These new dangers are ones that can be
measured and enumerated by scientists. The belief that the earth has
been seriously damaged and is being damaged more rapidly than ever
before is a far more prevalent and respectable belief than ever before. It
is a belief that is growing in popularity (Meyer and Turner,1995). Johnson,
Tayor and Watts (1995) point out that: " increasingly the
assumption that the earth is being improved requires a
defence and an explanation, while the assumption that it is
being dangerously degraded requires none." (p.304).Coping
with global environmental change has come to appear one of
humankinds most pressing problems. Perhaps the most powerful
representative of this new 'global consciousness' has been as Brenton
(1994) suggests, the 'Earthrise' photograph taken by the Apollo II in 1969.
As people are able to see the earth as a whole for the first time, they are
also able to see more clearly that which ecologists have always stated,
that everything on the earth is tied to everything else (Pearce,1995).
Since it's capture , the 'earthrise' photograph has been extensively
exploited by exponents of the 'fragile planet' view of the human
experience. Between 1970 and 1990 global population rose from 3.7
billion to approximately 5.3 billion people. Energy consumption grew even
faster, while nuclear production of electricity rose twentyfold. The number
of vehicles more than doubled and by the early 1990's people were
consuming about 40% of the entire global 'natural product' from the
photosynthesis of plants (Brenton,1994). Tropical rainforests have been
devastated and the productivity of more than 1.2 million hectares of land
has been lowered by human activities. 20% of the CO2 in the atmosphere
has been put there by humans, largely through C.F.C production, and it
has been C.F.C's that have created one of the most disturbing changes
to the environment, that of the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer
and the theory of global warming (McKibben,1987). Ozone is a
molecule of oxygen, made up of three oxygen atoms and it's existence is
essential for many life supporting systems. Ozone occurs at two levels in
the atmosphere; the stratosphere and the troposphere. In the
stratosphere it is concentrated into the 'ozone layer', and it is this
concentration that protects the earth from U.V radiation from the sun,
taking out 90% of U.V rays. It's depletion was first recognised in 1985,
when a gaping hole was found over Antarctica. By 1989 it became clear
that C.F.C's and halons were indisputably implicated in the collapse over
Antarctica, that ozone had diminished over heavily populated areas of the
world and that further significant depletion would occur if extreme action
was not taken to stop ozone-depleting substances (Kevies,1992).
Apprehension of global warming on the other hand, rests on the theory
that high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere trap radiation reflected
from the earth, creating a 'greenhouse effect'. This then leads to an
increase in temperature in the region close to the planets surface. The
current attention given to the climatic impacts of CO2 owes much to the
weather of the 1980's (Schnieder,1989). The 80's were already the
warmest on record, when the hot spring and summer of 1988 came
along, bringing with it drought, crop disasters and fire hazards. Suddenly
the 'greenhouse effect' was given major consideration by Press front
pages, T.V networks, celebrity benefits and in political circles. Schnieder
(1989) notes that in 1988, nature did more for the notoriety of global
warming in 15 weeks than anyone else was able to do for the previous 15
years. How much of this warming is due to an increase in CO2 though
and what the actual consequences will be is a debatable subject
(Pearce,1995). Although climatic change is occuring, why it's occuring is
not known for certain. Pearce (1995) argues though, that even if the
science of global warming turns out to be incorrect, it is not worth the risk
to do nothing about it. McKibben (1990) declares that to doubt that the
warming will happen because it hasn't yet appeared is" like arguing that
a woman hasn't yet given birth and therefore isn't pregnant." (p.12). As
the 20th century draws to a close, a general awareness is spreading
around the globe that human activity can and is causing serious damage
to the environment. Slogans such as 'think locally,act globally' and 'the
earth is one but the world is not' adhere to the principal that, everything is
tied to everything else. Problems on land become problems at sea and in
the environment. Humans now realise that it is they that pose the threat
to the environment, rather than the environment being a threat to
humanity. The danger is shining through the sky, with overwhelming
evidence that the earths ozone layer is being destroyed by human-made
chemicals far faster than any scientist had predicted. The threat is no
longer just to the future, the threat is here and now.
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. land more prone to hazards, more
people and property are thus exposed to the risk of disaster than ever
before, and as Stow (1992) argues, the death toll. encouraged to occupy the area. An
area which turned out to be one of great risk. Major disruption was
inevitable Burton et al (1978) argue whenever population