Download Why Learn About Natural Disasters?

Why Study
Environmental
Geology?
Poorna Pal,
MS MBA Ph.D.
Professor of Geology
Chair: Geology & Oceanography
Program
Glendale Community College
Disaster mitigation has become
a socioeconomic necessity because of
increasing
– Fatalities
– damage and destruction
 an increasingly complex task because of
intricate public policy choices

in addition to the perennial problems of
a seemingly insatiable demand for the
natural resources and
 the attendant problems of environmental
degradation and climate change.

Fatalities
Since the 1970s, natural disasters
have produced two-thirds of all
disaster-related fatalities worldwide.
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Fatalities are more common in the
economically less developed Third
World than in the economically
developed world.
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Disasters*
by type: 1971-96
High wind: 21%
Man-made
disasters: 34%
Total
Fatalities
worldwide:
(1971-96)
8,219,000
Flood: 19%
Other natural
disasters: 21%
Volcanoes: 1%
Earthquakes: 8%
Landslides: 3% Drought & Famine: 6%
* International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (The Economist, Sept 6, 1997)
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DISASTER FATALITIES* (1971-96: IN THOUSANDS)
0
4
8
12
16
ETHIOPIA
48.4 MOSTLY FAMINE
BANGLADESH
31.9
MOSTLY FLOODS
CHINA
SUDAN
MOSTLY MASS STARVATION
MOSTLY FLOODS
INDIA
MOZAMBIQUE
NICARAGUA
IRAN
PHILIPPINES
SOVIET UNION/CIS STATES
COLUMBIA
GUATEMALA
SOMALIA
* International Federation of Red Cross
HONDURAS
and Red Crescent Societies
PERU
(The Economist, Sept 6, 1997)
MEXICO
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NIGERIA
Changes, in this century, in the number of
deaths and cost of damage, in U.S. hurricanes
(cost in billion 1996$)
Deaths
Damage
Source: Harvey Blatt: OUR GEOLOGIC ENVIRONMENT (Prentice Hall, 1997)
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The Complexities of Disaster
Mitigation Strategies

Predictive value of the scaling law
and its implications for the publicpolicy choices.
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
Population Growth, Technology and
Environmental Stress
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Floods
Number of events per year
10
The U.S. 20th Century
Natural Disaster FatalityFrequency Plots
Tornadoes
1
Hurricanes
0.1
Earthquakes
0.01
1
10
100
1,000
10,000
This exponential scaling
gives us three alternative
choices



Flatten the curve
Steepen the curve
Lower the intercept
All indexed to 1920 = 1
50
World Stock
Gross World
Market2
Product1
10
World
Population1
5
1
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
J. Bradford DeLong: http://econ161.berkeley.edu/
2 P. Jorion & W. Goetzmann: Journal of Finance, 54(3), June 1999
1
2000
2020
10000
World Population
(in million)
1000
100
1000
10
1
100
10000
1000
100
10
Years Before the Present
1
GDP, per capita, in inflation
adjusted 2000 PPP$
10000
(per million inhabitants)
Earthquake fatalities,
100
4
10
2
1
0.1
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
0
2000
World population (in billions)
6
Economic prosperity and energy
consumption are closely correlated
Energy consumption
(in terrajoules)
100
USA
Russia
10
1
0.1
0.01
India
Brazil
France
Italy
U.K.
Mexico
Saudi Arabia
Spain
Netherlands
Australia
Sweden
Norway
Swtizerland
Singapore
0.1
China
Germany
Japan
1
GDP (PPP) in trillion US $
10
… and so are economic prosperity
and carbon emmissions
(billion tons C equivalent)
Total Emission
3
USA
1
China
Russia
0.3
Japan
Germany
Ukraine
Poland
0.1
Australia
India
Canada
U.K.
Kazakstan
Italy
France
South
Brazil
North
South
Africa
Mexico
Korea
Korea
Iran
0.03
0.03
0.1
0.3
1
3
GDP (PPP) in trillion US $
10
diversions (billion m 3/yr)
Flow of Colorado River below all major dams and
Colorado River
40
United States
30
Mexico
20
10
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
Sandra Postel: Forging a Sustainable Water Strategy (STATE OF THE WORLD 1996: Worldwatch Institute , 1996)
80
Stream Flow into Aral Sea (billion m
3
/year)
Drying of the Aral Sea
Aral Sea
60
40
20
0
1940
1960
1980
2000
Sandra Postel: Forging a Sustainable Water Strategy (STATE OF THE WORLD 1996: Worldwatch Institute , 1996)
Thus, the environmental stress
attendant to population growth
presents a catch-22 situation:

Poverty and deprivation enhance
environmental stress.

But this stress is only aggravated
by the technology that is needed
to ameliorate the deprivation.