Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Areas of the world prone to natural disasters
Certain parts of the world are more likely to suffer natural disasters: seismically
and volcanically active areas, those subject to hurricane or tornado, typhoon or
tsunami, drought, flooding, avalanche, landslide, sudden frost or intense storms.
There are probably areas more likely to be affected by warfare and social difficulties.
These threats can be recorded on a hazards map or database. It is also possible to
map things that are especially vulnerable to disruption by, say, pollution damage,
frost, or erosion. Hazardous industry or power generation and potential military
targets can also be mapped. These maps can be overlaid or fed into a GIS to assess
cumulative risks.
Environmental problems and developing countries
At the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment problems of the
environment were widely regarded in poor countries as matters for developed nations,
as they were too poor to afford the luxury of worrying, and anyway ‘the rich were to
blame’. Until roughly 1985 it was common for developing countries to suspect calls
to protect the environment of being a ploy to hold back their development and continue
their dependency or to withhold aid. Virtually all developing countries would now
accept that there are environmental problems which require attention (Schramm and
Warford, 1989). The nature and causes of the problems and the cure for them are
often less than clear.
Developing countries have tremendous diversity of environment, style of
government, administration, historical background, degree of poverty, etc. Many
have handicaps associated with being tropical: e.g. no season cold enough to
kill pest organisms; soils that are often infertile and difficult to manage without
causing environmental degradation; intense storms (Huntington, 1915; Ooi,
1983:2; Kates and Haarmann, 1992). Adams (1990:6–8) suggested developing
countries faced a double crisis: a crisis of development and a crisis of
environment. The first of these involves debt, falling commodity prices and
poverty. The second is the result of global environmental change, the impacts
of resource exploitation.

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