Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
9.7 Social and Human Dimensions of Risk
Human society in its development has approached the state when correlation
between processes in the environment and social organization of the society reaches
critical values at which the behavior of even one man can drastically change the
global processes. For instance, Tony Blair declared in November 2005 at the
meeting of 20 countries in London that the Kyoto Protocol should be reconsidered
and that science will find the ways to resolve the global warming problem. He also
said that politically no country wants to sacri
ce its economy to resolve the
problem. Other ways of its solution should be found, which would not restrict
the economic growth and keep a check on the processes of life improvement in the
world. It is this statement of one man that opens up ways to search mechanisms of
raising the living standards and poverty eradication.
According to Letz (2000), humankind has crossed the threshold of systems
adaptation, which makes it possible to damp out deviations from acceptable values
of NSS parameters and to preserve the habitat; therefore, immediate measures are
needed on formation of a new view of the processes in the environment. Especially
it concerns a technocratic paradigm which determines the decisions and respective
mentality of national leaders. Therefore, the socio-political constituent of risk is
very important in its evaluation and determination of the task for the society to
prevent damage from potential consequences of the made decisions. Among the
problems to be resolved by government authorities,
the following are most
important:
reduction of the level of risk of the social vital activity due to public policy in
the sphere of neutralization of negative processes in the environment;
an increase of the socio-political stability of the society by formation of insti-
tutional and informative conditions for preparation of population to actions
under extreme circumstances;
an increase of mobilization capabilities of the society for preventive and ade-
quate response to originating threats;
development of the legal basis and respective structures to meet the conse-
quences of extreme events and disasters of natural and technogenic origin.
As Churin (2005) noted, the social processes in the modern society have no
purpose-oriented control, and therefore it is dif
cult to evaluate the risk of decision
making. The interconnection of social and natural processes practically in all
regions of the planet is determined by their interactivity. Therefore, regulation of
social processes inevitably tells upon the functioning of natural systems, and this
certainly leads to a necessity to develop legal mechanisms for transition to sus-
tainable development.
A decision on the level of potential risk of possible change in the environment
can be made on the basis of analysis of pre-history of such events and using the
methods of prediction of natural events. As a rule, risk assessment methods are
based on statistical processing of data on parameters of the processes whose
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