Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
for the first time in 2012, estimating that 2 million deaths a year are probably due to
air pollution in East and South Asia alone. Yet this focus on the danger from envi-
ronmental events should not be allowed to disguise the fact that the loss of life and
injuries from other human activities are often far higher—the most obvious being
automobile accidents. For the world as a whole the latest U.N. report of Road Safety
(United Nations
2009
) calculated there were 1.3 million deaths annually due to road
accidents and 20-50 million non-fatal injuries, with many not formally recorded,
issues dealt with in the Healthy City discussion (Chap. 13), which also briefly deals
with other threats to human safety, such as those posed by biological causes.
93
Natural Hazards Effects
Obviously not all extreme natural events are as catastrophic as the examples already
described; they vary and have differential effects on the areas and settlements af-
fected. They can only be considered as creating human disasters when they involve
significant loss of life or destruction of property and infrastructure. One major dif-
ference comes from variations in their
incidence
, for not all of these potential haz-
ards apply in all regions. For example, the threat of earthquakes and volcanoes is
concentrated in areas where tectonic plates separate or collide, especially the so-
called 'ring of fire' around the Pacific, while urban places on rivers and sea shores
are under particular threat from floods. Yet settlements in some countries, especially
Japan and Indonesia, are more prone than the majority to natural disasters, because
of a combination of features, such as regular earthquakes, active volcanoes and long
seashores frequently affected by many tropical storms. Some low-lying countries
are especially at risk from floods. For example, the Netherlands has 60 % of its
population and 65 % of their Gross National Product generated in areas located in
flood-prone areas adjoining rivers or shorelines, for much of the inhabited area has
been reclaimed from the sea or from marshes. Recent reports of the Bangladesh
area suggest that one fifth of the five million delta residents will probably become
refuges by 2050 due to rising sea levels, more tidal surges, increased salinity, pol-
lution from the rivers and the loss of protective coastal mangrove swamps (PW
2012
). Settlements in northern climes have to regularly cope with large winter snow
accumulation and storms, while the intense downpours associated with monsoons
are regular potential hazards in Asian tropical lands.
The
spatial impacts
of these natural events also show very considerable varia-
tions. Although the most obvious destructive effects are local, some may have re-
gional or sub-continental impacts. The large tsunamis triggered by the Indian Ocean
earthquake of Boxing Day 2004, that involved slippage along an estimated 1600 km
north-south fault belt from just off the Sumatra coast to the Andaman islands, dev-
astated the local shores of Sumatra and southern Thailand, destroying many coastal
settlements. But these tsunami waves also spread across the ocean and obliterated
many settlements in eastern Sri Lanka, so the total death rate in the region could
have been as high as 100,000 people. However it is the large explosive volcanic
