Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and her lawyer against the toxic emissions from a chrome plant in New York state
revealed wide-spread denial and cover-ups before liability was accepted, events that
led to a major film based on her name. This led to more stringent safeguards against
pollution from industrial sources.
Perhaps more dangerous in their long term impact are the human mistakes that
have led to explosions in nuclear plants, not simply from the direct loss of life in-
volved, but from the subsequent abandonment of large areas around nuclear plants
because of radiation dangers, and the longer term cancer victims who were exposed
to radiation. The worse modern example is the 31 km exclusion zone around Cher-
nobyl (Ukraine) following the 1986 explosion that led to the abandonment of the
town of Pripyat, and rural communities in the zone, which will take centuries for
radio-activity levels to drop. This disaster was due to human error alone. Yet even
after this experience, safety standards are not always as strong as they could be, as
seen in the limited attention paid to the site of the Fukishima nuclear plant on a vul-
nerable sea shore and the ill-considered location of its back-up generators. On 11th
March 2011 the plant was partially destroyed when a large tsunami wave from a
large offshore earthquake destroyed the generators controlling pressure and cooling
which led to explosions in the reactor, although brave work by a small number of
engineers managed to partially control the damage. However, enough radio-activity
escaped to contaminate surrounding areas, which led to a 20 km exclusion zone
around the area. Official reports on the disaster show that there were poor safety
standards and monitoring at the plant, as well as subsequent cover-ups by the gov-
ernment and the company owners. Concern about nuclear safety has increased dras-
tically around the world, despite the recognition that many of the problems could
have been prevented. It has led several countries to review their nuclear power poli-
cies and some, such as Germany, have started to close down their nuclear plants,
although other countries are still committed to the power source.
96
Trends in Risk Reduction Policies
Four major approaches have been identified as reducing the level of risk and im-
pact of disasters (Smith and Petley
2009
). The first approach, involves
engineering
solutions, as seen in the building of embankments and dams to reduce floods. An-
other, initially associated with the natural hazard school of geography (White
1945
,
1974; Kates
1978
), focuses upon how
human behaviour
helps cause or magnify the
disaster, such when poor risk perception allows development in flood plains. The
developmental
emphasis came from the recognition that the size of many disasters
was a consequence of increased human vulnerability due to uneven development
processes, especially in large, unplanned and poor urban areas (Wisner et al.
2004
).
More recently, a
complexity
approach (Smith and Petley
2009
, p. 8) has emerged,
one that focuses on resolving problems by understanding the many interconnec-
tions of nature and society that underlie disasters. This complexity approach can be
extended to incorporate research from a more
community-based focus
on the effect
