Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
9.7.3
Risk Reduction Policies
This stage involves creating policies to upgrade deficiencies revealed in the physi-
cal and human capacities to cope with risks from natural hazards. Although these
improvements can be derived directly from the Initial Knowledge Domain, it is
often found that a
catalyst
to change comes from the impacts of a previous natural
disaster, which proved to be so calamitous that a new attitude towards risk-reduc-
tion occurs in the general population and in the decision-making structures of cities
or indeed nations. For example, Winnipeg, Canada, had suffered from major floods
for years, given its location on a flood plain at the junction of the northward flow-
ing Red and Assiniboine rivers. But the 1950 floods were far worse than usual with
10,000 homes destroyed, 100 thousand people evacuated and an estimated damage
of $ 125 million—probably a billion dollars in contemporary money. Opposition
from conservative forces meant that it took until 1959 before a decision was taken
to build the Winnipeg floodway around the city to divert high flood waters. In other
situations a major disaster may create public pressure that leads to policies that have
effects beyond the area affected. For example, a landside from a coal spoil tip lo-
cated on the steep valley slope above the mining village of Aberfan in South Wales
in 1966 rapidly covered an elementary school that lay immediately below it, killing
116 children and 28 teachers. It had been known for years that valley-side tips were
unstable and there were many examples of parts of tips slumping down slopes.
But the exceptionally heavy rainfall of previous weeks had essentially saturated the
overextended tip, compromising its stability, leading much of it to collapse quickly
and without warning down the steep valley side. The resultant outcry led the gov-
ernment to remove all coal tips on slopes in Britain, a task completed in subsequent
years—one that should have been made years earlier. So it took the sacrifice of over
a hundred young lives, blighting a generation in the coal-mining community, for a
long overdue reaction to prevent future natural processes working upon the careless
storage of coal waste.
A more general example of creating new attitudes to the risks of natural hazards
can be seen in new policies being applied in the developing world. Overseas De-
velopment experts now insist that all new projects involving outside help, whether
financial or technical, should incorporate resilience to natural disasters into their
plans, as well as their implementation, something that was rarely done even two
decades ago. Moreover, municipalities are increasingly taking a more pro-active
approach, identifying the deficiencies in the existing local level of preparedness to
cope with some major natural hazard
before
a disaster occurs, often learning from
other jurisdictions, or from advice provided by international organizations such as
UNISDR and Oxfam. Finally, it is worth noting that although the list of require-
ments in subsequent sections may seem enormous, and beyond the resources of
many urban places in developing countries, it has been found that relatively small
improvements can produce major returns, especially in the human sphere. For ex-
ample, the powerful storm, labelled Sidr in November 2007 that affected the flood
and cyclone-prone delta lands of impoverished Bangladesh killed around 4000
people. Although a tragedy, it was a huge improvement over the consequences of