Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the more developed countries as a consequence of the advent of post-industrial
society. For instance, Vila Parisi, a favela (slums) in Cubatao (Brazil) was a site of
one of major industrial accident on February, 1984, becoming a sort of case-study,
almost an emblem (
“
the chemical dirtiest town in the world
”
) of the
“
destructive
powers of the developed risk industry
.
The environmental damages caused by the process of industrialization and
urbanization that were recorded during this period involved both ancient and more
recent industrialization areas. There are many examples in this regard: from the
heavily industrialized areas of certain neighborhoods and suburban areas of large
cities (e.g. Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where from early 1800s had been built large
re
”
neries and where in the late 1970s it was discovered extensive contamination of
soil) to the huge industrial and urban areas in Asia whose harmful emissions, along
with the
res used to deforestation policies, caused the so-called Southeast Asian
haze of 2006.
It should also be considered the enormous environmental damage and health of
the population (in terms of incidence of cancer, deformities, chronic diseases and
serious pathologies) recorded in many areas subjected to decades of indiscriminate
mining or oil exploitation as the region of the Bolivar Coastal Field, the largest oil
eld in South America, or the region of the Niger Delta and of natural resources
exploitation, as in the case of the Aral Sea, almost dried as a consequence of the
massive exploitation of its waters planned since the second post-war years by
central and local Soviet Union authorities to promote intensive cultivation and for
industrial and civil purposes and whose shores were contaminated the systematic
use of herbicides and pesticides.
The progressive globalization of technological hazards and therefore their nature
and the relevant environmental impact of many technological disasters led
the United Nations. In 1974, for instance, the Secretariat of the United Nations
Scienti
c Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) was moved
from New York to Vienna and its functions were linked with the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP).
As a result of many serious accidents that have occurred in the 1980s and
con
rming the need of a growing awareness on the potential risk to people and
environment of technological hazards, the United Nations declared the 1990s, the
“
and especially to make a reorgani-
zation of the international organisms which until then had dealt with the manage-
ment of emergencies. In 1992, the United Nations Disasters Relief Organization has
been transformed into the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), based in
Geneva and New York. The new body has new tasks to operate in a more speci
International Decade for Disaster Reduction
”
c
and effective way in case of disasters. In order to operate in the
eld of prevention
has been established a special secretariat, the International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction (ISDR). In 1994, the ISDR has organized a conference in Yokohama,
which led to the drafting of the Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer
World. Although this work of prevention and response to disasters has been largely
focused on natural disasters, the ISDR has been increasingly concerned, especially
since the mid 1990s, to include the technological risks, paying particular attention
