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of coastal wetlands since the 1930s (Reed and Wilson, 2004). The combination of
shipping channels and disappearing wetlands opened up what some term a 'hurri-
cane highway' into the city, through which storm surges can be channelled and
amplifi ed (Hallowell, 2001). Despite numerous government reports foretelling the
impact of a major hurricane (Travis, 2005), development continued on New Orleans'
extensive fl oodplain, despite misgivings that containment measures, never foolproof,
would increase the severity and catastrophic power of fl oodwaters when they inevi-
tably overtopped the concrete and earthen barriers ringing the city (Bakker,
2005).
Despite numerous government reports foretelling the impact of a major hurricane
(Travis, 2005), engineering hubris prevailed in Louisiana. Notwithstanding public
celebrations of Cajun culture and despite Louisiana's rich seafood harvests (once
the most productive coastal seafood fi shery in the United States), its wetlands were
sacrifi ced to commercial transport and oil extraction, underpinned by a deep-rooted
cultural imaginary of wetlands as 'swamps' (Fritzell, 1978). These 'dark edens'
(Miller, 1989), actively targeted for draining in the 19th and 20th centuries in a
civilising mission directed at both the American landscape and at its inhabitants
(Marx, 1964), were converted into dumping grounds for toxic by-products of the
oil industry. Ironically, Katrina and other recent hurricanes were caused by unprec-
edented warming in surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico in recent years,
which some scientists have attributed to climate change (Emanuel, 2005; Travis,
2005; Webster et al., 2005); if true, a tragically ironic example of Louisiana's oil
economy coming full political-ecological circle.
Other work by environmental geographers on water-related hazards emphasises
the differentiation of vulnerability by region, race, class and gender, documenting
the disproportionate impacts of hazards on lower-income and minority communities
and women (Blaikie et al., 1994; Cutter, 2001; Liverman, 2001; Mustafa, 2005).
For example, as Susan Cutter notes in her analysis of the impacts of Hurricane
Katrina, 2 the segregated past of the American South is still visible in the spatial and
social geography of cities such as New Orleans, where housing for black, working-
class communities is located in the least desirable areas, with limited social services
and amenities and higher exposures to environmental risks, including fl oods. The
result is well documented by environmental justice and political ecology research:
wealthier, largely white individuals have secured relatively cleaner, safer environ-
ments in American urban centres (e.g. Pulido, 2000), leaving poor, largely black
communities to locations with higher-pollution and higher-hazard probabilities and
impacts (e.g. Cutter et al., 2003). As Neil Smith has observed, Katrina revealed that
topographical gradients were proxies for race and class in New Orleans (Smith,
2005), with largely white neighbourhoods situated on higher, drier ground. Simply
put, white privilege underlays the spatial location and racial composition of com-
munities most vulnerable to fl ooding.
The work of geographers has explored how the severity of impacts caused by
Hurricane Katrina was due to both social and natural causes; it was, in short, no
'natural' disaster. The impacts of Katrina thus serve as a tragic, emblematic example
of the results of recent environmental geography research on hazards, in which
socio-economic and psychological variables are as important as biophysical vari-
ables in understanding vulnerability and risk to water-related hazards. In turn,
geographical research has demonstrated how these terms - risk, vulnerability, hazard
and disaster - are deeply anthropocentric, insofar as they refl ect concern about
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