Are Natural Disasters Man-Made?

September 1, 2023

GS Paper III Disaster Management

Context:

Torrential rains in several parts of north India, particularly Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, damaged various infrastructures and took hundreds of lives.

While a warming Arctic is said to be a cause for the unusually heavy rains, years of haphazard planning and construction have multiplied the tragedy.

Are natural disasters man-made?

High Frequency & Intensity: The frequency and intensity of hazards have increased, and anthropogenic climate change has played a major role in that.
No Sustainability: Humans have built on floodplains, encroached water bodies, and planned cities without thinking about sustainability.
High Movement: The movement of people to urban centers has affected natural landscapes.
- Some landscapes have changed drastically and exceeded their carrying capacity that exacerbated the extent of loss and damage in these areas.
Increased Population Density: It means greater dependence on fossil fuel and greater climate-disruptive anthropogenic forces.

Concerns:

Not adequate planning for the kind of sea-level rise expected and the coastal inundation projected in the coming decades.
Lack of awareness
Ignoring a risk or the risk is not clearly estimated or defined before implementing a new infrastructure project
Risk is underestimated because of lack of a complete record that informs planners about current and upcoming disasters.
Also, available data sets are often pretty old and do not directly provide sufficient information about the future.

The Path Ahead:

Adopting the Sustainable Development Goals
Implementing careful urban planning
- Creating roads and streets keeping sustainable planning in mind
Need to think about long-term risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, and understand how socioeconomic drivers are worsening the problem in certain communities compared to others in the city
Need for strict implementation of the associated laws
Need to analyze the implications of imposing a strict carrying capacity in certain regions
Not allowing for more urbanization to happen in certain areas or restricting certain ways in which infrastructure is built
To make the right decisions, collaboration of experts from both private and public agencies and to focus on current and modern ways of understanding the scale of a disaster is desired
Need to build stronger systems from the bottom up and learn to do it collectively
Learn from others’ practices.
- Example: In Mumbai, we have seen floods viscerally and the city has continued to grow.
  - Mumbai has its own Disaster Management Agency and has been engaging with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology to predict floods better.
  - The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s storm-water drainage department built larger water-holding tanks.

New Pollution Report:

The “Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) Annual Update 2023” report by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute shows the impact of particulate pollution on life expectancy.
The report reveals that air pollution in South Asia is reducing the lifespan of people by an average of 5.1 years. The average person in these countries is exposed to pollution levels 51.3% higher than in 2000.
- The region includes Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, which are some of the most polluted regions in the world.
Bangladesh remains the most polluted country globally, facing high pollution levels exceeding WHO guidelines.
India, the second most polluted nation, experiences pollution levels beyond WHO guidelines and its own national standards. The Northern Plains region in India, with over half a billion people, is highly polluted, particularly Delhi.
- Over the years, air quality in India has deteriorated significantly, reducing life expectancy by 2.3 years between 1998 and 2021.
Rapid industrialization, population growth, and increased energy demands have driven up pollution levels.
The rise in air pollution is linked to factors like increased vehicle numbers and greater use of fossil fuels for energy production.
The most harmful pollutant, PM 2.5, can easily enter the human circulatory system and cause chronic diseases such as asthma, heart attacks, and respiratory problems.