Natural Disasters and Human Activities
The scale of natural disasters that we now see across the world are definitely man-made.
Some sections of the population are more vulnerable to them and more at risk than others.
Humans have played an important role in enhancing the risk from climate hazards.
The frequency and intensity of hazards have increased, and anthropogenic climate change has played a major role in that.
We have built on floodplains, encroached water bodies, and planned our cities without thinking about sustainability. So, humans are responsible.
Development translates to infrastructure growth.
We don’t pay enough attention sustainable development.
Sustainability means emphasising not only economics, but also society and environment.
Any sustainable development will consider the environmental implications.
So far, we have just run behind the economics, the land holdings, finding cheaper land, filling the water bodies, removing palaeochannels (deep underground stores of groundwater) and destroying natural drainage systems.
Indian scenario
There are a few different ways in which the landscape of disasters in India has changed.
The movement of people to urban centres has affected natural landscapes.
Some [landscapes] have changed drastically and exceeded their carrying capacity and this has exacerbated the extent of loss and damage in these areas.
Failure of planning in understanding how to ensure that certain critical ecosystems are kept alive and natural systems are kept at the core of the way we live.
In Mumbai, we have seen floods viscerally and the city has continued to grow.
Mumbai has its own Disaster Management Agency. It has been engaging with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, which develops models to predict floods better.
Also, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s storm-water drainage department has, in the last decade, built larger water-holding tanks.
Mumbai has been able to perform much better in this regard than, say, Delhi, which is seeing recurrent floods.
Challenges
Lack of awareness and ignoring a risk.
Risk is not clearly estimated or defined when we implement a new infrastructure project.
The problem is, most of the time this risk is underestimated.
Because often, we don’t have a complete record that informs planners about current and upcoming disasters.
Data sets are often pretty old and do not directly provide sufficient information about the future.
Inadequate observational network especially in Himalayan territory.
Way forward
The only solution is adopting the Sustainable Development Goals, implementing careful urban planning, and creating roads and streets keeping these in mind.
We will have to think about long-term risk assessments, vulnerability assessments.
Understand how socioeconomic drivers are worsening the problem in certain communities compared to others in the city.
Bring experts from both private and public agencies to have very good solutions, current and modern ways of understanding the scale of a disaster, where the risk is, and what kinds of solutions should be modelled around it.
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