Preventable disasters: addressing social vulnerability, institutional risk, and civil ethics
Article in: Geographisches Rundscahu: international edition, vol. 3, no. 1
It is generally agreed that natural disasters have been increasing in number and total losses for a century at least. There is much less agreement over what this means, and the article critiques some prevailing approaches and explores alternatives. Without doubt, enormously lethal and costly disasters continue to happen in the wealthiest as well as the poorest countries. They show little respect for political systems, economy or culture, although these can be decisive for the scale of losses, the persons or groups affected, and quality of response. Even more disturbing is to find that, in most cases, loss of life and damages could have been greatly reduced, even prevented. That is, with well-known and affordable protective measures, often officially mandated but not enforced!
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