Environmental Issues and Disaster Management

This is a vast subject encompassing the entire system of human activities. Simply, environment is defined as: all forms that surrounds us life forms [humans, animals, birds] & non-life forms moving [air, water] & non-moving [mountains, forests]. Human settlement interacts with the environment in a complex fashion involving many different scales.


What is Environment and Why it is Important?
This is a vast subject encompassing the entire system of and in future. We should not think forests, trees, and croplands as carbon sinks, but we must look at them that provide clean air for our survival. We take oxygen from the surroundings and give out carbon dioxide; and at the same time plants take carbon dioxide and release oxygen. These two groups of ecosystems complement each other. Drastic changes in either of them leads to unsustainable environment. Today, population is the greatest problem facing the country. In the past, the nature used to keep the balance through natural disasters and epidemics. Now, with the advent of modern medicine we are in control of epidemics and with the advancements in science and technology we are in a position to reduce the impacts of natural disasters but at the same time increased the diseases and disease rate. Human societies' impact on environment is a function of population growth, more particularly in urban areas with around 30% concentration which may reach 60% by 2050, their consumption pattern and their innovative technologies-based lifestyles. We consume resources from healthy ecosystems and make it unhealthy ecosystem over time.
Just before Paris Climate meet in 2015, Pope Francis released a provocative encyclical on the environment-Laudato Si. Again, later he emphasized that destroying the environment was a sin. He further noted that humans were turning the planet into wasteland of debris, desolation and filth, and called for urgent action. Pope Francis further emphasized that, "We must not be indifferent to the loss of biodiversity and destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behavior". He called for consumers to modify their modern lifestyles by reducing waste, planting trees, etc.

What is Disaster and how it Impacts Environment?
The major causes for unsustainable environmental growth in the modern world are the "disasters". A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. We are encountering with three types of hazards, namely natural, manmade and socio-natural hazards. The natural disasters are beyond human control and thus we need to adapt to them. The manmade disasters are though in the hands of man they rarely follow the precautionary principleprevention is better than cure policy. Here human greed and poor governance play the pivotal role along with poor civic sense among poor to elite.

Natural hazards
Are hazards which are caused because of natural phenomena.
They are of meteorological, geological or even biological origin.
Examples of natural hazards are cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which are exclusively of natural origin.

Manmade hazards
Are hazards which are due to human negligence. Manmade hazards are associated with industries or energy generation facilities and include explosions, leakage of toxic waste, pollution,  We rarely look at precautionary principle; instead of prevention measures, we try controlling measures with which we rarely achieve the stated goal. Also, with isolated control measures, the scenario will not change. Take for example: will the Supreme Court order really improve the industrial pollution? The court needs to look into ground realities such as excess production and zero pollution.

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Without that, there will not be any improvement in reducing the pollution levels. Water is a natural resource, fundamental to life, livelihood, food security and sustainable development; it is also s scarce resource. India has more than 17.11% of the world's population but has only 4.6% of world's water resources with 2.3% of world's land area. Precipitation and snow melt provide the fresh water; though they are renewable, they are highly variable with space and time; climate change plays vital role in the year to year water availability over different parts of India. India crossed 130 crore population and wasting around 40-50% of food produced -it is around 30% for the world as reported by FAO and the resources used to produce that is also simultaneously wasted. This is basically because of unplanned agriculture driven by technology that looks at profit than over the environment. Modern agriculture is causing air, water, soil and food pollution. We look at production growth, but we rarely look at the impact on environment by such technologies, more particularly on water resources and health of life forms.
Though the industry uses very little, when the pollutants generated by industries released in to potable water, it changes potable water in to polluted water. This very rarely we account as the water used by industry.

How do We Achieve the Disaster Risk Reduction? Preparedness
It is a protective process that embraces measures which enable governments, communities and individuals to respond rapidly to disaster situations to cope with them effectively. It also includes the formulation of viable emergency plans, the development of warning systems, the maintenance of inventories and the training of

Mitigation
It embraces measures taken to reduce both the effect of the hazard and the vulnerable conditions to it in order to reduce the scale of a future disaster. Therefore, mitigation activities can be focused on the hazard itself or the elements exposed to the threat.
Examples of mitigation measures which are hazard specific include water management in drought prone areas, relocating people away from the hazard prone areas and by strengthening structures to reduce damage when a hazard occurs. In addition to these physical measures, mitigation should also aim at reducing the economic and social vulnerabilities of potential disasters. However, with poor civic sense among poor to elite along with poor governance in some cases this is rarely achieved. Examples under this are the flood disasters mentioned earlier pages.

Industrial Pollution Related Disasters
In the case of pollution, some are point sources and some others are non-point source. Industrial pollution is point source pollution.
There are rules and regulations to control the pollution through were established to regulate them. However, the system is weak.
A classic example to this is the Bhopal gas tragedy. This disaster would have been averted if the government departments followed the stipulated norms. Instead, they allowed residential houses all around the factory, which has been resulted the great tragedy.
Another example is urban water [surface & groundwater] pollution that drastically reduced the potable water availability.