Environmental Hazards and Remedial Measures | ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHY Optional for UPSC

Introduction

A hazard is a source or a situation with the potential for harm in terms of human injury or ill-health, damage to property, damage to the environment, or a combination of these.

Natural (or physical) events are only termed hazards when they have the potential to harm people or cause property damage, social and economic disruption.

An environmental hazard is a substance, state or event which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment or adversely affect people's health, including pollution and natural disasters such as storms and earthquakes.

Thinkers’ perspectives on environmental hazards and remedial measures

Note: You can add these perspectives in all the topics under hazards or disasters.

1. Environmental Determinism:

• Geographical thinkers such as Ellsworth Huntington believed that environmental factors, such as climate and physical geography, determine human behavior and societal development.
• From this perspective, environmental hazards are seen as natural outcomes of living in certain geographical regions.
• Remedial measures from this perspective focus on adapting to or mitigating the effects of environmental hazards through sustainable land use practices, environmental management, or relocation.

2. Possibilism:

• In contrast to environmental determinism, thinkers like Vidal de la Blache emphasized human agency in shaping the environment.
• Geographers from this school of thought argue that human actions, including socio-economic and technological factors, contribute significantly to environmental hazards.
• Remedial measures from this perspective involve technological innovations that enable humans to overcome or mitigate environmental hazards.

3. Environmental Perception and Risk:

• Geographers, such as Gilbert White and Yi-Fu Tuan, argue that people's perceptions of hazards influence their behaviors and responses.
• Remedial measures should involve understanding and addressing people's perception of environmental risks to effectively communicate and implement mitigation strategies.

4. Marxism:

• Marxists view environmental hazards as a consequence of capitalist exploitation and the unequal distribution of resources. It highlights the exploitation of natural resources and labor for profit.
• Remedial measures: Marxists propose collective ownership of resources, sustainable production methods, and social equity as remedies for environmental hazards. Proposes collective ownership and democratic control of resources to control hazards.

5. Radicalism:

• Structural inequalities and environmental hazards: Radical thinkers analyze environmental hazards as a result of power imbalances and social injustices.
• Remedial measures: Radicalism promotes transformative change, including challenging existing power structures, advocating for environmental justice, and adopting sustainable practices at both individual and systemic levels.

Types of environmental hazard

• On the basis of main causative factors, the environmental hazards and disaster are of two types:
  • Natural hazards and disaster and
  • Anthropogenic hazards and disaster.
• Natural hazards are further subdivided into two categories:
  
  • Planetary hazards and
  • Extra planetary hazards and disasters.
• Planetary hazards are of two types:
  
  • Terrestrial or endogenous hazards, (volcanic eruption, Earthquake) and
  • Atmospheric or exogenous hazard (Cyclone, Flood, drought)
• Anthropogenic hazards are of three types:
  
  • Physical hazards (landslides, soil erosion, Earthquakes).
  • Chemical hazards and disasters (sudden outbreak of lethal poisonous gases from industries, nuclear explosion, leakage of radioactive elements,
  • Biological hazards and disaster (sudden rise in population of species in a given habited).

Cumulative Atmospheric Hazards

These are events caused due to cumulative effects of weather events which sustains for a longer period of time.

Examples — floods, droughts, heat waves and cold waves.