Natural Disasters Are Not Purely Natural

Introduction

The increased media coverage of the impacts of disaster events has caused a renewed interest in natural disasters (Hamilton and Press, 2009). This paper endeavors to show that what masses perceive as natural disasters are because of an array of factors. The focus is on human activities that create a fovourable environment for drought to become a natural disaster in arid areas (Giorgis, 2005). Socio-economic and environmental exposure can lead to disastrous consequences from even unpretentious vulnerability. Koffi Annan (Alexander, 2009) agrees with this. He states that human behaviour mainly results into what we call natural disaster. The research paper looks at evolution of the disaster field and illustrates the contributing factors to drought conditions in North Eastern regions of Kenya.

The evolution of the disaster field

Alexander (2009) defines natural disaster as extraneous elements within the environment that are harmful to human beings. This is in agreement with the traditional view of hazards as “acts of God”, against which man has no control (Alexander, 2009). Human beings were believed to carry no blame in enabling the occurrence of natural hazards and equally thought to have no power to mitigate them (Hamilton and Press, 2009). In the 20th century, the development of technologies to mitigate disaster impacts resulted in a desire to re-look at naturalness of disaster events (Giorgis, 2005).

Research focused on the study of environmental triggers of natural disaster such as “geo-tectonics, climates, and biological factors” (Boonzaier et al., 2007). However, with time has come a realization that the bulk of disasters are because of interactions among human beings. This has led to the emergence of new theories...

... middle of paper ...

...y invest in reclaiming the land and the nomadic pastoral life styles are perceived as the greatest impediment to converting the arid area to useful agricultural land.

References

Alexander, W. J. (2009) Coping Study on Risk and Society. Paper presented at the IDNDR Programme Forum 1999 “Partnerships for a Safer World in the 21st Century”.

Boonzaier, A., S. Edelstein, K. Fara, S. Kuiper, A. Speiser, and S. van der Merwe (2000) Environmental Situation Analysis with Regard to Land Degradation in the Orange and Fish River Catchments Area (OFCA), Environmental Evaluation Unit (EEU), Cape Town

Bryant, E. A. (2006) Natural Hazards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Giorgis, D. W. (2005) Drought and Sustainable Development. In Moorson, R. (ed.) Coping with Aridity. NEPRU, Windhoek.

Hamilton, R. M., and F. Press (2009) Mitigating Natural Disasters. Science, Vol. 1284.