Symptomatic profile and health‐related quality of life of persons affected by the Prestige catastrophe

This study analyses the impact of the Prestige oil spill on the mental health and the perception of physical health and functional capacity in the affected population. The sample comprised 926 residents from the section of the Spanish coast affected by the oil spill. The data was collected slightly more than one year after the accident. Scales referring to clinical symptoms (SCL‐36) and health‐related quality of life (SF‐36) were administered. The results suggest that individuals with higher degrees of exposure or residing in areas closest to the spill show lower levels of mental health in comparison to those with lower levels of exposure or living in areas farther away from the spill. This study also finds that women and fishermen tend to suffer more from the consequences of these types of disaster.     

Insiders and outsiders: local government and NGO engagement in disaster response in Guimaras,Philippines

This paper examines local government and non‐governmental organisation (NGO) engagement in disaster response in the wake of the M/T Solar 1 oil spill in Guimaras, Western Visayas, Philippines, on 11 August 2006. It assesses the response activities of these two entities as well as the institutional factors that affected their interaction on the ground. Local government and NGO engagement was shaped by multi‐layered, overlapping, and oftentimes contending government‐designed response frameworks. Within these frameworks, government actors played the role of primary implementer and provider of relief, allowing them to determine who could be involved and the extent of their involvement. The absence of formal roles for NGOs in these frameworks not only undermines their ability to work in a setting where such institutional set‐ups are operational but also it reaffirms their ‘outsider’ status. This study of the Guimaras oil spill illustrates the complexity and the institutional difficulties inherent in disaster response and coordination in the Philippines.     

The Tasman Spirit oil spill: implications for regulatory change in Pakistan

An oil spill in July 2003 from the tanker Tasman Spirit attracted considerable public and media attention in Pakistan. This paper focuses on the experience of a developing country such as Pakistan in dealing with a major oil spill and its impact on bringing about change in the national regulatory framework. A major outcome has been the ratification of the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage 1992, which came into force in March 2006 in Pakistan. The convention provides a compensation mechanism for victims incurring oil pollution damages from maritime casualties involving oil laden ships. Several additional changes are still required to improve the country's ability to cope with marine oil spills. These include the development of a comprehensive domestic regulatory framework, implementation of an effective contingency plan, and capacity building of all relevant agencies.     

Incident, accident, catastrophe: cyanide on the Danube

It has been described as the worst disaster since Chernobyl. In January 2000, a retaining wall failed at the Aurul gold processing plant in Romania, releasing a wave of cyanide and heavy metals that moved quickly from one river to the next through Romania, Hungary, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, killing tens of thousands of fish and other forms of wildlife and poisoning drinking-water supplies. This paper examines how and why the chemical spill at Baia Mare occurred and how responses to it emerged from circumstances at the global, local and immediate levels. The spill demonstrates the importance of the flow of information in framing and interpreting disasters, suggesting that such an event can go unnoticed or be viewed as catastrophic, depending on the political, historical and personal struggles that lead to its publicity. The paper offers a framework for understanding why the spill was alternately perceived as an incident, an accident and a catastrophe based on changing perceptions of culpability.     

How does living with a disability affect resident worry about environmental contamination? A study of a long-term pervasive hazard

ABSTRACT

While a growing body of research within the environmental hazards scholarship examines how disability affects human responses to major, sudden-onset environmental disasters, little attention has been given to understanding how disability affects responses to long-term, pervasive environmental hazards. Research analysing human responses to land and groundwater legacy contamination in residential areas has identified the significance of demographic and psychosocial determinants of worry, however the question of how living with a disability affects resident worry about contamination remains unanswered. This article provides a cornerstone study for exploring the relation between worry about environmental contamination and disability. A study of 486 adults living in 13 urban residential areas in Australia affected by a range of contaminants was undertaken in 2014. Ordinal logistic regression analysis found respondents with a disability were significantly more likely to worry about contamination than those without. People living with a disability had significantly higher amounts of worry about the contamination than those living without. Changes to residents’ daily habits in response to the contamination and perceptions of personal control over exposure to the contamination present important considerations for understanding the implications of worry for people living with and without a disability in the environmental contamination context.     

Hazardscapes in reunified Germany

Abstract

German reunification had significant political, economic, social, and environmental impacts. A major environmental impact involved changes to the German technological hazardscape (especially in the East). Hazardscapes are defined here as the spatial distribution and attributes of human engineered facilities such as industrial plants, military bases and power stations that contain or emit substances harmful to humans and the environment. The purpose of this paper is to explain how and why the German technological hazardscape changed after reunification. A cursory analysis might ascribe hazardscape change to the application of strict West German environmental laws and sophisticated environmental protection technologies to the East. This paper contends, however, that it was a political economy rather than an environmental imperative that drove the changes to the hazardscape, and that this continuing conflict may have serious repercussions on the future environmental health of eastern Germany.     

中国北方草原雪灾的致灾机制探讨

北方草原雪灾是天灾 ,更是一种人祸。受拉尼娜事件影响的异常气候固然是致灾的客观原因 ,但是不合理的人类经济活动 ,如超载放牧、耕地过垦、滥挖草药、滥用水资源等社会经济压力 ,超过了草原生态阈限 ,使脆弱的草原生态平衡遭到严重破坏 ;粗放经营 ,草原基础设施落后 ,也使草原生态系统抵御灾害的能力降低 ;草原公有、牲畜私有之间的所有制相位差是激发牧民掠夺式利用草原资源的最根本原因。为了追求私人经济利益的最大化 ,放牧者往往置公共草原的承载能力于不顾 ,严重恶化的草原生态环境也许正是“公共物品悲剧”的真实写照。     

Faith-based aid, globalisation and the humanitarian frontline: an analysis of Western-based Muslim aid organisations

This paper focuses on the emergence and modus operandi of Muslim faith-based aid organisations from the West, particularly those from the United Kingdom. Through case studies of Islamic Relief Worldwide and Muslim Hands, it examines the actual and potential added value generated by these humanitarian players in Muslim-majority contexts at times when aid actors from or associated with the West are being perceived by some as instrumental to the political agendas of Western powers, or are being confronted with the consequences thereof. The study analyses Muslim faith-based aid organisations' transnational networks, their implementing partnerships with local faith-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and their security position within and their access to insecure contexts, drawing on field examples and opinion from Central Asia, Iraq and Pakistan. It thereby argues that there is ground for an expansion of the role of Muslim aid actors, because of the existence of social and political realities in the field that cannot be always effectively tackled by the dominant international development approaches.     

Local government,political decentralisation and resilience to natural hazard-associated disasters

Natural hazards affect development and can cause significant and long-term suffering for those affected. Research has shown that sustained long-term disaster preparedness combined with appropriate response and recovery are needed to deliver effective risk reductions. However, as the newly agreed Sendai framework recognises, this knowledge has not been translated into action. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of how to deliver longer term and sustained risk reduction by evaluating the role of political decentralisation in disaster outcomes. Specifically, we investigate whether countries which devolve power to the local level experience reduced numbers of people affected by storms and earthquakes, and have lower economic damage. Using regression analysis and cross-country data from 1950 to 2006, we find that, in relation to both storms and earthquakes, greater transfers of political power to subnational tiers of government reduce hazard impacts on the population. The downside is that more politically decentralised countries, which are usually wealthier countries, can increase the direct economic losses associated with a natural hazard impact after the storm or earthquake than those which are more centralised. However, overall, it seems advantageous to give subnational governments more authority and autonomy in storm and earthquake risk planning.     

Protecting people in cities: the disturbing case of Haiti

Humanitarian actors have sought increasingly not only to assist people affected by natural disasters but also to protect them. This paper examines the efforts of international humanitarian actors to protect Haitians affected by the devastating earthquake of 12 January 2010. It begins with an analysis of the particular difficulties of conceptualising and operationalising protection in an urban environment and traces the efforts of international actors on the ground to develop appropriate protection strategies. The particular difficulties of working with camps and spontaneous settlements in urban areas are explored as are the challenges that stemmed from working with different levels of governmental authorities and a multitude of humanitarian actors. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the lessons learned from the successes and failures of international protection efforts in Haiti. It is hoped that these may assist future efforts to protect people living in urban environments.     

When information becomes action: drivers of individuals' trust in broadcast versus peer‐to‐peer information in disaster response

Information and communications technology (ICT), primarily mobile telephones and social media, is increasingly important in crisis and disaster response in developing countries. This fact raises an important question: in an information environment that includes traditional media such as radio and television, who are the people that trust information from ICT enough to act on it during a disaster? Drawing on a case study of and original survey data from the island nation of the Independent State of Samoa, this paper yields insights into who uses new technologies, particularly mobile telephones, to make decisions at the local level during crises such as natural disasters, as well as the socio‐political factors that motivate their behaviour. The results add to the growing pool of knowledge on utilisation of ICT and new technologies in developing countries for disaster response, and provide practical information on the social and political factors that lead people to trust different information sources and media.     

The rise of politics and the decline of vulnerability as criteria in disaster decisions of the United States, 1953–2009

This paper examines the shift from vulnerability to political responsiveness in presidential and gubernatorial disaster decisions in the United States from 1953–2009 (President Dwight D. Eisenhower to President Barack Obama) using annual request, declaration, and approval data from multiple sources. It makes three key conclusions: first, the 1988 Stafford Act expanded federal coverage to all categories of disasters, added a significant range of individual types of assistance, and provided extensive funding for recovery planning. Second, the election effects on disaster decisions increased over time whereas the impact of social and economic vulnerability (measured by scope of disaster) declined. Third, the changes affected governors more than presidents, and the choices of governors drove those of presidents. The analysis underscores the increasingly political nature of the disaster decision‐making process, as well as the difficulty in emphasising mitigation and preparedness as intensively as response and recovery. Proactive intervention yields fewer political rewards than responsiveness.     

Public participation in NGO-oriented communities for disaster prevention and mitigation (N-CDPM) in the Longmen Shan fault area during the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquake periods

ABSTRACT

The Longmen Shan fault area in southwest China is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. The epicenters of the two most recent earthquakes, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (8.0?Ms) and the 2013 Lushan earthquake (7.0?Ms), both of which caused serious losses, were only 85?km apart. Community-based disaster risk reduction is the foundation of the disaster management system pyramid and is critical to the success of ‘sustainable hazard mitigation’. Based on multiple collaborative stakeholder perspectives, this paper examines public participation in an NGO-oriented Community for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (N-CDPM) in the period between the two earthquakes as a multi-stage problem; N-CDPM establishment, normal operations, disaster testing, and continuous improvement. Multi-stage field research was conducted in the affected areas in the Longmen Shan fault area to examine the collaboration in each stage, after which the differences were compared across the four stages based on eight key indices; scales, core stakeholders, core network stability, mean number of lines, mean collaborative level, governments, and individual and public organization participation. The government participation, individual participation, and public organization participation are then discussed. This paper provides a novel research approach to CDPM in multiple earthquake regions and gives rich insights into the collaboration between the government and the public for N-CDPM.     

The African food crisis of 1982-1986*

The crisis cannot be attributed to any one cause, but rather it was the product of a number of interacting factors whose precise combination varied between countries. Drought, internal political and economic factors and an unfavourable external economic environment were significant contributory factors. Civil war and externally financed insurgency were primarily responsible for propelling a food crisis into a famine in four out of the six worst affected countries. Within the literature, there is a tendency for writers to emphasize the relative contribution of factors within their own disciplines. So far the literature on the responses, both within country and internationally, is comprised of eye witness accounts by journalists and evaluations by aid agencies of their performance. The international response by governments and the public was massive and unprecedented, but the response by governments, indigenous NGO's and the public within affected countries is often overlooked by the journalistic literature. Generalizations about "the African food crisis" have obscured the considerable diversity amongst countries. This is well illustrated by the experiences of Ethiopia, Kenya and Botswana. This diversity indicates the biased perspectives that arise from focussing on the extreme famines, as in Ethiopia. Research priorities should include studies of systems that coped during the crisis, historical analysis of the crisis, the way early warning information is processed within bureaucratic institutions, environmental degradation and fully integrated analysis of food production and consumption systems.     

The strength of networks: the local NGO response to the tsunami in India

This paper examines the role played by a network of 12 local non-governmental organisations (NGOs)--the East Coast Development Forum (ECDF)-in the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami ('Asian tsunami') of 26 December 2004, which devastated the east coast of India. It examines how the ECDF sought to meet the needs of affected people through a direct relief programme, a rehabilitation programme focused on the restoration of livelihoods, and through advocacy to press for changes to government programmes to make them inclusive and to ensure that they satisfy the priority needs of the people most affected. The paper concludes that it was the trust and capacity built up through past network activities of the fisher, dalit, and tribal communities that enabled the ECDF to launch an effective response to the tsunami. A lesson to emerge is that the use of similar existing networks could be employed in other disaster responses around the world.     

Disaster mitigation and preparedness: the case of NGOs in the Philippines

The Philippines is very vulnerable to natural disasters because of its natural setting, as well as its socio-economic, political and environmental context--especially its widespread poverty. The Philippines has a well-established institutional and legal framework for disaster management, including built-in mechanisms for participation of the people and NGOs in decision-making and programme implementation. The nature and extent of collaboration with government in disaster preparedness and mitigation issues varies greatly according to their roots, either in past confrontation and political struggles or traditional charity activities. The growing NGO involvement in disaster management has been influenced by this history. Some agencies work well with local government and there is an increasing trend for collaborative work in disaster mitigation and preparedness. Some NGOs, however, retain critical positions. These organisations tend to engage more in advocacy and legal support for communities facing increased risk because of development projects and environmental destruction. Entry points into disaster mitigation and preparedness vary as well. Development-oriented agencies are drawn into these issues when the community members with whom they work face disaster. Relief organisations, too, realise the need for community mobilisation, and are thus drawn towards development roles.     

Dividing disasters in Aceh, Indonesia: separatist conflict and tsunami, human rights and humanitarianism

This paper examines the interface between human rights and humanitarian action in the context of the conflict and tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, between 1998 and 2007. It looks at the challenges international humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) faced as they engaged in human rights work in the conflict period and in conflict-related activities in the post-tsunami period. The paper argues that many large NGOs may have compromised what some would hold to be essential principles for humanitarian action because of domestic political concerns, donor restrictions and resistance among certain NGO chiefs. In contrast with the pre-tsunami period, in which NGOs worked for years amid military operations, in the post-tsunami period NGOs were decidedly apolitical, neglecting the conflict in their tsunami response--despite significant developments that permitted greater political engagement in Aceh's post-conflict transformation. The evidence suggests that NGOs are challenged in contextualising humanitarian responses and that there is a need to underscore donor flexibility and independence in humanitarian action.     

Selling displaced people? A multi‐method study of the public communication strategies of international refugee organisations

The world has seen a major increase in forced displacement since 2011. As a growing number of states implement restrictive refugee policies, public communication has become essential for refugee organisations. This study analysed, therefore, three international refugee organisations’ discursive strategies towards the recent Syrian crisis, as well as their production and the social context. A critical discourse analysis of international press releases (N=122) and six semi‐structured interviews with press and regional officers revealed that the observed actors largely dehumanise displaced people and subordinate them to the ‘Western self’ and state interests; displaced people hardly ever acquire their own voice. The study found that the medium characteristics of press releases and the importance of media attention result in a depersonalising humanitarian discourse. In addition, there were indications of a post‐humanitarian discourse that reproduced the humanitarian sector's ‘marketisation’. Finally, the examined organisations use the political realist cross‐issue persuasion strategy, displaying displaced people as resettlement objects.     

Matching Food Security Analysis to Context: the Experience of the Somalia Food Security Assessment Unit

This case study reviews the experience of the Somalia Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU) of operating a food security information system in the context of a complex emergency¹ In particular, it explores the linkages between selected features of the protracted crisis environment in Somalia and conceptual and operational aspects of food security information work. The paper specifically examines the implications of context characteristics for the establishment and operations of the FSAU field monitoring component and for the interface with information users and their diverse information needs. It also analyses the scope for linking food security and nutrition analysis and looks at the role of conflict and gender analysis in food security assessment work. Background data on the food security situation in Somalia and an overview of some key features of the FSAU set the scene for the case study. The paper is targeted at those involved in designing, operating and funding food security information activities.     

Food as an instrument of war in contemporary african famines: a review of the evidence

Famine is conventionally portrayed as a natural disaster expressed in terms of food scarcity and culminating in starvation. This view has attracted criticism in recent years as the political, legal and social dimensions of famine have become more clearly understood. This paper draws upon these criticisms to understand the particular conditions of famine creation in conflict situations. Following an examination of six contemporary African famines, it is suggested that the use of food as a weapon of war by omission, commission and provision has contributed to the creation of famine in recent decades. Despite the optimism for peace engendered by the demise of the Cold War, the momentum for conflict would seem to be sustained by internal factors, including economic and environmental decline, political instability and ethnic rivalry. Within these conflicts, the strategic importance of food is likely to remain central. This study highlights the need to link concerns with food security and public health to those of development, human rights and international relations.