Natural disasters and their economic effects

1. Natural disasters and their economic effects dr. Jeney László Senior lecturer jeney@elte.hu Economic Foundations of Local Development Module 1/f: Development in spite of conflicts and disasters Autumn term 2016/2017. CUB Department of Economic Geography and Futures Studies

2. Natural disasters and their economic geographic impacts • The world’s a scene of changes, and to be Constant, in Nature were inconstancy. Abraham Cowley Inconstancy (1647)

3. Natural disasters • Earthquakes • Volcanism • Landslides • Storms • Draughts • Epidemics

4. Nature as a risky factor • Examples for the risks with different degree or the human population • Extent of risk: not only dependent of the natural process • Smaller: sparsely populated Siberia (even heavy flood) • Larger: densely populated city (even mid-size flood) • Heavy storm: • In harvest period: dangerous • In wintertime on a depopulated Great Plain • Definition of risk means: • Not only the natural event • Its effect

5. Information and Assesment • Visitors from Scandinavia to southern England are amazed and amused at the disruptive effects of a heavy snowfall • Road traffic may be brought to a halt, schools closed, telephone services interrupted, railway lines blocked, millions of domestic water pipes frozen, and so on • An exactly similar snowfall in Helsinki or Stockholm would scarcely merit a newspaper paragraph • The size of the environmental event provides little guide to its comparative impact • Exactly the same consideration affects all our measurements • For example, the 18-cm water deficit at Berkeley is a barrier only if you wish to grow summer crops or irrigate golf greens • The winter blizzards that reduced the cattle herds in the Dakotas during the 1870s had no effect on the spring wheat of the 1890s

6. Information and Assesment • Snow represents both a valuable natural resource and a dangerous natural hazard • On the positive side of the balance sheet we can point to its storage role: • Much of the irrigated agriculture in the western United States depends on meltwater from the mountain snowfields • The number of Americans who ski is now approaching 4 million and the value of snow as a recreational resource is rapidly increasing • It is difficult to asses the negative social and economic impacts of snow and ice but they are considerable • Average loss on life in the United States alone runs at over 500 per annum • Disruption to transport systems and funds spent to combat the hazard may amount $1 billion per annum

7. Losses from natural hazards Estimates of losses for selected hazards for the United States Annual property damage is for the most recent year for which data are available Figures for hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. refer to insured losses only 7

8. Information and Assesment • Later we consider how man evaluates changing and risky natural environments • For the moment we should note that physical data about environment are only at first stage • The most dangerous and unpredictable environments may also be the most attractive: 12 percent of the United States population elect to live in areas subject to periodic river floods or sea surges • The fact that flood losses have topped $1 million in recent years must be set against the greater advantages – fertility, flatness, communicatibility, etc. – that make them so attractive • But geographers are sufficiently optimistic to hope that environmental knowledge may be a beginning of environmental wisdom

9. Adjustments to Natural Hazards • Another group of geographers at the University of Chicago has been studying how various groups react to natural hazards • With natural hazards are included all sorts of extreme geographic events like floods, storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions that have a rising toll of lives and damage

10. Natural Hazards • Extreme and irregular events such as periodic famines, hurricanes, and earthquakes provoke a wide variety of strategies related to the perception of the group affected and the magnitude, frequency, duration, and spacing of the natural event

11. Adjustments to Natural Hazards • Among the original Chicago group, Gilbert White and Ian Burton have investigated the responses of people living in flood-plain areas to threats of floods • Human responses and adjustments to the known danger of flooding do not increase consistently as the risk becomes greater • Until the environmental stress builds up to the point where the likelihood of damage is regular and recurrent, little or no adjustment takes place

12. Perception of flood hazard • Figure shows the degrees of hazard perception in 3 US communities with different likelihood of flooding • Darlington, Wisconsin, can expect only one flood in the same period • When the probability of hazard recurrence is high, however, the danger is widely perceived but evaluated in different ways • The curve shows the frequency of flood hazard for 496 urban places in the US • Most places for which flood frequency data were available have 2 or 3 floods each year

13. Perception of flood hazard • Degree of adjustment for 3 places with 3 different experiences pf flooding is illustrated • Height of each columns refer to the number of respondents in each place who fail to perceive a threat weekly or strongly (2 levels of ‚perceived’), or who adjust to the hazard (‚adapted’)

14. Adjustments to Natural Hazards • Table lists 4 of the ways in which individuals respond to uncertain risks of the recurrence of natural disasters • Each response represents an optimistic rationalization for continuing to live in a hazard area • It is interesting that the range of responses is greater when the probabilities of recurrence are moderate • High-risk and low risk areas tend to be more uniform in response

15. Human reactions to irregular natural hazards

16. Adjustments to Natural Hazards • Studies of drought hazard areas in the Great Plains support the results of the flood-plain research • Perception of drought risk is directly related to the degree one is likely to be affected by a potential hazard • That is, wheat farmers are far more aware of the likely incidence of drought than can cattle ranchers • One interaction between the hazard area and its occupants was probed to determine why the resource user, in spite of previous exposure to the hazard, returns to the hazard-prone site • It seems likely that the risks act as filters, attracting settlers who have inclination or capability (in personally, finance, etc.) to cope with the hazard threat but repelling the more timid souls