To begin to understand the role that mitigation can have in ensuring a country’s sustainable development, both mitigation and sustainable development must be defined. Sustainable development is defined in the United Nations document, Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development as, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) describes mitigation as, “the effort to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters”. This paper proposes that mitigation can help with ensuring a country’s sustainable development through sustainable communities.
The term sustainable development has become very popular over the last ten (10) years by many governments and the sustainable development programs and initiatives in many countries. Sustainability encompasses three (3) major pillars/areas; social, environmental and economic. With each program and initiative being interpreted sustainability differently the focus is most times on one (1) of the stated pillars at a time. The social aspect of sustainability focuses on balancing the needs of the individual, this pillar supports initiatives like peace, social justice, reducing poverty, and other grassroots movements that promote social equity. Environmental sustainability occurs when processes, systems and activities reduce the environmental impact of an
Throughout this essay, Williamson mentions that it is estimated that “about 8.3 percent of New York City’s population” will have to evacuate over the next century in order to account for the rising sea level, and how that is not a devastating number due to previous instances of migration from other factors such as poor government and inhospitable environments (Williamson 1). However, Williamson fails to recognize that these people moved because they were financially able to pick their whole lives up and move them elsewhere. Some people are bound to the land they live on, either by culture, finance or some other relative issue and by simply stating that “people move around” (1) erases the lives of those who cannot move. Even within the previously mentioned, and misinterpreted, IPCC report it is stated that “climate change will amplify existing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems. Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development” (IPCC 13).
Natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes sometimes cause extreme environments to change, in spite of the fact that most extreme environments have always been this way. In addition to the aforementioned extreme environments, poverty and natural disturbances, can also qualify as extreme environments. Extreme conditions are especially deadly and leave residents vulnerable to the derogatory effects of residing in them. These ideas are very prevalent in the article “In their Own Words: Resilience among Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake” as they experienced trauma from the earthquake that occurred in 2010. In the article “In their own words: Resilience among Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake '' by Guitele J. Rahill et al.
These natural disasters can drive distrust within communities. For example, in an analysis of natural disaster data, evidence was found by Dawn Brancati and Rakhi Bhavnani that “...natural disasters result in a high likelihood of conflict because victims compete with one another for scarce resources such as relief aid, housing and so forth” (Kang 1-2). Due to the scarcity of essential resources, those affected are fighting over them promoting conflict within a community. Instead of connecting, the people are competing against each other to survive. However, the use of the resources in a more efficient way can help to reduce fighting over resources.
Housing conditions are comprised of the actual physical infrastructure of the house (whether it is sub-par construction or manufactured housing), homeownership and location/overcrowding. The housing conditions directly reflect what Tierney describes as the “affluence” of the populations, which is the ability to have affordable, well-constructed, self-owned homes. Many people at the lower end of the social class strata are living in poorly made/maintain housing, which they rent, in areas that are prone to disaster. Many of these individuals are unable to afford better housing, transportation, or have the ability to evacuate or prepare for a disaster. Similarly, after a disaster, these populations have a much lower resilience due to their social factors.
Marino makes it known that understanding this relationship is essential in distinguishing how Shishmaref citizens have become a vulnerable community. In fact, these relationships along with historical conditions, influenced how residents in that specific community experienced disasters. In this section, the differences between a hazard and vulnerability are also highlighted to determine their interconnection with disasters; for a disaster to take place both must be present. Marino strategically follows up with chapter three to show the link between climate change, vulnerability, and disasters. The purpose of this chapter was to demonstrate how ecological changes can be contributed to the vulnerability of Shishmaref.
Loss of life, property damage, economic disruption and environmental degradation all play a part in these devastating events, leaving an aftereffect with devastating challenges for these affected communities in their wake. This essay will examine some underlying social and economic factors which contribute to increased vulnerability while simultaneously challenging adaptive capacity among regional communities when facing bushfires. There are various social and economic factors that make regional communities more prone to bushfire impacts, such as population density. Many regional communities with relatively few residents distributed over an extensive geographical area make emergency response harder as emergency personnel must cover large areas with limited resources; additionally, their spread-out nature makes it more challenging for individuals seeking information or support during bushfire
Though the community only has a small effect on the overall picture, they are the most vulnerable to all disasters and threats. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the community to prepare one another and assess the potential risks and hazards within their community in addition to what steps are needed to address the issues. It is this preemptive response and planning, especially in locations with historically reoccurring hazards that reduce the disaster effects and overall cost. This community-based effort conducted by community groups has the, “potential to make a significant and long-lasting contributions to reducing local vulnerability and strengthening adaptive capacities” (Allen, 2006, p. 97). One example of a community-organized group is Community Emergency Response Teams or CERT.
ASSESSMENT/AUDIT 1. Understanding of why it is important to measure sustainability and the associated problems and conflicts of different indicator sets and types Evidence – It is really difficult to find exact concept for measuring sustainability. For instance the measurement of life parameters is differ between different cultures and individuals. So, different solutions will be required to be found for many different communities. However; we should not assume that things we cannot measured easily is not important.
Introduction In today’s world, most developing countries are in a race to build up the necessary infrastructure to scale up there operations and become the next global superpower. In this process, a lot of energy is consumed – be it for transportation, manufacturing or construction. This rapid growth of energy use seen over the past two decades have raised concerns for governments and energy-related organizations alike. Questions with regard to the supply, sustainability and exhaustion of energy sources abound, and while most developed countries have taken active steps to reduce consumption of scarce resources, the position of developing countries in this regard is still lacking.
There are linkages between social deficits and vulnerabilities in support of strong indications between high social vulnerability traits and low community resiliency traits. This relationship should include consideration of systematic design and management of policies and procedure processes including resiliency planning to decrease disaster vulnerability while increasing resiliency during the process (Bergstrand, Mayer, Brumback, & Zhang, 2015). Consequently, the further established vulnerability planning and risk assessments, the more of a comprehensive span of resiliency preparedness
Sustainable development aims to achieve a balance between the three pillars of sustainability, ensuring that all sectors become one entity. The disadvantage associated with this model is that each pillar is given individual recognition and not recognized as a combined entity (Giddings, Hopwood and O’Brien, 2002). This results in the
Sustainable development is a model that aims to link the idea of what is to be sustained, with what is to be developed, and focuses on three pillars, economics, social and environmental (Kates, Parris, and Leiserowitz, 2005; pp. 3). As a holistic approach it seeks to develop the three pillars, on a local, regional and global level. This paper will analyse the concept of sustainable development and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach will be discussed. Firstly, a background of this model will be presented, which will explore the three pillars. Secondly, the strengths and weaknesses will be evaluated, and lastly, a brief contrast will be provided of the opinions of sustainable development between the Global North and Global South.
Sustainability: If you take a look around at what’s really happening in our world, there’s an inescapable pattern of ‘what’s going on is simply unsustainable’ and in other words, it can’t go on for much longer. Sustainability is to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. As cities began to grow with the population increase, the need for a sustainable development became more apparent as resources began to diminish in quantity and value. Left to it’s own devices, the Earth is a sustainable system.
Environmental sustainability considers the ways through which resources will not be used up faster than they are being replenished, and the transition toward low carbon emissions despite the increasing population. Figure 3.1: The Three Pillars of Sustainable Development Source: Kahn (1995) The theoretical framework used by Kahn explains the need to integrate and appropriately co-ordinate the economic, social and environmental units of a country to achieve sustained social and economic development. In other words, to realise qualitative growth rather than
Sustainable development, as its name suggests, is a concept continually elaborating. The most commonly used definition, according to World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), is the development which “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). It shows the importance of considering benefits for both current and future generations and strongly supports economic development, while it also implies when accessing environment and natural resources, human beings tend to take an anthropocentric view, that the primary goal is to satisfy human needs. With no regard for earth as a life-support system, a development will not be considered sustainable. Therefore, by taking economic, social, environmental issues into accounts is a key approach to develop sustainably in different contexts.