The Philippines is once again the location of yet another disaster - Typhoon Haiyan. "The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone places on Earth," said Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado. "They've got it all. They've got earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tropical cyclones, landslides." Just two years ago, Tropical Storm Washi killed more than 1,000 people.
The country led the world in disaster mortality in 2012 with more than 2,000 people killed.
Despite the government’s early warnings and evacuation of up to 800,000 people from vulnerable areas, the category 5 – the highest level – Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda to Filipinos) has left some communities and coastal zones in the central Philippine islands of Visayas in complete ruins.
It would be very easy to simply put it all down to one of natures “acts of God” that many thousands have died and hundreds of thousands are homeless. While our hearts go out to the victims, for socialists the tragedy it is one we have seen many times before.
Humans played a big role in this disaster — probably bigger than nature’s, meteorologists said. University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy figures that 75 to 80 percent of the devastation can be blamed on the human factor. Meteorologists point to extreme poverty and huge growth in population — much of it in vulnerable coastal areas with poor construction, including storm shelters that didn’t hold up against Haiyan. More than 4 out of 10 Filipinos live in a storm-prone vulnerable city of more than 100,000, according to a 2012 World Bank study. The Haiyan-devastated provincial capital of Tacloban nearly tripled from about 76,000 to 221,000 in just 40 years. About one-third of Tacloban’s homes have wooden exterior walls. And 1 in 7 homes have grass roofs, according to the census office.
Those factors — especially flimsy construction — were so important that a weaker storm would have still caused almost as much devastation, McNoldy said.
“You end up with these kind of urban time bombs, where cities have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size in 50 years” without good building standards, said Richard Olson, director of the Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University. “It is, I hate to say, an all-too-familiar pattern.”
A combination of regulatory uncertainty, corruption, and mismanagement has left many areas, especially outside the industrialised centres in the northern island of Luzon, lacking in basic, quality infrastructure.
In recent years, experts and pundits have consistently pushed the Philippine government to improve its basic infrastructure (only20 percent of the country’s roads are paved), especially given the country’s vulnerability to natural calamities. Many have criticised the government for not implementing more decisive measures ahead of the storm. Knowing very well that many shanty towns and coastal communities have always been vulnerable to natural disasters, there were a number of options that the government could have pursued, critics argue, from the mandatory evacuation of citizens in high-risk areas to the establishment of concrete bunkers that can withstand super- storms. Bangladesh had much bigger losses of life from cyclones in the 1970s than it does now. The international community built strong evacuation shelters that get used frequently.
But for many, the greater issue is climate change, and how developing countries such as the Philippines have been paying the price of centuries of relentless industrial expansion by the developed world, exacerbated by the ongoing deadlock in climate negotiations, whereby major Western countries as well as big emerging economies have refused to subject their emission levels to mandatory reduction.
Scientists say man-made global warming has contributed to rising seas and a general increase in strength in the most powerful tropical cyclones. But they won't specifically apply these factors to Haiyan, saying it is impossible to attribute single weather events, like the typhoon, to climate change. A 2008 study found that in the northwestern Pacific where Haiyan formed, the top 1 percent of the strongest tropical cyclones over the past 30 years are getting on average about 1 mph stronger each year — a phenomenon some scientists suspect is a consequence of global warming.
"The strongest storms are getting stronger" said study co-author James Kossin of the National Climatic Data Center.
Similarly, the Philippines has seen its sea rise nearly half an inch in the past 20 years — about triple the global increase, according to R. Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado. Higher sea levels can add to storm surge, creating slightly greater flooding.
40 percent of the population living on less than $2 per day. The country’s unemployment rate is high and around a third of its workers are in agriculture, making them particularly vulnerable to severe weather.
A 2005 World Bank report discussed why poverty has exacerbated the Phillipines’ frequent disasters, writing, “Rapid urban growth and lack of tenure, for instance, have forced many to live and work in high-risk areas, such as on the shores of Navotas or flanks of active volcanoes. Families may have little choice but to return to such areas post disaster even when resettlement options are available because of the importance of proximity to place of work.” The World Bank report noted that “Disasters can also contribute to longer-term states of poverty by delaying development of poorer areas. An initial poverty mapping exercise of the Philippines reports that the results from the rapid appraisal demonstrate the importance of road conditions and distances to “centers of trade” as a determinant of poverty. Yet disasters destroy roads and many, particularly feeder roads, may not be repaired for several years after a disaster.”
In a cruel cycle, poverty and under-development make disasters worse, and disasters make poverty and under-development worse. Surely a sane society like socialism will address such problems with effective solutions.
From here and here and here
The country led the world in disaster mortality in 2012 with more than 2,000 people killed.
Despite the government’s early warnings and evacuation of up to 800,000 people from vulnerable areas, the category 5 – the highest level – Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda to Filipinos) has left some communities and coastal zones in the central Philippine islands of Visayas in complete ruins.
It would be very easy to simply put it all down to one of natures “acts of God” that many thousands have died and hundreds of thousands are homeless. While our hearts go out to the victims, for socialists the tragedy it is one we have seen many times before.
Humans played a big role in this disaster — probably bigger than nature’s, meteorologists said. University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy figures that 75 to 80 percent of the devastation can be blamed on the human factor. Meteorologists point to extreme poverty and huge growth in population — much of it in vulnerable coastal areas with poor construction, including storm shelters that didn’t hold up against Haiyan. More than 4 out of 10 Filipinos live in a storm-prone vulnerable city of more than 100,000, according to a 2012 World Bank study. The Haiyan-devastated provincial capital of Tacloban nearly tripled from about 76,000 to 221,000 in just 40 years. About one-third of Tacloban’s homes have wooden exterior walls. And 1 in 7 homes have grass roofs, according to the census office.
Those factors — especially flimsy construction — were so important that a weaker storm would have still caused almost as much devastation, McNoldy said.
“You end up with these kind of urban time bombs, where cities have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size in 50 years” without good building standards, said Richard Olson, director of the Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University. “It is, I hate to say, an all-too-familiar pattern.”
A combination of regulatory uncertainty, corruption, and mismanagement has left many areas, especially outside the industrialised centres in the northern island of Luzon, lacking in basic, quality infrastructure.
In recent years, experts and pundits have consistently pushed the Philippine government to improve its basic infrastructure (only20 percent of the country’s roads are paved), especially given the country’s vulnerability to natural calamities. Many have criticised the government for not implementing more decisive measures ahead of the storm. Knowing very well that many shanty towns and coastal communities have always been vulnerable to natural disasters, there were a number of options that the government could have pursued, critics argue, from the mandatory evacuation of citizens in high-risk areas to the establishment of concrete bunkers that can withstand super- storms. Bangladesh had much bigger losses of life from cyclones in the 1970s than it does now. The international community built strong evacuation shelters that get used frequently.
But for many, the greater issue is climate change, and how developing countries such as the Philippines have been paying the price of centuries of relentless industrial expansion by the developed world, exacerbated by the ongoing deadlock in climate negotiations, whereby major Western countries as well as big emerging economies have refused to subject their emission levels to mandatory reduction.
Scientists say man-made global warming has contributed to rising seas and a general increase in strength in the most powerful tropical cyclones. But they won't specifically apply these factors to Haiyan, saying it is impossible to attribute single weather events, like the typhoon, to climate change. A 2008 study found that in the northwestern Pacific where Haiyan formed, the top 1 percent of the strongest tropical cyclones over the past 30 years are getting on average about 1 mph stronger each year — a phenomenon some scientists suspect is a consequence of global warming.
"The strongest storms are getting stronger" said study co-author James Kossin of the National Climatic Data Center.
Similarly, the Philippines has seen its sea rise nearly half an inch in the past 20 years — about triple the global increase, according to R. Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado. Higher sea levels can add to storm surge, creating slightly greater flooding.
40 percent of the population living on less than $2 per day. The country’s unemployment rate is high and around a third of its workers are in agriculture, making them particularly vulnerable to severe weather.
A 2005 World Bank report discussed why poverty has exacerbated the Phillipines’ frequent disasters, writing, “Rapid urban growth and lack of tenure, for instance, have forced many to live and work in high-risk areas, such as on the shores of Navotas or flanks of active volcanoes. Families may have little choice but to return to such areas post disaster even when resettlement options are available because of the importance of proximity to place of work.” The World Bank report noted that “Disasters can also contribute to longer-term states of poverty by delaying development of poorer areas. An initial poverty mapping exercise of the Philippines reports that the results from the rapid appraisal demonstrate the importance of road conditions and distances to “centers of trade” as a determinant of poverty. Yet disasters destroy roads and many, particularly feeder roads, may not be repaired for several years after a disaster.”
In a cruel cycle, poverty and under-development make disasters worse, and disasters make poverty and under-development worse. Surely a sane society like socialism will address such problems with effective solutions.
From here and here and here
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