Man-made Natural disasters

Introduction:

 Natural disasters
 Man-made disasters
 The genesis of Man-made natural disasters

Main Body:

Man-made Natural disasters

I- Global Warming

 Burning of fossil fuels

 Population explosion
 Release of methane from manure
 Deforestation
 Modern agriculture and animal rearing-a source of methane
 Domino effect of global warming

II- Pesticides Induced Pollution

 Adverse effects on humans

 Environmental effects
 Industrial disasters in pesticides plants: Bhopal Disaster

III- Wild Forest Fires

 Man-intrusion into woods

-California wild fires

Iv- Extinction of Flora and Fauna

 Insane hunting
 Indiscriminate hunting techniques
 Ecological disturbances

V- Off-shore Oil Drilling Accidents

 A case of oil rigs in Gulf of Mexico

VI- Mining Disasters

 Quarrying from deeper strata

 Poor safety mechanisms
 Intense exploitation of minerals
 Effects of Mining disasters

VII- Nuclear Disasters

 Chernobyl
 Fukushima-Daiichi
 Nagasaki and Hiroshima
 Potential threat from nuclear reactors

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VIII- Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

 Testing of WMD
 Disposal of WMD
 Ammunition stock explosions

IX- A beau-ideal of the man-made disasters: Floods in Pakistan

 Drainage crisis in Indus Basin

 Human negligence and advertent sabotaging of mechanisms
 Feeble safety measures

How to avoid man-made natural disasters?

 Cosmic and galvanized view of life

 Use of knowledge for human welfare
 Strengthening Environment Management Systems (EMS)
 Halt unsustainable exploitation of natural resources
 Realize that armed conflicts are not a solution
 Encourage cosmopolitan approach: inter-nation harmony
 Make UN effectual to resolve conflicts
 Collateral policies to deal out with problems like terrorism and global warming

Conclusion:

Divert the wellspring of the modern boons for the benefit of human kind

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 Man-made Natural Disasters

History of mankind is replete with both natural as well as manmade disasters. Earthquakes, floods,
landslides, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornados, tsunami and other such hazards are natural disasters. Health
hazards are also categorized as natural disasters, epidemics such as Spanish Flu in 1918 that claimed 50
million lives worldwide.

Man-made or anthropogenic disasters are direct outcome of human activities such as industrial or
engineering failures, terrorism etc. They result from human intent, negligence, or error; or involving a
failure of a man-made system. In order to set the new ceilings, displaying the feats of engineering and
more importantly, avaricious propensities are prodding the humans to test their mettles. However, in
ancient times it were only natural disasters that caused havoc on humanity, today manmade disasters are
playing an equal, if not bigger role in causing destruction of life and property around the world.
Humankind has become technologically advanced, frequency and magnitude of manmade disasters has
increased in the same proportion. As a result, they are posing themselves as foolhardy and seem
oblivious of the adage that ‘discretion is the better part of valor’.

In the contemporary world, the distinction between the natural and man-made disasters is
becoming fuzzy. For centuries humans lived within the parameters of nature thus yielding a symbiotic
relationship, which enabled man to progress. But in the present times, we abandoned reciprocity with the
natural world in pursuit of its command over it. Though, modern humanity has achieved great material
success, but scientific findings also suggest that in pursuit of this achievement, human society has
inadvertently put its future at risk, the dangers like global warming, acid rains are looming larger before
the human race. It seems that human activities are now initiating the hitherto natural disasters.

Global warming is the cardinal man-made disaster. Anthropogenic causes are predominantly
responsible for this unprecedented climate change. U.S president Barak Obama has aptly commented on
the role of humans in unleashing this disaster, “All across the world, in every kind of environment
and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are
abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not
only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon:
the man-made natural disaster.”

Natural causes are also responsible for climate change but pale in comparison to the man made
causes. Humans are accelerating the natural climatological cycles with human-created emissions of
greenhouse gases. The primary gas, carbon dioxide, is released every time fossil fuels are burned-
currently our main energy source. Likewise population explosion is Global Warming factor. More
population means an extra burden on the food supply, transportation and exploitation of resources; these
invariably release green house gases into the atmosphere. Methane, a potent green-house gas that traps
the heat more effectively than carbon dioxide, is released from manure. In order to feed huge population,
colossal numbers of animals are raised and their manure releases methane.

Deforestation is another man-made contributor to the global warming, it has a two pronged effect
on global warming, firstly, it eliminates the carbon dioxide users and secondly decay and burning of these

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trees release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. While our fiddling
with the arctic tundra is destabilizing “carbon sinks”-a natural system that stores carbon over thousands of
years. The "green revolution" of the twentieth century allowed the farmers to use the nitrogen fertilizers.
Plants "fix," or capture, nitrogen on their own as well, but humans are now adding more nitrogen than all
the plants of the world jointly add! Nitrogen oxides have 300 times more heat-trapping capacity per unit of
volume than carbon dioxide. A recent United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization study found that
modern farming is contributing more to global warming than all of the transportation sector! Similarly,
CFCs and HCFCs (chlorofluorocarbons and hydro-chlorofluorocarbons) used in refrigeration are also
powerful greenhouse gases. The rising global temperature sets off a domino effect which results in rising
melting of Clathrates-a hidden source of Methane. Increase in the temperature disrupts ecosystems and
increase bacterial activity in the soil that leads to further global warming. These changes are self-
reinforcing. From an objective perspective, it looks like we are playing Russian roulette with all of life on
Earth!

There are other instances in which humans, in order to gain mastery over nature, have shown
their sheer imbecility. Humans thought that by applying the pesticides, they can control the pests. But the
fallacy of their claim is evident by the fact that each year more and more doses of pesticides are
employed but the problem still persists. But tinkering with nature never goes un-penalized. According to
the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, 10 of the 12 most dangerous and
persistent chemicals are pesticides. Pesticides are causing acute and delayed health effects; these
effects range from simple irritation of the skin and eyes to more severe effects such as affecting the
nervous system, mimicking hormones causing reproductive problems, and also causing cancer.
Pesticide use raises a number of environmental concerns. Over 98% of sprayed insecticides and 95% of
herbicides reach a destination other than their target including air, water and soil. Pesticide drift occurs
when pesticides suspended in the air as particles are carried by wind to other areas, potentially
contaminating them. Thus, it seems that rather than having a bane for humans, pesticides have become a
man-made natural disaster. Even if, their use is banned, it will take years to neutralize the adverse effects
of the already used pesticides. Moreover, the world's worst industrial catastrophe, The Bhopal disaster
occurred in pesticide plant of the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) in Bhopal, India.

Forests have been ravaged by wildfires for thousands of years; they are an essential part of the
natural ecosystem. But the fires that burned hundreds of square miles last year in California — at the
disaster's peak, 18 separate fires were burning—weren't entirely natural. At least one, the Santiago
Canyon blaze, was deliberately set, while two others — the Witch and Rice Canyon fires — were caused
by downed power lines that ignited surrounding brush. Whether those brush should have been more
thoroughly cleared, and whether people should be permitted to build homes in remote, are now matters of
active debate. But it’s the humans who have intruded with their unnatural inventions into the wild. These
human recreational homes amid the woods have increased the chances of wildfires around the world; this
is a perfect case of man-induced natural disaster.

In an ecosystem, a perfect balance is maintained by the number of predators and number of the
animals below them in the food pyramid. But the humans have acquired predatory techniques that enable
them to hunt animals in large numbers, thus the ecological balance is disrupted. This has led to the
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extinction of number of species and has categorized a number of other animals into the endangered
species such as Mountain Gorilla, Blue Whale, Asian Elephant, Giant Panda, Asiatic Lion, and Siberian
Tiger. The Baiji Dolphin "goddess of the Yangtze", is a rare freshwater mammal that is almost certainly
extinct because noisy boat collisions and dam construction that may have imperilled the sonar-driven
animals, and overfishing with such indiscriminate techniques as netting, dynamite and powerful electric
shocks. The disappearance of a top-level predator like the Baiji — an indicator species that signals the
health of its ecosystem— have fairly demonstrated the man-made natural disaster.

To satiate the human demand for fossil fuels, engineers are up to a Sisyphean task. They have
employed oil rigs to extract the off-shore oil and gas. The nature of their operation means risk; accidents
and tragedies occur regularly. The U.S. Minerals Management Service reported 858 fires and explosions
on offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico alone from 2001 to 2010. In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon
platform, 52 miles off-shore of Venice, Louisiana, exploded, killing 11 people. The resulting undersea
gusher, conservatively estimated to exceed 20 million US gallons as of early June, 2010, became the
worst oil spill in US history, eclipsing the Exxon Valdez oil spill. These oil spills are hazard to the
environment and disturb the flora and fauna of not only of immediate area but also of distinct areas as the
spills are moved by ocean currents to distant places.

Mining, the extraction of minerals and geological materials has been man’s occupation since pre-
historic times. Mining poses a number of risks for the environment, such as erosion, formation of
sinkholes, loss of biodiversity, landslides and contamination of soil, groundwater and surface water by
chemicals from mining processes. But mining also causes an abruptly conspicuous man-made disaster-
the collapse of the mine. Walls of the mines are weakened by decades of quarrying. Coal mines are most
prone to collapse as Methane gas usually accumulates in the mines that explodes. The greedy humans
are trying to extract the minerals from the deeper strata of the earth and have created the perfect habitat
for the man-made disasters. Large number of people dies because of this man-made disaster and most of
the deaths nowadays occur in developing countries.

Nature has provided the humans with environmentally safe energy resources, but humans out of
their cost-effective theories or nuclear armament doctrines are harnessing the nuclear energy that is a
recipe for disaster. Back in the 1980s, the Chernobyl reactor blew and irradiated everything in a 150 mile
radius. Now this year, Fukushima-Daiichi power plant released the radiation after it was hit by a massive
tsunami. It is folly to build the nuclear plants in a country, which sits on more than 40,000 fault lines and is
part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Even in other parts of the world, nuclear power plants poses a certain level
of threat to humans, any error at nuclear power plant can be a man-made disaster. But humans are
advertently ignoring the risk and muddling along with their reckless risk taking.

The world is competing on the production of the weapons of mass destruction, nuclear arms and
other conventional weapons. The accumulation of these destructive weapons is considered as national
pride and presumed to be guarantors of their national security. The Nagasaki and Hiroshima hark backs
the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons, but humans are paying no heed to this harsh reality.
Between 1946 and 1972, several of the world's nations decided to toss their outdated weapons of mass
destruction into the bottom of the sea. Japan, USA, and Russia apparently have several sites, but rather

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than mark any of them they have decided to just leave the toxic material where it is and let it become one
with nature. That can lead to another human induced natural disaster. At continents, the stock of
ammunition, at sometimes blew and caused a man-made natural disaster. In this year alone, this
occurred in Mozambique and Cyprus. The testing of weapons at the sea bottoms must have disrupted
the ecosystems, sea beds and topography in the deeper oceans, but the effects of these man-made
natural disasters are less evident today.

A beau ideal of the man-made disasters is conspicuously evident in Pakistan, where a series of
natural disasters have occurred in the past few years. These natural calamities were not meant for the
massive catastrophe but human negligence, advertent sabotaging the already feeble safety mechanism
and human greed transformed them into the man-made natural disasters, such as the floods of 2010-11.

The floods were so intense because of the `drainage crisis` engineered by man-made structural
interventions in irrigation and drainage in the Indus basin. The British Raj introduced a modern irrigation
system with perennial water supplies through mega structural measures like headworks, weirs and
barrages on the rivers. Considerable expansion of the irrigation network in the Indus basin took place in
the decades following independence. With three storage reservoirs, two headworks, 16 barrages, 12
interlink canals, 44 canal systems, more than 64,000km of canals and 90,000 water courses in the Indus
basin today, Pakistan has one of the largest contiguous irrigation systems in the world. The huge
infrastructure has made it possible to divert 101 million acre feet (MAF) out of the 154 MAF annual water
flow in the Indus basin for feeding the canal system, thereby intensifying irrigation in the country.

But from the outset, the intensive irrigation network has unleashed a range of social and
environmental problems including the erosion of flora and fauna, and land degradation in the form of
water-logging and salinity. To fix the problem of waterlogging and salinity, structural measures like the
Salinity Control and Rehabilitation Project (SCARP), Main Nara Valley Drain (MNVD), Left Bank Outfall
Drain (LBOD), National Drainage Programme (NDP) and the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD) were
undertaken.

The construction of engineering works across and along the Indus River has seriously obstructed
natural drainage in the Indus basin. The riverbeds that developed over thousands of years have been
squeezed into narrow passages, not allowing peak flood flows to pass smoothly. For instance, the Indus
bed previously spanned 14-20km in the plains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, south-western Punjab and Sindh
before the advent of the modern irrigation regime that saw the construction of embankments. It has now
been reduced to not more than 2km!

The scientific contributions have not always been beneficial; indeed, many would argue that
science is to be blamed for the deterioration of the global environment. But is it science that, through its
applications, leads to global warming, weapons of mass destruction and widespread poverty? Or do these
developments occur through actions of those who misuse scientific charisma to satiate their lust for power
and greed?

This goes without saying that the human greed and avarice is responsible for this tinkering with
nature and life on earth. There is need to rein in the human greed and the best cure is an education,

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which accentuate the ethics, morality and tolerance in the humans. The inexorable march towards
scientific progress is not a bad occurrence at all, but systems of control need to be tightened to reign in
the rogue elements which abuse their powers and those of scientific technologies. The curriculum being
adopted in almost every discipline must emphasize on the moral and ethical honing of the skills of the
students, so that when they pass out, their hearts are filled with compassion and sympathy towards other
human beings. The United Nations here has to take the lead as the world body charged with the collective
responsibility of fostering tolerance and peace. More importantly, religious education needs to imparted to
students as every religion teaches compassion, peace and humanity.

Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people’s hearts. Western
civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human 'brain' with knowledge, but no
one seems to care about filling the human 'heart' with compassion. This is what the real role of
religion is.”-Dalai Lama

we should not made posterity suffer from our bequest of greed, thus reconfiguring the man-
environment relationship is imperative as only through this, the life on earth can survive in the long run. A
beneficial, symbiotic relationship with the nature will not only undo the colossal destruction that has been
wrought by the human bungling but will also usher in an era where life will be more congenial to live.
Moreover, the prevalent economic order buttresses the human greed. We need a neo-capitalism- a
restrained form of capitalism, which provide avenues to individual progress as well as ensure the well
being of the nature-, can address much of the woes of modern civilization.

There is a need to have a holistic view of life on earth, rather than striving to serve the few, the
people at the helm of affairs need to endorse the egalitarian and cosmopolitan view of humankind. An
individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic
concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Martin Luther King, Jr. The humans must realize
that armed conflicts never solve the underlying problems in the contemporary world. The precedents of
superpowers looking for political solutions after decades of wars are before us. Thus, the humans must
act out of their common sense; need to look for the solutions in an amicable way. Otherwise, the armed
conflicts are bound to endanger the very existence of humans on this planet.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on
programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Knowledge Revolution of the 21 st century has provided us an understanding, reason and
logic to tackle the above-mentioned challenges. The menace like global warming, climate change are
grave but humans know the solutions, all they need is to divert the wellspring of the modern boons for the
benefit of human kind rather than hoarding it to perpetuate the dynamics of human greed.

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