This subject approaches the impact that the organisations have with regard to the environment under some basic principles as a consequence of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (Rio, 1992): environmental responsibility, environmental risk management and accepting the consequences of the facts.
The issues included in this subject are: (1) Prevention of pollution, (2) Sustainable resource use; (3) Climate change mitigation and adaptation and (4) Protection of the environment, biodiversity and restoration of natural habitats. About issue 1, the actions considered are related to the identification of pollution and waste sources, prevention measures, involving in the local communities or the training on environmental matters. Our working environments must become familiar with the use of sustainable resources taking into account: the energy efficiency, the use of water, the efficiency in the use of materials, promoting sustainable procurement, saving energy, making a sustainable use of new technologies, of the urban use (building, construction), and of products from sustainable suppliers. In the deontological codes, the respect for environment is part of the ethical value social responsibility or directly the respect for the environment is mentioned (AMETIC). In any case, it refers to the sustainable services, sustainable equipment and to the use of sustainable technologies (SEDIC).
The basic static conditions implied by Pareto efficiency can be extended to an intertemporal setting in a straightforward fashion through the dating of commodities. That is, final goods and productive factors are distinguished by time as well as by the type of good. For private goods, distributional efficiency requires that each pair of individuals has the same marginal rate of substitution between any pair of commodities, including the same good consumed at different points in time. The common marginal rate of substitution must be equal to the economy's marginal rate of transformation between the pair of commodities. The necessary conditions for a Pareto-efficient allocation of a public good are somewhat more complicated. In particular, efficiency obtains when the marginal rate of transformation is equal to the summation of individual marginal rates of substitution over both time and individuals [Sandler and Smith (1976)].
As demonstrated in the previous section, the efficiency conditions for the use of long-lived assets require that the marginal value of the flow of services from the asset is equal to the marginal value of the asset, and that the marginal rate of return to each asset is the same. The basic condition of equal returns to each asset is independent of any ethical criterion. That is, given any social welfare function, if the intertemporal condition is not satisfied, then there exists a better path for the economy to follow, where better is defined in terms of the chosen social welfare criterion.
A market allocation will be intertemporally efficient given standard neoclassical conditions about the convexity of production and preference sets and a complete set of markets, including future markets for each dated commodity and a full set of contingent markets for each state of the world. Arbitrage activity by asset owners seeking to maximize the present value of their portfolio would ensure that the total return to each asset is equal. The future markets enable the economy to establish the proper initial price for each asset [Dasgupta and Heal (1979)]. In the absence of futures markets, it could be some time before an initial error is discovered and corrected. The absence of contingent markets would prevent the efficient allocation of risk. The exact impact on the pattern of natural resource use depends upon the source of uncertainty. For example, uncertainty about the timing of the development of a substitute for the resource can lead to more rapid depletion while uncertainty about the size of the resource stock can lead to less rapid depletion [Fisher (1981)].
The existence of a complete set of futures, risk, and capital markets is essential to the efficient allocation of any long-lived asset and is not specific to interactions between resource use and the environment. The open access to environmental assets and the public good characteristics of environmental amenities are important sources of intertemporal market inefficiencies derived from resource–environmental interactions. Because of the open-access and public-good aspects of the environment, the environmental costs of resource use are not fully internalized in private decision making. This market failure results in both direct intertemporal inefficiencies and static misallocations with indirect implications for intertemporal allocation. In general, one would expect that environmental assets would be undervalued and, therefore, over-exploited.
The static failure of the market to capture the current environmental costs of natural resource use induces greater extraction of natural resources than would occur if all costs were covered by the resource price. This static inefficiency also affects the entire time pattern of resource extraction. The intertemporal bias in the pattern of resource extraction created by market imperfections, including externalities, depends upon the rate of change in the market imperfection over time relative to the rate of discount [Sweeney 1977)]. A simple example is the case of a static environmental effect with a constant marginal cost so that the rate of change in the market imperfection is zero. In this case, if the rate of discount is positive and the environmental cost is external to the market, then the market depletes the resource more rapidly than socially desirable because the present value of the market imperfection is greater in the present than it is in the future.
In addition to the dynamic implications of static inefficiencies, there are several direct sources of intertemporal inefficiency that are associated with the interaction between natural resource use and the environment. Many of the environmental effects of resource use are long-lived and cumulative in nature – the climatic impact of carbon dioxide emissions will be felt long after the consumption of fossil fuels has ended. In the case of cumulative effects, there is a dynamic cost of the externality that captures the present value of any future environmental damage caused by current emissions. For example, if D(P(t)) denotes the value of the environmental damage of an accumulation of pollutant P at time t, then the shadow price of the resource should include the term
which represents the present value of the present and future marginal environmental damage caused by the use of the resource [Schulze (1974)].
This value is greater than the present value of the marginal damage of the current stock of pollution, D′(P(t))/δ, whenever the marginal damage of pollution increases with the level of pollution and the level of pollution is increasing over time. In the models of the previous section, this cumulative effect of natural resource use is captured in the shadow price of the resource – note the equivalence of this term with the second term on the right-hand side of eq. (25) above. Note also that the correct valuation of the environmental damage depends upon the entire future path of pollution. The persistence of pollutants can imply that economic incentive policies do not have an informational advantage over direct controls since it is not possible to determine the optimal tax (or number of tradeable permits) without solving for the optimal path for environmental quality [Griffin (1987)].
The open access to the environment means that the benefits of the regenerative capacity of the environment are not appropriable. Consequently, there are no market incentives for investment in the assimilative capacity of the environment nor for the development of technologies that use the environment less intensively. Commoner (1972) presents evidence that changes in production processes were the most significant factor in the increase in environmental degradation in the post-World War II period. For example, in the USA between 1949 and 1968, the use of fertilizer nitrogen increased by 648% while population increased by only 34% and per capita output increased by only 11%. Hence there has been a very significant increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizer per unit of output. Research and development efforts are guided by market forces and if environmental resources are undervalued, then R&D activities will be allocated inefficiently and technological progress will be oriented toward more extensive use of the environment and, in turn, the depletion of natural resources will be too rapid.
Other intertemporal inefficiencies may arise because future generations do not participate in the market. The general nature of these problems is the inability to conduct trades across generations. Future generations may prefer a different mix of capital, resource, and environmental assets than the mix of assets bequeathed to them by the present generation. It is possible that they may desire to exchange material wealth for environmental amenities. The present generation might be willing to accept the trade but cannot because of the temporal barrier. Such a situation arises when development is irreversible and there is uncertainty about future preferences [Fisher and Krutilla (1974)].
The public-good nature of an environmental asset over time raises questions about the effect of discounting on the intertemporal allocative efficiency. Sandler and Smith (1976) have argued that discounting can result in Pareto inefficiency in the intertemporal allocation of long-lived public goods such as environmental assets. Cabe (1982) establishes that the proper rate of discount on future services is the marginal rate of transformation for the numeraire good between the current period and the period in which the services are provided. He argues that the result obtained by Sandler and Smith is due to their implicit assumption of a numeraire with a marginal rate of transformation equal to unity and that this assumption is unrealistic in a growing economy. Sandler and Smith (1982) agree that the proper discount factor is the intertemporal marginal rate of transformation for the numeraire but argue that a value of unity is realistic for a commodity that serves as a standard of value. In any case, the market rate of discount is not necessarily the socially optimal rate of discount.
In summary, because of the open-access and public-good characteristics of environmental assets, the interaction between resource use and the environment poses significant problems for achieving an efficient intertemporal allocation even in the presence of a complete set of futures, risk and capital markets for privately owned commodities. While a variety of outcomes is possible, it is generally expected that a market allocation would deplete natural resource stocks too rapidly and that environmental degradation would be too great.
African farmers and herders control a wealth of sophisticated knowledge about the environment. Studies by anthropologists throughout Africa highlight the importance of understanding how local knowledge systems affect the use of environmental resources. These systems are expressed through elaborate local terminologies and classification systems, which rarely are acknowledged by governments and policy makers. Instead, outside agencies and development ‘experts’ often advocate new technologies and practices that may actually contradict or conflict with these local knowledge systems. Social science research in this area has emphasized the documentation of local vegetation and resources, local environmental practices, and the development potential of indigenous knowledge. As indicated earlier, these knowledge systems can have important gender components.
A few examples from Kenya demonstrate the critical role of local knowledge systems and practices in natural resource use. In the Baringo area of Kenya, for instance, many community-based irrigation schemes have achieved considerable success in a region noted for land degradation and food shortages; and where large-scale irrigation systems have failed miserably (Little 1992). Based on local councils of elders (lamaal), low-cost irrigation systems have been developed that conserve the fragile soils and transport water through intricate canal systems over kilometers of dry barren lands. Land and water disputes are resolved locally and, unlike neighboring villages, food-aid distribution is minimal in these areas. Because local irrigators maintain trees in their fields and do not drain or extend irrigation into local wetlands, they help to maintain some of the richest diversity of bird populations in East Africa (in excess of 700 species in an area of less than 70 square kilometers). By contrast, the mechanized, clear-cutting techniques of large-scale, government irrigation projects in the area threaten this rich diversity by transforming valuable habitats.
In the nearby Kerio Valley of northern Kenya, irrigation is managed on the basis of clans, and in some cases sub-clans. As Soper (1983, p. 91) notes, ‘the water ownership unit is the clan section or, in some cases, sub-section, which is also the land-holding and the basic residential unit.’ A clan or a group of clans will own a particular furrow, which they are responsible for managing and maintaining. Water from the furrows is allocated on a rotating basis to members of the clan, usually based on a 12-hour watering unit or fractions of the unit. Most agriculturalists who have surveyed the furrow system note its efficiency in conserving water and soil. They also indicate the community's commitment to maintaining it. In an area that is prone to drought and environmental problems, the system stands as a notable achievement.
As demonstrated in this volume, recent research has enriched our understanding of the nature, causes, and consequences of policy responses to the development challenges of our time. The examples provided for certain agricultural, resource, and environmental policy concerns have shown the richness of incorporating transaction costs, risks, institutions, and political economy into traditional models of economy–society–environment interactions. Yet, the efforts to unravel fundamental explanations to many recent and emergent development patterns have only just begun. For students of development, the field is fertile for research, both at the theoretical and empirical levels. For example, the link between security and sustainability through the concept of risk is yet to be analytically clarified. Clarifying the concepts of and interrelationship among disaster management, risk, hazard, vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability would contribute greatly in our understanding of the economics of disaster.
The role of institutions in natural resource use can be further explored to include transitions across different forms of institutions, the role of government and its interaction with resource users, and economic development. It is useful, for example, to explore how certain political economy models of rent-seeking and citizen voting can affect resource use outcomes and the sustainability of economic development. Development of theoretical foundations of “learning-by-lobbying” would be likewise useful in shedding light on the transmission effects of the use of resources and the potential for a resource curse.
From a policy perspective, advancing the search for fundamental explanations will go a long way toward informing what works and what does not in efforts to achieve sustainable economic development. For one, we hope to mitigate the tyranny of fads, fancies, and myths over concrete and logically thought-out proposals to achieve sustainable development. For another, a clear understanding of the nature, causes, and consequences of policy helps inform the deployment of appropriate metrics for monitoring and evaluating progress—or the lack of it—in achieving sustainable development.
There is much room for improving the methods for measuring various capital stocks, shadow prices, rates of depreciation and depletion, and rates of investment as the different economies move forward to green accounting—inclusion of environment and natural resource considerations in, say, the National Income Accounts.
The framework of nonrenewable resource and a ceiling on the stock of pollution can also be used in the evaluation of regulatory policies, such as in modeling the impacts of the Keystone Pipeline System in Canada and the United States as well as the discovery of shale gas reserves in China and the United States. Complementing the formal models of institutional development and natural resource management with empirical studies will further increase the value of these tools toward a more fully comprehensive approach to sustainable development.
The majority of the studies described above focus on the second-best theory: in the presence of governance (monitoring and enforcement) costs, what is the socially optimal institutional change? They describe the second-best institutional choice for resource management given the costs of introducing and maintaining institutions. In practice, resource management involves decentralized decisions by individual resource users (with or without enforcement by a resource manager or a regulator). In other words, in many cases institutional change occurs as a result of resource users’ deliberate decisions, as Ostrom (1990) describes.
Several studies investigate the outcome of decentralized decisions to enforce private property by resource users (de Meza and Gould, 1992; Hotte et al., 2000; Margolis and Shogren, 2009). One important insight from these studies is that decentralized enforcement decisions by resource users may be different from what is socially optimal. Their focus, however, is the steady state or static equilibrium. In addition, their frameworks do not apply to the case of common property, where individual resource users’ interest may not be consistent with the group’s interest. Under common property, enforcement among resource users (and cooperation among them) is a key challenge in resource management. Because of failure in cooperation among users, many common pool resources are overharvested to the extent close to that in open access (Ostrom, 1990). Given the challenges of internal and external enforcement, how would self-governance emerge as an equilibrium outcome of resource users’ decisions?
Tarui (2004) presents a dynamic model of renewable natural resource use with entry deterrence by a group of resource users, where the harvest price is taken as given and fixed over time. The model—a simplified version of the Hotte et al. (2000) model of costly external enforcement—considers both external and internal enforcement. In the model, a coalition of agents self-governs the commons and monitors overharvesting by members and entry by outsiders. If the coalition chooses its group size in each period to maximize income per member, subject to costly internal and external enforcement, then a unique equilibrium is associated with smaller resource rents than the second-best level, given costly monitoring. The equilibrium steady state resource stock is larger than the second-best level—a result consistent with earlier studies (de Meza and Gould, 1992; Hotte et al., 2000; Margolis and Shogren, 2009) that describes the difference between decentralized enforcement decisions and the socially optimal enforcement level.
Though Tarui’s analysis is limited to comparative statics of steady states, it illustrates that the steady state resource stock has a nonmonotonic relationship with harvest price—a result consistent with that of Roumasset and Tarui (2010). Given a low harvest price, self-governance does not emerge in the steady state because gains from enforcement are too low relative to the cost of enforcement. As harvest price increases, self-governance emerges and generates positive rents. Since the open-access stock level also decreases as harvest price increases, the model exhibits a U-share relationship between the steady state resource stock level and harvest price.
Tarui’s (2004) model also describes the effects of monitoring productivity on steady state stock and rents. Monitoring productivity determines the effectiveness of monitoring efforts in detecting overharvesting by insiders and outsiders, thereby representing the cost of enforcement. Not surprisingly, with sufficiently high monitoring productivity (i.e., enforcement costs converging to zero), the second-best outcome converges to the efficient outcome. However, the equilibrium inefficiency remains: because of excessive enforcement by insiders to deter entry by potential resource users from the outside, the equilibrium resource stock level exceeds the Pareto efficient level when the monitoring productivity is large enough.
The studies cited above help in understanding how (steady state) equilibrium institutional arrangements based on decentralized decisions by resource users depend on the underlying parameter values (such as harvest price and costs of enforcement or resource governance). What has not been explored is how institutions emerge along the transition path in equilibrium as the number of resource users and the resource scarcity change.
A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Social Protection Programs for Nutritional Outcomes
There is a large body of literature on social protection and its implication for welfare outcomes (Grosh et al., 2009; Alderman and Yemtsov, 2013; Gentilini, 2014; Gentilini, 2016). Yet the evidence on how social protection directly helps in nutritional outcomes is still limited. This is partly due to the varying objectives of social protection programs, and because most social protection programs do not have nutritional outcomes as their primary goal. As a result, there are both research and policy gaps in analyzing the contribution of social protection programs toward improved nutrition.
Social protection programs have wide ranging and sometime multiple objectives: poverty reduction, women’s empowerment, resilience building, food security, and dietary quality, to name a few. Nutrition is addressed as the direct objective in only a few of the programs. Understanding how nutritional goals could be achieved through social protection interventions through both direct and indirect pathways can help policy makers re-think their intervention options and the approach to social protection. Some of the pathways to nutritional outcomes through social protection are depicted in Fig. 12.1.
Figure 12.1. Conceptual pathways to link social protection and nutritional outcomes.
Based on Coady, P.D., 2004. Designing and evaluating social safety nets: theory, evidence and policy conclusions. Food Consumption and Nutrition Division Discussion Paper No. 172. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC; Harvey, P., 2007. Cash-based responses in emergencies. Humanitarian Policy Group report 24. Overseas Development Institute, London; Arnold, C., Conway, T., Greenslade, M., 2011. DFID Cash Transfers Literature Review; de Brauw, A., Hoddinott, J., 2011. Must conditional cash transfer programs be conditioned to be effective? The impact of conditioning transfers on school enrollment in Mexico. J. Dev. Econ. 96 (2), 359–370; and Ruel, M.T., Alderman, H., 2013. Nutrition-sensitive interventions and programmes: how can they help accelerate progress in improving maternal and child nutrition? Lancet 382 (9891), 536–551.
As most of the poor and malnourished households live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihood, agricultural development strategies need to be inherently multi-sectoral in nature. They should cover a wide range of issues and approaches such as technology development and adoption, sustainable natural resource use, delivery of institutional services, and human capital development. All these interventions are needed for the holistic growth of the agricultural sector (WDR, 2008). Social protection programs can help in all these interventions.
In addition to the direct contribution through food and cash transfers, social protection has potential in the long run to achieve agricultural development goals which can further contribute to nutritional outcomes through the channels discussed in previous chapters. In some countries, social protection continues to focus on targeted poverty alleviation programs to reduce current poverty levels.
In addition, public interventions that aim at social protection also focus on increasing service delivery, enhancing labor productivity, improving livelihood strategies for the poor, and financial inclusion and sustainable insurance for the poor. The intermediate benefits of such interventions are reduced risk, improved resilience, gender empowerment, asset building and input investment in agriculture, sustainable natural resource management, and human capital investments, to mention a few. These intermediate benefits work through income increases and changes in consumption patterns to result in food security and nutritional outcomes.
As income increases, the demand for food increases, as we noted in Chapter 6, Consumer Theory and Estimation of Demand for Food. However, increased food intake does not necessarily mean good nutrition. How income transfers from social protection improve nutritional outcomes through diet changes has been of interest to policy makers for quite some time. Social protection programs can improve nutritional outcomes by empowering women, and by recognizing the role of women in the nutritional well-being of their children. Addressing intra-household dynamics, as seen in Chapter 9, Intrahousehold Allocation and Gender Bias in Nutrition: Application of Heckman Two-Step Procedure, can reduce the gender bias in nutrition (Babu et al., 1993).
The cost-effectiveness of social protection programs has been discussed in the literature (Gentilini, 2016). Programs and policies for poverty alleviation through social protection can improve their cost-effectiveness through improving their design. For example, transferring the funds to the beneficiaries through mobile technology and cell phones can reduce pilferage and reach the right target groups. The benefits of cash transfers could mean more improved nutrition if the program is also implemented with adult education and behavior changing activities toward good nutrition (Ruel and Alderman, 2013).
Skill development as part of the intervention could increase the chances of the target households moving away from dependency on social protection, as it has been shown that given opportunities households do find gainful benefits and do not continue to depend on social protection programs (FAO, 2015). Such complementary investments are necessary for the long-term sustainability of nutritional benefits.
In addition to the rural focus of social protection programs, urban focused interventions have been helpful in integrating the urban poor into the mainstream economy. Programs that help in providing rural credit and increased inclusion of the poor in employment guarantee schemes and other insurance programs help in increasing resilience and protecting the assets of the poor (FAO, 2015).
Policy makers often see social protection as a short-term solution to help the poor get out of the poverty trap. How long the program will have to be continued will depend on the opportunities that are created for households to become part of the mainstream economy. Thus, poor people’s dependence on the public provision of social protection has been an issue in the development community. However, results of studies have shown that under certain institutional settings, the participants of the programs could be weaned off over time.
In general, most of the social protection interventions aim at increasing the income of the households in the long run. Thus, the design of the social protection program matters as a means of providing an enabling environment for the participants to move out of the program. This often comes in the form of human capital development. School feeding programs, such as “Food for Education” in Bangladesh, aim at the provision of food under the condition that the children of the households will attend school for a certain number of days in a month (Ahmed and Babu, 2006).
Social protection programs that offer food in kind to the families have implications for local market development and the prices farmers get for the food they produce (Omamo et al., 2010). To avoid deleterious effects of such interventions, program designers sought to buy the food they provide to the household from local markets. Often when food is provided in kind, they tend to focus on reducing hunger. This has implications for dietary diversity and the nutrition intake of the program participants (Rabbani et al., 2006).
The provision of cash could help in diversifying their diets, and the targeted groups will have an increased ability to buy and consume high value commodities which are nutritionally rich. In addition, social protection programs could provide incentives for diversifying production systems, such as moving away from cereal crops to legumes, which can increase the protein content of the diet (Audsley et al., 2010).
The designers of social protection programs also face issues related to the combination of instruments such as food and education, food and health interventions, the level of rations to be given, and the combination of items in a ration. Timing of the intervention has implications for the benefits that accrue to the participants. Interventions during a lean season may have a better impact on nutrition (Babu et al., 1993). The nature of the intervention also differs based on the time intervals needed between the distribution of food or cash.
The target groups need to be specifically those who are most vulnerable to nutritional problems. In addition to food and other benefits for achieving best nutritional outcomes, programs need to have behavioral change and educational components. All these factors also affect how programs benefit the participants nutritionally. Finally, the economics of the interventions matter, in terms of how much the design costs, and how many people can be pulled out of hunger, poverty, and malnutrition challenges.
Nonstructural mitigation, as defined previously, generally involves a reduction in the likelihood or consequence of risk through modifications in human behavior or natural processes, without requiring the use of engineered structures. Nonstructural mitigation techniques are often considered mechanisms where “man adapts to nature.” They tend to be less costly and fairly easy for communities with few financial or technological resources to implement, though the true costs of mitigation, whether monetary or otherwise, may be passed to individuals or businesses.
The following section describes several of the various categories into which nonstructural mitigation measures may be grouped and provides several examples of each:
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Regulatory measures
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Community awareness and education programs
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Nonstructural physical modifications
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Environmental control
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Behavioral modification
Regulatory Measures
Regulatory measures limit hazard risk by legally dictating human actions. Regulations can be applied to several facets of societal and individual life, and are used when it is determined that such action is required for the common good of the society. Although the use of regulatory measures is pervasive, compliance is a widespread problem because the cost of enforcement can be prohibitive and inspectors may be untrained, ineffective, or susceptible to bribes.
Examples of regulatory mitigation measures include:
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Land use management (zoning). This is a legally imposed restriction on how land may be used. It may apply to specific geographic designations, such as coastal zone management, hillside or slope management, floodplain development restrictions, or microclimatic siting of structures (such as placing structures only on the leeward side of a hill).
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Open space preservation (green spaces). This practice attempts to limit the settlement or activities of people in areas that are known to be at high risk for one or more hazards.
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Protective resource preservation. In some situations, a tract of land is not at risk from a hazard, but a new hazard will be created by disturbing that land. An example of protective resource preservation is protecting forests that serve to block wind and preserve wetlands.
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Denial of services to high-risk areas. When squatter and informal settlements form on high-risk land despite the existence of preventive regulatory measures, it is possible to discourage growth and reverse settlement trends by ensuring that services such as electricity, running water, and communications do not reach the unsafe settlement. This measure is only acceptable when performed in conjunction with a project that seeks to offer alternative, safe accommodations for the inhabitants (otherwise, a secondary humanitarian disaster may result).
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Density control. By regulating the number of people who may reside in an area of known or estimated risk, it is possible to limit vulnerability and control the amount of resources considered adequate for protection from and response to that known hazard. Many response mechanisms are overwhelmed because the number of casualties in an affected area is much higher than was anticipated.
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Building use regulations. To protect against certain hazards, it is possible to restrict the types of activities that may be performed in a building. These restrictions may apply to people, materials, or activities. (See exhibit 4.6.)
Exhibit 4.6
Two-Tiered Land Use/Building Use System in Japan
Based on: Bullock & Haddow LLC, 2013.
Following the events of the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japan Reconstruction Policy Council released a new risk-guided land use policy to ensure disaster risk reduction was achieved through reconstruction. Pre-existing policies limited construction in risk zones where tsunami events presented an anticipated return interval of 150 years or less (i.e., events with at least a 0.67 percent likelihood of occurrence in any given year). The new policy introduced a two-tiered protection zone for tsunami inundation: the first corresponding to the 150-year return interval called the “Prevention Level” or “L1,” and a newly established “Preparedness/Mitigation Level” zone referred to as “L2” that protects against extreme or catastrophic events. This new zone rates risk according to a 50 percent increase in tsunami intensity (height) over previously assumed levels.
According to new land use and construction policies, structural tsunami mitigation measures are no longer considered fail-proof solutions, regardless of their protection levels. Rather, communities operate under the assumption that engineered prevention structures will be effective only in rare yet more likely tsunami events, understanding that unforeseen event magnitudes are always possible, given the GEJE experience. As such, land area protected by such structural mitigation measures is only to be used for certain low-value or non-critical community infrastructure components inclusive of such things as roadways and agriculture, and in some communities, structurally strengthened and/or elevated residential facilities. However, the land area directly protected by these measures (i.e., the areas that would be inundated in their absence) are considered inappropriate for most high-value or high-occupancy infrastructure inclusive of schools, hospitals, government buildings, and other social welfare facilities, given that overtopping is always a possibility.
The new construction policies encourage the use of transportation infrastructure designed and constructed to provide additional layers of protection to at-risk zones. Roadways, for example, are being designed to sit on elevated embankments that serve the dual purpose of acting as secondary and tertiary floodwalls and at the same time protecting transportation networks from damage. Other components of the community, including coastal forests, parks, and artificial hills, are also being utilized or designed to increase protection and therefore reduce the size of the L1 zone.
Within the L2 zone, life-saving vertical evacuation measures have been proposed, planned, and constructed to enable those trapped within these existing risk zones to survive despite such changes in land use policy. Free-standing evacuation platforms are the classic example, though many other solutions such as stairwells leading to elevated roadways have also been planned.
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Mitigation easements. Easements are agreements between private individuals or organizations and the government that dictate how a particular tract of land will be used. Mitigation easements are agreements to restrict the private use of land for the purpose of risk reduction.
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Standards for HAZMAT manufacture, use, transport, and disposal. Hazardous materials are a major threat to life and property in all countries. Most governments have developed safety standards and procedures to guide the way that these materials are manufactured and used by businesses and individuals, the mechanisms by which they are transported from place to place, the methods of containment, and devices that contain them.
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Safety standards and regulations. Regulations that guide safe activities and practices are diverse and apply to more situations than could be described in this chapter. Safety regulations may apply to individuals (seatbelt laws), households (use of smoke detectors), communities, businesses, and governments. The establishment of building codes, as described in the section titled “Structural Mitigation,” is an example of a safety regulation.
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Natural resource use regulations. The use of common natural resources, such as aquifers, can be controlled for the purpose of minimizing hazard risk (in this case, drought).
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Storm water management regulations. Storm water runoff can be destructive to the areas where it originates (through erosion) and the areas where it terminates (through silting). It also can contribute to pollution, changes to stream flows, and other effects. Development, especially when large amounts of land are covered with impervious materials such as concrete, can drastically increase the amount of runoff by decreasing the holding capacity of the land. Regulations on storm water management, imposed on private and public development projects, help to manage those negative effects, reducing both hazard risk and environmental vulnerability.
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Environmental protection regulations. Certain environmental features, such as rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands, play an important part in reducing the vulnerability of a community or country. Preventing certain behaviors such as dumping or polluting helps to ensure that these resources continue to offer their risk-reduction benefits.
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Public disclosure regulations. Property owners may be required to disclose all known risks, such as flood or earthquake hazard risk, when selling their property. This ensures hazard awareness and increases the chance that purchasers will take appropriate action for those known risks when they begin construction or other activities on that land.
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Mitigation requirements on loans. Banks and other lending institutions have much at stake when they lend money to developers. Therefore, lenders can apply mitigation requirements or, at the very least, require that hazard assessments be conducted, and governments can require that such actions be taken by those lending institutions. Such policies limit the building of unsafe projects.
Community Awareness and Education Programs
The public is most able to protect itself from the effects of a hazard if it is first informed that the hazard exists, and then educated about what it can do to limit its risk.
Public education programs are considered both mitigation and preparedness measures. An informed public that applies appropriate measures to reduce their risk before a disaster occurs has performed mitigation. However, a public that has been trained in response activities has participated in a preparedness activity.
Often termed “risk communication,” projects designed to educate the public may include one or more of the following:
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Awareness of the hazard risk
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Behavior modification
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Pre-disaster risk reduction behavior
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Pre-disaster preparedness behavior
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Post-disaster response behavior
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Post-disaster recovery behavior
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Warning
A more detailed description is provided in chapter 5.
Warning systems inform the public that a hazard risk has reached a threshold requiring certain protective actions. The amount of time citizens have to act varies, depending on the hazard type and the warning system’s technological capabilities. Some warning systems, especially those that apply to technological and intentional hazards, are not able to provide warning until the hazard has already begun to exhibit its damaging behavior (such as a leak at a chemical production facility, or an accident involving a hazardous materials tanker truck). The UN Platform for the Promotion of Early Warning (PPEW, n.d.) states that four separate factors are necessary for effective early warning:
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Prior knowledge of the risks faced by communities
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A technical monitoring and warning service for these risks
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The dissemination of understandable warnings to those at risk
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Knowledge by people of how to react, and the capacity to do so
Warning systems, therefore, are dependent on hazard identification and analysis, effective detection systems (as described in the section titled “Structural Mitigation”), dissemination of the message, and public education. A tsunami that occurred in American Samoa in 2009 illustrates the ineffectiveness of a system missing even just one of these components. The tsunami had been detected by the US government and transmitted to the governor of American Samoa, and the people of American Samoa were trained in personal response to tsunamis, but the lack of an alert system prevented ample warning, and many people who otherwise could have escaped were killed (American Samoa Government, 2009). (See exhibit 4.7.)
Exhibit 4.7
The Complex Requirements of Effective Warning Systems
Based on: Coppola, 2014.
Blame for the widespread failure of advance notification by governments of countries impacted by the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean Tsunami is much more complex than a simple lack of sensors. In fact, many sensors were in place, and awareness of the earthquake’s 9.0 magnitude and high tsunami likelihood began just minutes after it struck. For locations in close proximity to the earthquake’s epicenter, seismic shaking was perceptible, but waves actually struck within minutes—much less time than is typically required to launch an international alert. But for many of the areas farther outside the shaking zone, these physical clues did not exist, and there was more time to allow warnings to be issued.
Several countries had seismic detection and tsunami forecasting systems in place, including the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. A number of international organizations did, as well, including the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization and the European Space Agency. Unfortunately, few of the impacted countries had this capacity, and recognition was therefore possible only through information exchange. Availability of data was the first failure.
The second problem stemmed from the fact that even those countries that maintain sensing capabilities did not have in place standard mechanisms through which information could be quickly and efficiently packaged and communicated to the international community. Notification efforts were ad-hoc, and questions about the source, reliability, and responsibility of the information persisted.
Thirdly, there were few, if any, pre-existing relationships between governments to facilitate the sharing of warnings, and virtually no information sharing protocols. Those countries that did receive notifications by the Pacific Tsunami Warning System did so by telephone—and only after the US Geological Survey requested that the US Department of State identify appropriate contacts and share the information as they were able.
And lastly, for those countries that did receive warnings, there were no mechanisms in place that would allow rapid and effective message transmission to the at-risk communities. Any such measures would have to have been in place prior to the event and included communications systems, local protocols for receiving and acting on the information transmitted, and knowledge among citizens about how to react to the warnings.
Early warning systems have been developed to varying capacities for the following hazards:
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Drought
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Tornadoes and windstorms
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Cyclonic storms
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Epidemics
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Landslides
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Earthquakes
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Chemical releases
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Volcanoes
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Floods
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Wildfires
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Air raids and attacks
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Terrorist threats
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Tsunamis
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Extreme winter weather
The United Nations Environmental Programme Division of Early Warning and Assessment maintains an inventory of early warning systems at the website http://database.unep.dkkv.org/.
Risk mapping involves presenting the likelihood and consequence components in the format of a physical map, with figures based on a specific hazard or set of hazards. Risk maps are fundamental to disaster management, and are very effective as a mitigation tool. Using risk maps, governments and other entities can most effectively dedicate resources to areas of greatest need, and plan in advance of incidents, so that adequate response resources are able to reach those highest-risk areas without unforeseen problems. Risk maps are generally built onto the base maps described in chapter 2, but include the added information acquired through the risk analysis and assessment processes described in chapter 3. (See figure 4.13.)
Figure 4.13. Map detailing the likelihood of fire determined by activities and presence of causative agents
From Alberta Sustainable Resource Development.
Nonstructural Physical Modifications
There are several different mitigation options that, while not structural in nature, involve a physical modification to a structure or property that results in reduced risk. Examples include:
Securing of furniture, pictures, and appliances, and installing latches on cupboards. In many earthquakes, the majority of injuries are caused by falling furniture and other unsecured belongings. Economic costs also can be reduced significantly through this very inexpensive, simple measure, which generally requires little more than connecting items to walls through the use of a specially designed thin metal strap.
Removal or securing of projectiles. During tornadoes, items commonly found outside the house, such as cooking grills, furniture, and stored wood, may become airborne projectiles that cause harm, fatalities, or further property damage.
Environmental Control
Structural mitigation involves engineered structures that control hazards. It is also possible to control or influence hazards through non-engineered structural means. These nonstructural mechanisms tend to be highly hazard specific, and include:
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Explosive detonation to relieve seismic pressure (earthquakes)
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Launched or placed explosives to release stored snow cover (avalanches)
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Cloud seeding (hail, hurricanes, drought, snow)
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Chemical surface treatment (ice and snowstorms)
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Controlled burns (wildfires)
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Bombing of volcano flows (volcanic eruption)
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Dune and beach restoration or preservation (storm surges, tsunamis, erosion)
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Forest and vegetation management (landslides, mudflows, flooding, erosion)
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Riverine and reservoir sediment and erosion control (flooding)
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Removal and replacement of soils (expansive soils)
Disease vector eradication (epidemics; see figure 4.14 and exhibit 4.8)
Figure 4.14. Incidence of dengue fever (in red) showing 1970 levels during a mosquito eradication campaign, and 2010 levels, decades after the eradication campaign was stopped. http://1.usa.gov/1ybKiUc
From CDC, 2005.
Exhibit 4.8
Dengue Fever Eradication—An Example of Failed Mitigation
Based on: CDC, 2005.
Dengue fever is caused by four closely related flavoviruses: DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3, and DEN-4. When people are infected with one of these viruses, they gain lifetime immunity if they survive the illness. However, they will not have cross-protective immunity, and people living in dengue-endemic areas can actually have four dengue infections during their lifetime. Dengue fever occurs predominantly in the tropics and is spread through a cycle of infection between humans and the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Infection with dengue fever results in a full range of nonspecific viral symptoms spanning from mild to severe and fatal hemorrhagic disease. Important risk factors for the disease include the strain and serotype of the infecting virus, as well as the age, immune status, and genetic predisposition of the infected person.
The emergence of dengue fever has been most dramatic in Latin America. In an effort to eradicate yellow fever, which is also transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) organized a campaign that effectively eradicated the insect from most Central and South American countries during the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, epidemic dengue was also limited, occurring only sporadically in some Caribbean islands during this time. The eradication program was officially discontinued in the United States in 1970, and subsequently stopped elsewhere in the following years. As a result, the species began to re-infest countries from which it had been eradicated, and by 1997, the geographic distribution of Aedis aegypti was wider than its distribution before the eradication program. (See figure 4.14.)
In 1970, only DEN-2 virus was present in the Americas. DEN-1 was introduced in 1977, resulting in 16 years of major epidemics throughout the region. DEN-4 was introduced in 1981 and caused similar epidemics. Also in 1981, a new strain of DEN-2, from Southeast Asia, caused the first major dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) epidemic in the Americas. This strain has spread rapidly throughout the region and has caused outbreaks of DHF in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, French Guiana, Suriname, and Puerto Rico. By 1997, 18 countries in the region had reported confirmed DHF cases, and it is now endemic in many of these countries.
The DEN-3 virus reappeared in the Americas after an absence of 16 years and was first detected in Nicaragua in 1994. Almost simultaneously, the strain was confirmed in Panama and, in early 1995, in Costa Rica. In Nicaragua, considerable numbers of DHF cases were associated with the epidemic. Gene testing from the DEN-3 strains isolated from Panama and Nicaragua showed that the new American DEN-3 strain likely came from Asia, since it is genetically distinct from the DEN-3 strain found previously in the Americas but is identical to the DEN-3 virus serotype that caused major epidemics in Sri Lanka and India in the 1980s. As suggested by the finding of a new DEN-3 strain and the susceptibility to it of the population in the American tropics, DEN-3 spread rapidly throughout the region, causing major dengue epidemics in Central America in 1995.
As of 1997, dengue was the most important mosquito-borne viral disease affecting humans; its global distribution is comparable to that of malaria, and an estimated 2.5 billion people live in areas at risk for epidemic transmission. Each year, tens of millions of cases of dengue fever occur and, depending on the year, up to hundreds of thousands of cases of DHF. The case-fatality rate of DHF in most countries is about 5 percent, with most fatalities affecting children and young adults.
Behavioral Modification
Through collective action, a community can alter the behavior of individuals, resulting in some common risk reduction benefit. Voluntary behavior modification measures are more difficult to implement than the regulatory measures previously listed, because they usually involve some form of sacrifice. However, through effective public education, behavioral modification is possible. Tax incentives or subsidies can help to increase the success of behavioral modification practices. Examples of mitigation measures that involve behavioral modification include:
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Rationing. Rationing is often performed prior to and during periods of drought. Because it can be very difficult for governments to limit vital services such as water to citizens, it is up to citizens to limit their individual usage. Electricity rationing is also performed during periods of extreme heat or cold to ensure that electrical climate control systems are able to perform as required.
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Environmental conservation. Many practices in both urban and rural areas are very destructive to the environment. Once the environmental feature—a body of water, a forest, or a hillside—is destroyed, secondary hazardous consequences may appear that could have been avoided. Through proper education and the offering of alternatives, destructive practices can be halted before too much damage is done. Examples of environmental conservation include environmentally friendly farming practices, wood harvesting that does not cause deforestation, and protecting coral reefs from dynamite fishing and other fishing practices.
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Tax incentives, subsidies, and other financial rewards for safe practices. Individuals and businesses can be coaxed into safer practices that reduce overall risk through financial incentives. Examples of schemes that use financial incentives include lower insurance premiums, housing buyout programs to move out of high-risk areas, farm subsidies for allowing land to be used for flood control during emergencies, and environmentally friendly farming practices (no deforestation, responsible grazing practices, flexible farming and cropping).
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Strengthening of social ties. When a community strengthens its social ties, it is more likely to withstand a hazard’s stresses. For many reasons, the largest of which is urbanization, these ties break and are not replaced. In Chicago in 1995, a heat wave caused the deaths of 739 people. It was later determined that weak social structures were primarily to blame for the deaths, which could have been prevented had friends, family, or neighbors checked on the victims.
