The Threat Of Natural Disasters To Cambodia Environmental Sciences Essay

The Threat Of Natural hazards To Cambodia Environmental Sciences EssayA banter on Building Resilient Communities, A Case Study of Cambodia. entirely with the 20th century, cities of the world gain grown in size and importance, with an estimate of about half of all muckle bread and butter in urban atomic number 18as and their numbers be expected to rise to at to the lowest microscope stage 60 per cent by 2030 (UNHSP, 2002). Ironically, while cities are of vital importance as economic engines, hubs for transportation and communications, cultural centers and homes to the majority of the earths people, they are in particular assailable to innate(p) and environsal hazard impacts. During the 1990s, losses from inwrought casualtys were more than four durations greater than during the 1950s, with more than 500,000 fatalities and over $1 cardinal in perverts (Walter, 2003). The existence of multifaceted and cascading hazards in Cambodia has occurred in time past create large destructions. These hazards that occur are most generation unavoidable only when their impact could be reduced if the necessary share are put in place.Managing earthy and environmental hazards is essential because they put down signifi domiciliatet threat to the human populace, carrying the potential to disrupt economic and kind activities, cause substantial damage to property and even kill people. The better(p) form of addressing such situations is to make the necessary investigations and preparations for emergency response when (before and after) these hazards occur. Basically, construct resilient cities are an act of preparation for the inevitable natural hazards. Cambodia is placed in the tropical zone, Southeast Asia, about 10-13 degrees north of the equator. Its clime is henpecked by the yearly monsoon cycle with its alternating wet and dry seasons, making it warm to hot throughout the year. It covers an area of about 181,035 square kilometres and is shared out into 24 provinces as seen in anatomy 1. It is bordered to the North by Thai set down and Laos, to the East and South by Vietnam, and to the South and Southwest by the disconnectedness of Thailand. Most of Cambodias land is relatively flat with vast tracts of land attached over to sift production.Annual rainy season commences in July, with outpouringing occurring betwixt September and December. During the monsoon season, Cambodia experiences flashing floods usually after heavy rainfall. The provinces of Battambang, kampong Chnang, Kampong Speu, Kampong Thom, Kampot, Kandal, Pursat and Rattanakiri are regularly hit by flash fill up. The second type of flood, the ofttimes slower but prolonged flooding, is caused by the over stream of Tonle Sap River and Mekong tributaries, inundating the provinces of Kampong Cham, Kratie, Kandal, Prey Veng, Stung Treng, Svay Rieng and Takeo. In 2000, Cambodia truism the worst flooding in recent history, with a thoroughgoing estimated dam age of USD150 million. It come toed more than three million people in 22 of the 24 provinces of the country, displacing 85,000 families and killing 182 (ECHO, 2008).Drought in Cambodia is characterized by loss of weewee sources caused by the early end or delays in expected seasonal rainfall. The traditional drouth/lean season is between the months of August and November. Although non as severe as floods in ground of impact, it severely affects kingdom productivity especially among rice developing communities who rely solely on rain or river-fed irrigation. Low agricultural yield due to all-inclusive drouth has plus indebtedness of families and contributed to widespread food shortages. The worst drouth incident in 2002 had affected two million people and incurred a total damage of USD 38 million, (ECHO, 2008).No one can throw overboard natural misadventures. However, we can reduce the impact of natural disasters on the carnal and the socio-economic losses in society. It is notable that victims of disasters mainly come from the least slopped and influential those in unsafe houses and employed in more sober activities, who have limited options and entitlements. In any(prenominal) case, university students killed in school annual graduation or new born babies in health parcel out facilities are especially disturbing aspects of the aftermath of disasters. Surely, these places should put safety issues first.imputable to environmental degradation and human activities, natural hazards have been persistent. The Mekong flood in 2000 gave Cambodia the most terrible incident in the last 70 years, causing both socio-economic and physical damages. According to the official report of the National committal for Disaster Management (NCDM) (2006), the floods affected about 3.4 million people with 347 fatalities, 80 percent of which were children. Moreover, schools and other infrastructures such as hospitals, houses, and pagodas were seriously damaged, with a total estimated loss of US$161 million. Again, floods hit Cambodia in 2001 and 2002, damaging approximately US$36 million and US$12 million respectively. In 2001, the floods killed 62 people while in 2002 the floods killed 26 (40 percent of whom were children), and many another(prenominal) schools were reposeed. meet 1.Map of Cambodia with Provincescambodia-map-provinces.jpgBecause many Cambodians depend upon subsistence agriculture for their source of revenue, they are particularly vulnerable to suffering hunger, want, or even the loss of life, when such disasters hit. This picture has increased in recent years because of a series of almost unbent annual disasters that have not allowed people the opportunity to recover from forward floods or droughts. The Royal Government of Cambodia and other stakeholders, including NGOs and the donor communities, have been increase cooperation to allow for joint responses to the needs of the affected population when disasters strike. The o verall determination is to ascertain and address the root causes of vulnerability to disasters. There is and so a need to identify and prioritize areas that are prone to natural disasters, and areas in which the population suffers most when disasters strike.Flood affected areas, rice dependency, and food credentials are considered when determining areas that should be prioritised for flood tie in interventions. The extent to which for each one an area is affected by flood waters, depends on rice production, and incapability to manufacture enough food to feed itself during flood years are taken together to classify areas into different levels of precedence. Two major types of flood were identified in Cambodia Flash floods which result from heavy downpours upstream on the Mekong River which affect the provinces along the Mekong River and in the southerly areas of the country. Central area floods are large floods that result from a gang of runoff from the Mekong and heavy rains slightly the Tonle Sap Lake. The waters affect the areas around the lake, but to a fault flow heavily down the Tonle Sap River and the lower portion of the Mekong to flood the southern provinces. The first precedence area is rigorously affected by any type of flood, the second area is only affected by the bigger central area floods, and the third area is only affected by flash flooding of the Mekong. These three priority areas are shown in figure 2. contour 2 Flood Prone Communesimage7_02.pngThe method applied to restrain areas vulnerable to drought is similar to that discussed ealier. The concern evaluate include drought affected areas, rice dependency, and food security. Areas were defined as high schoolly rice underage if more than 80 percent of houses are fully engaged in rice production. Food insecurity was measured as preceding(prenominal) for the drought year of 1998.Definitions for three levels of priority were again developed. First priority areas are defined as th ose with low precipitation and NDVI, high rice dependence, and food insecurity in 1998. These are areas where droughts are likely, and where they will have the most terrible consequences. Second priority areas have the same criteria as the first priority passs, but were not food insecure during the 1998 drought year. Third priority communes have low precipitation and NDVI, and are thus drought prone, but are neither highly rice dependent nor food insecure. The three levels of priority communes are presented in figure 3.Figure 3 Drought Prone Communesimage7_03.png photograph well-meant is the exposure and esthesia to livelihood shocks and risks. Risks are the combination of the probability or frequency of circumstance of a defined hazard and the magnitude of the consequences. Natural hazards ofttimes cannot be prevented, and if they materialize, can generate a shock that affects menages and communities in both sure and unpredictable ways. Vulnerability is only to some extent det ermined by the type of hazard, while it is mainly determined by social placements and business leader (Wisner et al. 2006). The degree of vulnerability depends on the nature of the risk and a households resiliency, or ability to recover after shocks. Vulnerability can be lessened by reducing exposure to risks of shocks that affect many people (e.g., frequent droughts) or shocks that affect individuals or households (e.g., the death of the household head) and increasing the households ability to manage shocks. However, chronically food-insecure households often are not resilient to shocks and are continuously vulnerable. The political science in Cambodia has initiated poverty reduction policies that attempts to reduce poverty, increase food security and thus reduce vulnerability of poor households.The concept of vulnerability golf links the consanguinity that people have with their environment to social forces and institutions and the cultural values that plunk for or contest th em. Vulnerability refers to the totality of relationships in a abandoned social situation producing the formation of a condition that, in combination with environmental forces, arrives a disaster. Disaster, risks and outcomes are socially produced at the intersection of a complex and participating range of hazard and vulnerability patterns, associated with underlying social, economic, territorial reserve and political processes operating in specific topical anesthetices. The concept of vulnerability links general political economic conditions to very particular environmental forces to pull in how basic conditions such as poverty or racism produce susceptibilities to very specific environmental hazards. Vulnerability, thus, integrates not only political economic, but environmental forces, defined in terms of both biophysical and socially constructed risk. The workings definition provided by Blaikie et al. is currently among the most utilized By vulnerability we mean the charac teristics of a person or group in terms of their aptitude to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural hazard. It involves a combination of factors that determine the degree to which someones life and livelihood is put at risk by a discrete and identifiable event in nature or in society(19949).The DIPECHO shake off was implemented in confederacy with three local NGOs for the period of 15 months (from 15/02/2007 to 14/05/2008) in three operating provinces. The project activities centre of attention primarily is on the poorest and most excluded fellowship members, identified as being particularly vulnerable to disaster, including women and children, poor farawaymers, fishery communities, landless people, ex-Khmer rouge soldiers, displaced people, wage labourers, people living with or at risk from HIV and AIDS, Vietnamese minority groups, and people with disability. The total number of direct beneficiaries identified through the project was put dow n as 15153, (ActionAid International, 2006). The project aim is to build the capacity of community members and local authorities in 48 target villages in the project areas in the three provinces to better understand and prepare for recurring flood and drought by implementing the following strategiesOrganise and build competence of the local communityCreate and strengthen institutional systems at the village and commune levelWorking in alliance with other actors and government on disaster risk reduction programmesAdvocating on Disaster Risk Management (DRM) issues and influencing the implicated officials and institutionsCapacity building of the existing institutions, communes and the various organs of the National citizens committee on disaster management at commune, district, province levelConducting a detailed vulnerability analysis, developing village level disaster plans and formulating commune disaster risk management plansThe following were the outcomes on the completion of t he projectThe capacity of Commune Committees for Disasters Management and Village Development Committees was enhanced to break their vulnerability and actively prepare their communities for the risks of flood and drought.Increased availability of Disaster Preparedness intimacy and skills across community members in target villages. decreased vulnerability to disaster through small-scale disaster preparedness and moderation initiatives carried out at the village community level.Formal structures and network of partnerships for community-based disaster risk management in Cambodia (CBDRM) comprise of an approach that builds upon existing capacities and cope systems of communities to jointly plan and apply appropriate and durable reduction and disaster preparedness plans. The strategy involves the participation of local actors, particularly vulnerable communities, who actively work to identify causes of vulnerability and actions to mitigate the impact of vulnerability from these nat ural disasters. Furthermore, the strategy aids communities towards long term capacity to adapt. With recurring drought and flooding and threats from other natural disasters in Cambodia, CBDRM is seen as a pacer in reducing massive loss of life, property and livelihood. The Cambodian government considers CBDRM as an essential part of its clownish outgrowth program to attend poverty (ActionAid International, 2006).The major purpose of sustainable development is to generate and pull through flourishing ecological, social and economic systems. There exists an intimate link between these systems as humans can transform the ecological system and they also depend on it for food, wealth and security. Human actions can severely affect the ability of the ecosystem to perform its natural functions with adverse consequences for vulnerability, human life and security. some(prenominal) case studies have helped shed more light on the connexion between resiliency, sustainability of social e cological systems and diversity (Berkes and Folke, 1998). Resilience basically refers to the degree of shock that concerned system can endure and stay in spite of appearance a given state. It can also be the degree to which the system concerned can organize itself or build capacity for cultivation and adaptation.It has been argued that two components of any given system affect its resilience, one being its adaptive capacity which is directly related to its heterogeneity and broadly equivalent weight t the diversity of its institutions and assets available in social systems. The second is its cogency and this refers to the properties of a given system that allow it accommodate disturbance without surplus adaptation. Resilience and robustness refer to the capacity of the system to accommodate disturbance without losing functionality. Disaster management style or procedure can destroy or build resilience depending on how the community concerned organises itself in response to mana gement actions.Building societal resilience requires understanding of ecosystems that incorporates knowledge of local users (Olsson and Folke, 2001). Structured Scenarios and active adaptive management have been acknowledge as fundamental to building resilience. Circumstances are used to ideate option emerging scenarios. Applying this action, resilience building strategies can be admit and applied within the framework of sustainable development. The probability of sustainable development is improved by management for resilience in a dynamic world full of astonishments.Sustainable development is a pattern of resourcefulness use aimed at meeting human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present but also for future generations. It brings together the concern for carrying capacity of natural systems and social challenges faced by humanity. It is now clear that sustainable development that regard the impact of mans activities on the na tural environment and attempts to reduce damage to the natural environment is the key to poverty reduction, environmental security and management and mitigation of weather and water related hazards. It basically targets resource poor and landless communities especially in the coastal regions because of population density, rapidly declining natural resources, work and income security and a high level of vulnerability to these hazards. With the understanding that environmental degradation can be tackled by knowledge and technical empowerment of the resource poor, illiterate rural man and women, the major aim of these programmes is to blend technological frontier with local knowledge in order to provide an integrated orientation to technological development and dissemination.As local communities confront the impacts of glacial melting, rainfall fluctuation, flooding and drought, they will need support to strengthen their capacity to withstand these changes and increase their resilience to the effects of a changing climate on planetary waters. Rivers, lakes and coastal ecosystems are increasingly being impacted by deforestation, land degradation, poor water management, and aquatic species loss as well as changes in fisheries habitats, water scarcity and floods or droughts precipitated or exacerbated by climate change, making communities more socially, economically and physically vulnerable. Local communities have shown, through ecosystem restoration, integrated water resources and coastal management and development that these activities can help communities associated with international waters increase their resilience to climatic variability and future effects of climate change. While in some cases it may be too early to gauge the adaptation success of local projects since it may entail preparing for future climate events and impacts, this publication provides some examples of how communities have successfully conserved their resources, restored their ecosystem s, reduced their vulnerability and improved their livelihoods and increased their resilience to environmental threats and climate change in international waters. Resilient communities are far less vulnerable to hazards and disasters than less resilient places. For this assumption to be validate and useful, knowledge of how resilience is determined, measured, enhanced, maintained, and reduced is vital (Klein et al., 2003). It is not obvious what leads to resilience within coupled humanenvironment systems or what variables should be utilized to measure it. Because of the multidimensional nature of resilience and its different component parts, a broad model of resilience has yet to be empirically tried and true at the community level (Cumming et al., 2005).CONCLUSIONThe existence of a growing incidence in the situation of natural hazards can be authoritative to a multifaceted world where increase in population is present. Vulnerability are ever-increasing in communities due to human activities. However, climate change and sea level rise may be accountable for augmented occurrence of some of these hazards. Globalization also spreads the cost of natural hazards going beyond the borders of the country directly affected. Technological and science based progress in our pursuit to understand natural hazards, applications and technological responses have clearly been insufficient. solution to disaster happen mostly after the event and so much is required to be put in place to sustain query and draw up programmes for risk assessment, recommend countermeasures, build and strengthen resilience in communities at risk. Researchers and disaster managers need to work hard to procure vigorous knowledge takes a essential role in insurance policy development. In this, local communities will be more resilient to natural and environmental hazards