Differential Vulnerabilities to Hazards

Less Wealthy versus Wealthy Societies

In the less wealthy parts of the globe people tend to be relatively directly dependent on the natural environment. Their resilience is mostly locally determined, and buffers against hazards are thin in terms of time, as well as economic and material resources. For example, when powerful storms such as Typhoon Chataan strike a less wealthy and nonindustrial place such as the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), there is typically less warning, less locally based technology for emergency response, and less wealth to support nutrition and recovery. Consequently, people are caught relatively unprepared, and often their capacity to feed themselves and recover quickly is weak. It should be noted, however, that such people do at times develop their own low-technology systems to aid in coping with hazards such as drought (see photo).

In wealthier and industrialized parts of the world, people generally have more capacity to prepare for, and respond to, what are commonly termed major natural hazards, such as earthquakes and strong storms. They have greater infrastructure, and their wealth allows both recovery and massive importation of food from outside the local area. However, such places also create their own hazards through industrial processes and technologies.

An example of a creeping hazard is California's preparations to manage the water supply during drought (climate change) through reservoir infrastructure. However, the state quietly and accidentally polluted significant portions of its groundwater supplies in the 1990s and early 2000s though the introduction of chemicals such as MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) into the water supply, which was added to gasoline to reduce air pollution!

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