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The Perfect Spill: Solutions for Averting the Next Deepwater Horizon By Robert Costanza, David Batker, John Day, Rusty Feagin, M. Luisa Martinez, Joe Roman National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) f we refuse to take into account the full cost of our fossil fuel addiction-if we don't factor in the environmental costs and national security costs and true economic costs-we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future." -President Barack Obama, Carnegie Mellon University, June 2, 2010 he continuing oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon is causing enormous economic and ecological damage. Estimates of the size and duration continue to escalate, but it is now the largest in U.S. history and clearly among the largest oil spills on record.1 s efforts to plug the leak and clean up the damages continue, it is not too soon to begin to draw lessons from this disaster. We need to learn from this experience so we can prevent future oil spills, reevaluate society's current trajectory, and set a better course. ne major lesson is that our natural capital assets and other public goods are far too valuable to continue to put them at such high risk from private interests. We need better (not necessarily more) regulation and strong incentives to protect these assets against actions that put them at risk. While the Obama administration's demand for a trust fund to compensate injured parties is appropriate, it arrived only after the fact. Common asset trusts and new financial instruments like assurance bonds would be better able to shift risk incentives and prevent disasters like the Deepwater Horizon. The Costs: Damages to Natural Capital Assets he spill has directly and indirectly affected at least 20 categories of valuable ecosystem services in and around the Gulf of Mexico. The $2.5 billion per year Louisiana commercial fishery has been almost completely shut down. As the oil extends to popular Gulf Coast beaches, the loss of tourism

10 MAY 2010: ANALYSIS The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Accident Waiting to Happen The oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has shattered the notion that offshore drilling had become safe. A close look at the accident shows that lax federal oversight, complacency by BP and the other companies involved, and the complexities of drilling a mile deep all combined to create the perfect environmental storm. by john mcquaid It's hard to believe now, as oil from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon well encroaches on the Louisiana marshes. But it was only six weeks ago that President Obama announced a major push to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. Obama's commitment to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling reflected the widely-held belief that offshore oil operations, once perceived as dirty and dangerous, were now so safe and technologically advanced that the risks of a major disaster were infinitesimal, and managing them a matter of technocratic skill. But in the space of two weeks, both the politics and the practice of offshore drilling have been turned upside down. Today, the notion that offshore drilling is safe seems absurd. The Gulf spill harks back to drilling disasters from decades past - including one off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. in 1969 that dumped three million gallons into coastal waters and led to the current moratorium. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a classic "low probability, high impact event" - the kind we've seen more than our share of recently, including space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. And if there's a single lesson from those disparate catastrophes, it's that pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off-base, and the worst-case scenarios downplayed or ignored. The Gulf spill is no exception. Getty Images/U.S. Coast Guard Fire boats battle the fire on the oil rig Deepwater Horizon after the April 21 explosion. The post-mortems are only beginning, so the precise causes of the initial

Building Resilience on the Prairies Adaptation as Resilience Building What's New? Manitoba Agricultural Producer Primer This brochure provides a summary of how Manitoba producers have coped and adapted to past weather-related shocks and stresses. It is based on Masters degree research undertaken by Peter Myers at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba. In October 2004, IISD initiated a new project in partnership with the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (the rural extension service of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) and the University of Manitoba's Natural Resources Institute. This two-year project funded by Canada's Climate Change Action Fund will examine the resilience of prairie communities to past climate stresses as a means of strengthening adaptation to future climate change. The project is based on the premise that prairie agro-ecosystems, or the inter-relationship between social and ecological systems in the prairie region, have been continuously adapting (successfully and unsuccessfully) to historic climate variability. By examining successful examples of how agro-ecosystems have adapted to past climate stress, IISD and its partners believe that we learn how to promote adaptive capacity and build the resilience of prairie agro-ecosystems to present climate change. It is expected that the project's research findings will make an important contribution to the design of Canada's evolving Agricultural Policy Framework. Project Reports Farmer Responses to Weather Shocks and Stresses in Manitoba: A Resilience Approach (PDF - 644 kb) A Masters Thesis by Peter Myers describing how producers in Manitoba have dealt with past weather- related shocks and stresses as a view toward future coping and adaptation for climate change. Living with Climate Change: How Prairie Farmers Deal with Increasing Weather Variability (PDF - 2.4 mb) A technical report by Masters student Kent Pearce describing how producers in Saskatchewan

Does The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Mean That The U.S. Is Headed For Gas Lines, Higher Food Prices And A Broken Economy? The Economic Collapse June 23, 2010 As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis enters a third month, the economic impact of this environmental nightmare is starting to become clearer.  The truth is that the "oil volcano" spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf has absolutely decimated the seafood, tourism and real estate industries along the Gulf coast.  Not only that, but energy industry insiders are now warning that the chilling effect that this crisis will have on offshore drilling could precipitate a new 1970s-style energy crisis.  Considering the fact that the U.S. economy was already on incredibly shaky ground even before the oil leak, the last thing we needed was a disaster of this magnitude.  But it has happened, and the reality is that the long-term effects of this crisis are potentially going to reverberate for decades.  The American people certainly have a negative view on the impact that this oil spill will have on the economy.  According to a new poll, about eight out of every 10 Americans expect the oil spill to damage the U.S. economy and drive up the cost of gas and food. But is a new 1970s-style energy crisis really a possibility? Could we actually soon be headed for blackouts and gas lines? Well, former Shell executive John Hofmeister believes that is exactly what we are headed for…. "Within a decade I predict the energy abyss looks like brownouts, blackouts and gas lines."  In fact, Hofmeister claims that some of his fellow energy industry insiders expect things to be even worse than he is projecting in the years ahead. Why? Hofmeister says that the problem is the U.S. government…. "Our federal government, when it comes to energy and the environment, is dysfunctional, it's broken, and it's unfixable in its current form." Without a doubt, the oil spill will have a chilling effect

Iran, BP and the CIA LAWRENCE S. WITTNER Counterpunch June 23, 2010 The offshore oil drilling catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico brought to us by BP has overshadowed its central role over the past century in fostering some other disastrous events. BP originated in 1908 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company-a British corporation whose name was changed to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company two decades later.  With exclusive rights to extract, refine, export, and sell Iran's rich oil resources, the company reaped enormous profits.  Meanwhile, it shared only a tiny fraction of the proceeds with the Iranian government.  Similarly, although the company's British personnel lived in great luxury, its Iranian laborers endured lives of squalor and privation. In 1947, as Iranian resentment grew at the giant oil company's practices, the Iranian parliament called upon the Shah, Iran's feudal potentate, to renegotiate the agreement with Anglo-Iranian.  Four years later, Mohammed Mossadeq, riding a tide of nationalism, became the nation's prime minister.  As an enthusiastic advocate of taking control of Iran's oil resources and using the profits from them to develop his deeply impoverished nation, Mossadeq signed legislation, passed unanimously by the country's parliament, to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British government was horrified.  Eager to assist the embattled corporation, it imposed an economic embargo on Iran and required its technicians to leave the country, thus effectively blocking the Iranian government from exporting its oil.  When this failed to bring the Iranians to heel, the British government sought to arrange for the overthrow of Mossadeq-first through its own efforts and, later (when Britain's diplomatic mission was expelled from Iran for its subversive activities), through the efforts of the U.S. government.  But President Truman refused to commit the CIA to this venture. To the delight of Anglo-Iranian, it received

Governing Disasters The Challenges of Emergency Risk Regulation Alberto Alemanno Edited by Alberto Alemanno, Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law and Risk Regulation, HEC Paris, France 2011 320 pp Hardback 978 0 85793 572 4 Hardback £75.00 on-line price £67.50 Qty This book is also available as an ebook  978 0 85793 573 1 from - www.EBSCOhost.com www.myilibrary www.ebooks.com www.ebookscorporation.com www.dawsonera.com www.ebrary.com/corp/ www.books.google.com/ebooks Description 'This comprehensive edited volume makes an important and much needed contribution to an increasingly important dimension of risk assessment and management, namely emergency risk regulation. Drawing upon the responses of government, businesses, and the public to the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland - which disrupted European air travel, it offers important lessons for policy-makers who are likely to confront similar unanticipated global risks. The recent nuclear power disaster in Japan makes this volume both timely and prescient.' - David Vogel, University of California, Berkeley, US Contents Contributors: A. Alemanno, N. Bernard, V. Brannigan, C.M. Briggs, M. Broberg, A. Burgess, G.G. Castellano, S. Chakraborty, A. Fioritto, F. Hansstein, L. Jachia, A. Jeunemaitre, C. Johnson, C. Lawless, F.B. López-Jurado, D. Macrae, M. Mazzocchi, V. Nikonov, M. Ragona, M. Simoncini, A.M. Viens Further information 'The challenges posed by risky decisions are well documented. These decisions become even more daunting when they must be made in a midst of a crisis. Using the European volcanic risk crisis as the principal case study, Alberto Alemanno and the other contributors to this thought provoking volume derive valuable lessons for how policy makers can cope with the attendant time pressures, uncertainties, coordination issues, and risk communication problems. Once the next emergency risk situation occurs, it may be too late to learn about how to respond. Governing Disasters should be re

From the oil spill to the financial crisis, why we don't plan for the worst Network News X PROFILE View More Activity TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Yahoo! Buzz Reprints   COMMENT 50 Comments  |  View All »  COMMENTS ARE CLOSED WHO'S BLOGGING » Links to this article By Richard A. Posner Sunday, June 6, 2010 The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest of several recent disastrous events for which the country, or the world, was unprepared. Setting aside terrorist attacks, where the element of surprise is part of the plan, that still leaves the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the global economic crisis that began in 2008 (and was aggravated by Greece's recent financial collapse) and the earthquake in Haiti in January. THIS STORY If it seems unthinkable, plan for it Why is BP's CEO still on the job? In all these cases, observers recognized the existence of catastrophic risk but deemed it to be small. Many other risks like this are lying in wait, whether a lethal flu epidemic, widespread extinctions, nuclear accidents, abrupt global warming that causes a sudden and catastrophic rise in sea levels, or a collision with an asteroid. Why are we so ill prepared for these disasters? It helps to consider an almost-forgotten case in which risks were identified, planned for and averted: the Y2K threat (or "millennium bug") of 1999. As the turn of the century approached, many feared that computers throughout the world would fail when the two-digit dates in their operating systems suddenly flipped from 99 to 00. The risk of disaster probably was quite small, but the fact that it had a specific and known date made it irrational to postpone any remedies -- it was act now or not at all. Such certainty about timing is rare; indeed, a key obstacle to taking preventive measures against unlikely disasters is precisely that they are unlikely to occur in the near future. Of course, if the consequences of the disaster would be very grave, t

Socializing Risk: The New Energy Economics May 27, 2010frankackermanLeave a commentGo to comments from Frank Ackerman Despite talk of a moratorium, the Interior Department's Minerals and Management Service is still granting waivers from environmental review for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including wells in very deep water. Until last month, most of us never thought about the risk that one of those huge offshore rigs would explode in flames and then sink, causing oil to gush out uncontrollably and befoul the oceans. The odds seemed low, and still do: Aren't there lots of drilling rigs in use, year after year? Twenty years ago, your elected representatives thought that you'd be happy to have them adopt a very low cap on industry's liability for oil spill damages.  Nuclear power was never quite free of fears; it was too clearly a spin-off of nuclear weapons to ignore the risk of a very big bang. Yet as its advocates point out, we have had hundreds of reactor-years of experience, with only a few accidents. (And someday when Nevada's politicians aren't looking, maybe we can slip all of our nuclear waste into a cave in the desert.) Again, the risks are so low that you'd be happy to learn about a law limiting industry's liability for accidents, wouldn't you?  Environmentalists have long warned that the world could run out of energy and resources, from the "limits to growth" theories of the 1970s to the more recently popular notion of "peak oil." The response from economists has been that prices for energy and raw materials are still moderate, and declined over the course of the 20th century; if we are running out of something, why doesn't its price skyrocket? The problem is that what we're running out of is low-risk conventional energy supplies. Because our economy conceals and socializes energy risks, prices remain deceptively low for an increasingly risky energy supply. The market wasn't supposed to work this way. In the

"Transparency is not only in the public interest, it is part of the scientific process. We want to make sure that independent scientists, engineers and other experts have every opportunity to review this information and make their own conclusions." -Secretary Chu As part of the Obama Administration's ongoing commitment to transparency surrounding the response to the BP oil spill, the Department of Energy is providing online access to schematics, pressure tests, diagnostic results and other data about the malfunctioning blowout preventer. Secretary Chu insisted on making the data widely available to ensure the public is as informed as possible, and to ensure that outside experts making recommendations have access to the same information that BP and the government have. This site is updated regularly with new data and additional documentation. Latest Information July 9th Combined Total Amount of Oil and Gas Recovered Daily from the Top Hat and Choke Line oil recovery systems. (.xls) (.ods) Visual Breakout of the Cummulative Barrels of Oil Recovered by the LMRP Cap and Q4000. Oil and Gas Flow Data from the Top Hat and from the Choke Line (.xls) (.ods) July 1st Key Events Timeline (.ppt) - This document lists key events beginning with the April 20 fire on the Deepwater Horizon through June 30th. Data Summary from Deepwater Horizon The following documents are a collection of data from operations to control flow from the Deepwater Horizon well. All information was provided directly by BP. The file names have been preserved in order to maintain a traceable record of where each file came from in the BP tracking system and whenever possible, we have worked to ensure that the contents are data readable. Description of System This page gives a general overview of the well, the blow out preventer, the lower marine reservoir package and the riser configuration as best known after the April 20 fire on the Deepwater Horizon. Well Configuration (.pdf)- showing the dept

About the Deepwater Horizon Study Group   The Deepwater Horizon Study Group was formed by members of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM) in May 2010  in response to the explosion and fire at British Petroleum's Deepwater  Horizon well on April 20, 2010.  CCRM is a group of academic researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines who attempt to share their knowledge of safety, organizational reliability and the mitigation of adverse human and natural events.   CCRM researchers have laudable expertise in engineering, law, the offshore petroleum industry, accident investigation, protection of sensitive environments, and in organizational management for dangerous environments.  Prompted by inquiries from industries, government agencies, the news media, and concerned individuals around the world regarding the causes and possible remediation of the oil spill at Deepwater Horizon, CCRM members organized the Deepwater Horizon Study Group (DHSG) to consider ways they might help to mitigate the effects of this incident.  DHSG is comprised of faculty members from the University of California and other institutions, accident investigators, petroleum engineers, social scientists, environmental advocates, and directors of research centers. DHSG members identified critical goals for the better understanding and prevention or mitigation of future accidents.  The first goal of DHSG is to capture facts and observations from workers, managers, witnesses, regulatory agencies, and other sources that may be lost if not gathered and preserved immediately.   An archive for this evidence will be established and accessible to interested researchers and investigators.  DHSG will produce its own in-progress reports and analyses of this incident from these data.  Finally, DHSG will attempt to disseminate the results of its inquiry and analysis to the public, to national and local governments, to industries that must operate in potentially dangerous environ

In our time, the human species has acquired the capability to destroy both human life and much of the biosphere that hosts it. This potential is even more dangerous as the processes of globalization unfold, especially in their corporate and oligarchic modes, which contribute to increased poverty and environmental degradation. This situation makes the development of a new mode of reason necessary. In this article, I propose to analyze the discursive continuity between the Gaia hypothesis and ecofeminism as a space from where this alternative mode of reason is emerging. This alternative mode of reason, I claim, posits symbiosis rather than independence as the basic form of relatedness between individual entities. Symbiotic reason, I suggest, is exponentially feminine, for women's bodies are predisposed to be two-in-one-to be hosts to other bodies in pregnancy.[ 1] Symbiotic reason understands life as an interrelated web in which each individual is a small node that exists thanks to the others' presence. Life resembles a Deleuzian rhizome, a multiplicity of elements in a free-range order, with each element different from the next, yet all recognizably part of the whole.[ 2] If symbiosis is the axiom on which the new rational mode of thinking rests, then symbiotic reason is ecofeminist.[ 3] Ecofeminism, short for ecological feminism, emerged from a feminist interest in science - the area of knowledge that claims reason and rationality as its own turf. In the 1980s, feminist science studies exposed the white male perspective behind the alleged objectivity of Western science.[ 4] In the 1990s, ecofeminism evolved as a mode of feminist discourse concerned with ecological issues that Western science was unable to resolve.[ 5] While major agents of corporate globalization such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are accustomed to treating the Earth as assemblage of consumable resources, many ecofeminist philosophers are keenly aware that the Earth may ve

Scribd Launches Readcast, Integrates With Facebook® Social Plugins to Make Reading More Social SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - April 21, 2010) -   f8 Developer Conference -- Scribd, the world's largest social publishing and reading site, launches Scribd Readcast along with Facebook's new social plugins. Readcast is a set of features that enables people to automatically share what they're reading on Scribd with their friends on Facebook and other social sites. The Facebook Like button and Activity Feed are also now part of the Scribd social reading experience. "Scribd is the place where connections form around shared reading interests," said Trip Adler, CEO and co-founder Scribd. "Now, the universe of social reading suddenly opens up to include Twilight fan fiction, investigative reports about Goldman Sachs, Mary Meeker's Web 2.0 presentation, tips for using solar power. This reflects the breadth and depth of what people read on a daily basis, not just what they're reading on news sites." Readcast is a customizable feature that enables people to automatically share what they're reading on Scribd with friends on Facebook and contacts on other social media sites. People can also choose to share Scribd reading events such as scribbles, comments, ratings, downloads, and eventually mobile reading activity, printing and purchases. Visit http://blog.scribd.com for more information about Readcast. Faceboook social plugins integration enables Scribd users to "like" their favorite reading material and to see -- without leaving Scribd.com -- which Scribd books, research, presentations, illustrations and other written works their friends on Facebook friends "like," comment on, and share. "Scribd's integration with our new social plugins allows people to create social connections around written works," said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook Developer Network. "Now, it's easier to connect with friends on Facebook who are reading the same books, researching the same topics or s

My company, Intellectual Ventures, is misunderstood. We have been reviled as a patent troll-a renegade outfit that buys up patents and then uses them to hold up innocent companies. What we're really trying to do is create a capital market for inventions akin to the venture capital market that supports start-ups and the private equity market that revitalizes inefficient companies. Our goal is to make applied research a profitable activity that attracts vastly more private investment than it does today so that the number of inventions generated soars. "That's preposterous," some might say. "Inventing can't be a business in its own right. It's too risky, and inventions are too intangible to generate sufficient profits by themselves. Inventing and inventions can't be separated from the companies that turn the ideas into actual products. And the notion of creating a liquid market for inventions is absurd." I couldn't disagree more. In the 1970s, people said the same thing about another type of intangible intellectual property: software. Back then, everyone in the computer industry believed that software was valuable only because it helped to sell mainframes or minicomputers and that you could never sell software by itself. As a result, software engineers worked for computer manufacturers or for companies that used computers. Very few independent software vendors existed, and those that did were barely profitable. As a business, software was hopeless. Everyone said so. Everyone was wrong, of course. Over the next three decades, software became one of the most profitable businesses in history. I know because, as a manager and ultimately the chief technology officer at Microsoft, I had a ringside seat to this amazing success story. Software owes its ascent largely to two crucial developments. First, software vendors gradually persuaded software users-through both education and lawsuits-to respect intellectual property rights and pay for somethi

Principles of emergency planning and management David E. Alexander 0 Resenhas Oxford University Press US, 2002 - 340 páginas As interest in planning for emergencies and disasters burgeons, and educational and training programs proliferate, Principles of emergency planning and management is the first book to meet the need for a concise yet comprehensive and systematic primer on how to prepare for a disaster. Providing readers with a comprehensive, systematic, yet concise introduction to effective preparation for disasters, it provides a unified starting point encompassing the scattered and parochial literature in this nascent field of academic enquiry and practical endeavor. The book provides a general introduction to the methods, procedures, protocols and strategies of emergency planning, with emphasis on situations in industrialized countries and the local level of organization (i.e. cities, municipalities, metropolitan areas and small regions), though with ample reference to national and international levels. Rather than concentrating on the practices of any one country or state, the author focuses on general principles. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be a reference source and manual from which emergency managers can extract ideas, suggestions and pro-forma methodologies to help them design and implement emergency plans. A comprehensive all-hazards approach is adopted, with frequent reference to the most important individual hazards and the planning and management needs that they create. Twelve examples of actual emergency planning and management problems are analyzed in detail. Principles of emergency planning and management is written especially for the new generation of emergency planners and managers that is emerging as a result of intensified governmental interest in disaster preparedness. Many of them will occupy positions in government or other organizations that require emergency plans. The book will also be of value to

Edward Paice's Wrath of God: Lisbon 1755 I read this book very quickly, while away on half term last week. It is a brilliantly researched and well-written account of a world-changing tragedy - and there is no small, grim irony that this is the week in which the Porguguese island of Madeira has suffered more natural disaster. That Lisbon 1755 was a terrible moment (earthquake followed by rampant fires followed by tsunami) is not in doubt and simply as a human story, it is entirely deserving of study. Indeed, it was such a huge event that the impact was felt 100s of miles away, and the sea was affected on the other side of the Atlantic (in the Caribbean). It thus qualified as one of only two 'teletsunami' (a tsunami that has travelled over 1000km) ever recorded in the Caribbean. But its wider importance cannot be underestimated either, because of the philosophical and moral repercussions it had on European thought. As Paice describes Voltaire's brilliant deconstruction of prevailing ideas: In Voltaire's deft hands the Lisbon earthquake became the vehicle for an assault on optimism and the orthodox view of divine Providence which would change the way people thought for ever; and it in turn it arguably became the last disaster in which God held centre stage. (p195) The reasons are many - but if a city could ever have claimed to have been 'Christian' Lisbon was one that would have tried (although many Protestants at the time including the likes of Wesley and Whitefield would have disputed it). It's Catholicism was very strong - perhaps 1/6th of the population were so called 'religioso' - but its forms were (even by many european Catholics' admissions) rampantly corrupt and hypocritical. Worse, though, was that the first big quake struck at 10am on Saturday 1st November 1755 - which was at precisely the moment that many of Lisbon's citizens would have been in church. For 1st November is also All Saints' Day, and this was a huge fea

The sustainability of megacities and the ecosystems they influence are critical for ensuring quality of life and environment throughout the world. This sustainability requires infrastructure systems that provide a good and equitable quality of life, and a balance between consumption, disposal, and environmental capacity. Megacities must be strengthened and prepared to resist all hazards that may threaten them. Megacities function as a mega-system made up of many independent subsystems that have been developed in silos. However, the operations of each system depend upon other subsystems within the mega-system, under both extreme and usual circumstances. Lifeline systems are the basic infrastructure that supports all other systems needed for a megacity to function properly. The resiliency of lifeline systems is critical to the sustainability of megacities. Future directions in lifeline systems require improved interactions between the interdependent systems and improved inter-agency coordination. Megacities are extremely vulnerable to risks from natural and man made hazards. Transformative research is needed to better understand how interdependent systems interact and to develop decision support tools that help to understand the performances of complex systems under normal and extreme events. Examples from the Los Angeles megacity region are presented to show the makeup of megacities and mega-systems, and to illustrate their vulnerabilities to extreme events. The simulated performance of water supply and distribution systems in Southern California during a great earthquake scenario are summarized to show how advanced decision support tools may be used for improving the functionality of critical infrastructure systems under normal and extreme circumstances. This study indicates that resilience can be enhanced through multi-system integration and the risks and vulnerabilities to hazards can be overcome through integration of existing infrastructure.

Introduction to international disaster management Damon P. Coppola 3 Resenhas Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007 - 547 páginas The purpose of Introduction to International Disaster Management is to provide practitioners, educators and students with a comprehensive academic overview of the players, processes, and the special issues involved in the management of large-scale natural and technological disasters that exceed one or more nations' capacity to respond. The book provides a global perspective on risk, hazards, and disasters. It explains the various private, non-governmental, national, and international agencies that assist in the preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery to national and regional events. The book discusses special issues encountered in the management of international disasters, and gives a detailed explanation of the conflict related to 'complex humanitarian emergencies.' It also serves as a reference to governmental and other agencies involved in international disaster management activities, and is the first of its kind to take a global approach to the topic of international disaster management. -Caters to both students within disaster management programs and young professionals entering the field -Provides links to disaster management websites and information sources -Numerous case studies examine a diverse range of issues involved in the management of large-scale, international disasters, including the 2004 Asian Tsunami disaster, the SARS epidemics, and Hurricane Mitch

Natural Hazards Center Publications Descriptions and links to publications of the Natural Hazards Center are provided below. In most cases, downloadable versions of the publications are available, along with archives of past publications. An updated PDF file listing all of the Natural Hazards Center Publications is available. For information on ordering hard copies of any publications, visit our publications purchasing page. Natural Hazards Observer The Natural Hazards Observer is the bimonthly periodical of the Natural Hazards Center. It covers current disaster issues; new international, national, and local disaster management, mitigation, and education programs; hazards research; political and policy developments; new information sources and Web sites; upcoming conferences; and recent publications. Disaster Research Disaster Research (DR) is a biweekly e-newsletter that includes some news items that also appear in the Natural Hazards Observer as well as other timely articles about new developments, policies, conference announcements, job vacancies, Web resources, and information sources in the field of hazards management. Quick Response Reports With funds contributed by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Hazards Center Quick Response program offers social scientists small grants to travel to the site of a disaster soon after it occurs to gather valuable information concerning immediate impact and response. Scholars participating in the program submit reports, which the Center makes available for free online. Research Digest Research Digest is a quarterly online publication that compiles recent research into an easily accessible format for the hazards and disasters community. It provides complete references and abstracts (when available) for current research in the field. The issues include more than 35 peer reviewed publications. Natural Hazards Review The Natural Hazards Review is a joint publication of the Natural Hazards Center and the American Societ

The precautionary principle and international law: the challenge of implementation David Freestone, Ellen Hey 0 Resenhas Kluwer Law International, 1996 - 274 páginas The precautionary concept has become intrinsic to international environmental policy, especially with the adoption, in 1992, of the Rio Declaration at UNCED. Principle 15 of that Declaration provides that:'In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. 'The challenge facing the international community is how to attain truly precautionary environmental policies. This challenge is one of changing perceptions as much as of changing institutions or technical mechanisms. It is a challenge to our way of viewing the world as much as to our views of the role of science, or the burden of proof. It also raises a question as to the role of legal and other regulatory instruments in implementing the precautionary principle. This question, however, lends itself to a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach. It is in this context that the book develops a thematic rather than a sectoral (water, air, biodiversity, etc.) view of the topic and places the challenges faced by international law in a wider context.After an introduction to the origins and development of the precautionary principle, twelve chapters explore a selection of themes relevant to the implementation of the principle. Where the relationship between international, national and local policies is concerned, a new concept is introduced: glocalization . The book concludes with a synthesis of the opportunities for and constraints on the implementation of the precautionary principle, as identified by the various authors.

Superfund and Retroactive Liability: Is It Really Fair? by Adam J. Smargon Part I -- Introduction The United States produces close to 300 million tons of hazardous waste every year. Nineteen years ago, Congress wanted to improve the management and disposal of hazardous waste, and it therefore enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). But that act failed in the area of previously existing hazardous waste sites which threatened nearby residents by leaking into the water supply. In 1976, the nation awoke to find that Love Canal families had to move due to the neighborhood being built over an abandoned hazardous waste site. The end result in the wake of this public outcry was the passing of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), more commonly known as Superfund. It gave more authority to the federal government to react to threatened or actual releases of hazardous materials, and "it allows the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to compel parties to clean up their properties, or alternatively, to reimburse [the] EPA for the government's cost of doing the cleanup."[1] CERCLA was amended and reauthorized six years later, as the obviously-named Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA).