Hi, need to submit a 1750 words essay on the topic Mapping Vulnerability, Disasters, Development and People.But then, the question arises – vulnerable to what? The answer may point to some hazard. T

Hi, need to submit a 1750 words essay on the topic Mapping Vulnerability, Disasters, Development and People.

But then, the question arises – vulnerable to what? The answer may point to some hazard. This means that hazard and vulnerability are concomitant and lead to risk.

Mapping Vulnerability is an awesome task. It is even more daunting when the vulnerability is seen in the backdrop of disasters, and linked with politics and cultures, the resourceful rich and the superstitious downtrodden, giving it a multidimensional effect.

In eight chapters running into 130 pages, the authors deal with many aspects of large scale disasters pointing out that not all of them are ‘acts of God’. It is audacious to look at Chernobyl and Bhopal and point a finger at the Almighty. So also man-made market-driven technologies which create wonders on the one hand and leave huge piles of radio-active obsolescence difficult to manage, on the other. Global warming is one single disastrous act of man which is already wrecking ecological balance in alarming proportions.

The study of disasters and the concept of vulnerability can contribute to clarifying the question of environmental versus socially defined limits.

Hazards have always been part and parcel of the world’s reality, and populations inhabiting hazard-prone areas adapted strategies to deal with extreme events, using their own capabilities, skills, talents, knowledge and technologies. Learned from their ancestors and their own experiences, these adaptation strategies are made part of their traditions and culture.