Disaster — noun — a sudden accident or a natural catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life.
It’s what we call tsunamis, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and floods or droughts.
Human-made disaster is a disaster resulting from man–made hazards as opposed to natural disasters resulting from natural hazards. Human-made disaster involves an element of human intent, negligence, or error; or involving a failure of a man–made system. It is also called a man–made disaster.
We as humans think of ourselves as the alpha beings on this land, as governors and protectors. And yet, every now and then, our own incompetence and stupidity surfaces and shows us we’re nothing more than a danger.
Not convinced ?
Hold your reactions until you finish reading the following unfinished list.
1. The Bhopal Gas Leak
2. The Jilin Chemical Explosion
3. The Tennesse Coal Ash Spill
4. The Sidoarjo mud volcano
5. The North Pacific Garbage Patch
6. The Gulf War Oil Spill
7. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
8. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
9. The Guiyu E-Waste Dump In China
10. The Baia Mare Water Cyanide Contamination
11. Chernobyl disaster and list can go on.
Not to mention war, terror attacks, political unrests, riots, mass shooting, urban fires, forest fires, human stampedes and environmental disaster.
There is a risk of overestimating humankind’s ability to control the escalation of any global crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has blown into a global crisis in just three months. Global leaders have been unable to make decisions in the face of imperfect and competing sources of information. Some leaders have downplayed the risk of escalation of the crisis and actually further increased it. In short global governmental disfunction has cost more lives. It has also further exacerbated the threat of future global crises like nuclear, climate or biological.
Humanity continues to face multiple existential dangers—nuclear, biological or chemical weapons and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode. Competent, timely actions to prevent and mitigate future global crises—whether they involve biological, nuclear, climatic, or other major threats—will depend on the world’s ability to address three fundamental governance concerns.
- We need better governance. Leaders who are able to rise above their own interest, domestic political gains and think of our planet and its future.
- We need to arrest and rapidly reverse the decreased commitment among nations towards international cooperation. Strong International agreements with strong verification regimes are the need of the hour.
- We need to address the manipulation and distortion of information.
A nuclear crisis would unfold far more rapidly than any pandemic, with more uncertainty and wider devastation. Much of the infrastructure we can rely on today (communications, logistics, transportation) could be wiped out in a nuclear exchange, complicating decision making.
Every time we as inhabitants of this planet may not be so lucky. Let’s acknowledge that some of our actions are not in the best interest of our society. This would be the first step to eliminate risks of nuclear, chemical or biological crises.
