If it seems like we hear more about major natural disasters than we used to, that’s because earthquakes, floods, fires and hurricanes have increased in frequency and severity in recent decades. But terming these weather events “natural” is misleading as it obscures the role of humans in causing the disasters.
According to an article on the UN’s website penned by former secretary general Kofi Annan, there were three times as many major natural disasters in the 1990s as in the 1960s, and the overwhelming majority of victims are residents of the Third World. Annan, and many others, point out that poverty forces people to live in dangerous areas – on flood plains, unstable hillsides, and in earthquake-prone zones. Unsafe buildings exacerbate the risks. What’s more, logging and imprudent agricultural practices can reduce the soil’s ability to absorb water, increasing erosion and flood risk.
You don’t have to go too far back in time to get a sense of the massive number of lives lost every year due to natural disasters. The 2005 earthquake in Pakistan killed some 40,000 souls only months after a massive quake in the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami that killed 229,866 people. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,000 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, and several years earlier in 1998, hurricanes Mitch and George took 13,000 lives in Central America.
Although all these events were big stories in the international press, media critics complain the press selectively covers disasters in the developing world. Many deadly weather-related events there are never reported at all in the major Western media outlets. In his study called Disasters, Relief and the Media, Jonathan Benthall writes that the major news organizations’ recognition of a foreign disaster is “a prerequisite for the marshalling of external relief and reconstructive effort.”
Not only are disasters in the developing world underreported, writes Jaap van Ginneken in his book Understanding Global News, but labeling them “natural” dupes the public. He calls it “a highly ideological operation, which shifts the blame to the weather gods and away from anyone who might be in a position to do anything about the situation.” After all, it's necessity, not choice, that drives poor people to settle on unstable hills and in flood plains. The only solution to make people safer is to raise and enforce development and land use standards.
The media’s treatment of “natural” disasters is a good example of how the press prefers to report on events and not on long processes. Every event has root causes and an extensive background. It is the responsibility of good journalists to report disasters in all their complexity. The public should understand these so-called natural phenomena are actually the consequences of interactions between natural hazards, underdevelopment, and above all, poverty.
Read Kofi Annan's full article here.
