Talk:Environmental disaster

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 January 2022 and 4 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kavvyasharma (article contribs).

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Liv Davis. Peer reviewers: Siperez, Hnworth, Weilh, HRVEF, Savlatt.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 January 2019 and 1 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Aileenxgui.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:41, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV comments

Why are no natural environmental disaster's mentioned? Volcano's, hurricane's, tsunami's, that sort of thing. At least on a regional scale, natural environmental disasters often far exceed what people have managed to do. Where people seem to excel at creating problems is with an accumulation of relatively small environmental insults that add up over time. Surely not as dramatic, as worthy of the word disaster, as the natural ones.

The word "environmental" usually impies the negative effects of human activity on the environment. There is a seperate article for Natural disasters Alan Liefting 20:28, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This article is hardly NPOV. As the above post says, natural disasters aren't even mentioned. Furthermore, Environmental degradation, which is actually a scientific term, redirects to this article, despite the fact that it is really a slightly different thing. I recommend that we heavily re-write this article and undo the redirect on Environmental degradation, and make that into a newer, better article. Bonus Onus 02:34, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Thats probably because the article starts with: "Man-made negative alteration of the ecosystem that has widespread or long lasting consequences." I would disagree with this as I believe that Environmental Disasters can be caused by things other than Humans. --Dumbo1 17:23, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a few natural disasters and tries to make it more NPOV. Alan Liefting 10:11, 15 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The article should be rewritten to be specific disasters that are of concern to environmentalists. Alan Liefting 20:28, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh.

Arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh appears to be natural. See [1] Alan Liefting 20:38, 15 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How is Arsenic poisoning natural? By the way, that source you provided is no longer available. Mr Pigeon (talk) 05:05, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

POV Disaster

I have reinstated the POV as the title alone is inflammatory.

Define 'environmental'. To the 'environment' of whatdoes this refer? Define 'disaster'. What standards are to be applied? How do we objectively measure 'disaster'? Disastrous to whom, or what, and how?

This article really needs to be a subsection of something larger concerning the negative impacts (both natural and 'man-made') on the Earth's environment. My initial reaction would be to tag AFD but there could be something worthwhile. Eddie.willers 01:24, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Eddie.willers environmental disasters should be about disasters that occurred in the environment, not just man-made disasters. Maybe we can create a link to an article about natural disasters to better improve the readers' understanding. Mr Pigeon (talk) 05:23, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Environmental vs. Natural

What is the difference between environmental and natural disasters and who is going to clean the mess in links and categories? Right now I am lost to which one should I link the Bulgarian articles and categories but will go for "natural" as being closer to our Bulgarian term and meaning.

As I am not a native English-speaker I can only guess that one may consider natural ones to be nature-driven (not human-made), and the environmental to be affecting somehow the nature. If there is natual "revenge", it is a subset of natural disasters. Am I right, or totally wrong? Cheers, Goldie (tell me) 11:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

environmental disasters are disasters that occur in the environment. The fact that only man-made disasters are on this page is quite confusing since natural disasters are also environmental. Mr Pigeon (talk) 15:42, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Added new sections, links, and fixed grammar

Hi everyone, I added two new sections, especially one called "Difficult in Categorization" to point the debate around what can be considered an environmental disaster. However, this whole article leans toward human created environmental disasters so maybe someone should change the title to "Man-made environmental disasters" or something better. --205.250.250.154 21:04, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Classification issues

A hazard is the geophysical agent that can lead to disaster, e.g. an earthquake. A disaster is a case of a hazard impact, e.g. the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. See Emergency management.

Hazards and their resulting disasters are classified according to their main driving forces: natural, technological, or sociological. Human involvement is pivotal in all three classes for a hazard impact to be seen as a disaster. Earthquakes in uninhabited deserts cannot become disasters. However, natural hazards strike without human involvement whereas sociological hazards (like riots and stampedes) cannot strike without human involvement. What is in between, like this article is a greyzone. What is clear is that for instance, an oil spill, is a Environmental hazard, whereas the Exxon Valdez oil spill was an Environmental disaster.

The rest is open for discussion. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 16:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well said, but I would differ on some minor points... An 'emergency' is any unexpected event which poses an immediate threat of loss to life, property, or the environment. A 'disaster' is an emergency which overwhelms the local response capability. That's an important distinction to keep in mind within the Disaster/Emergency Management Project.

An earthquake in an uninhabited desert is (also) not a disaster because the emergent threat to the environment does not overwhelm the local response capability -- which absent a human presence would be a geologic/ecologic response, and measured in eons. Thus earthquakes are never really any hazard at all without people -- there is no vulnerability to be expressed in the Risk equation. To be thorough, earthquakes are a natural part of the planetary geology and thus don't actually pose an environmental threat, because in the course of nature, the event is planned -- so to speak. (okay, I'm not a geologist...)

Spilling oil is a hazard to be avoided, but an oil spill is an emergency with an environmental impact. (Certainly the Exxon Valdez emergency was a disaster, but it was man-made, not environmental!) ...See the new topic below, I'm on a roll... Parradoxx 08:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rename as Environmental calamity?

The word calamity has less emotive and negative connotations than disaster. It could be used on this article as well as List of environmental disasters and Category:Environmental disasters. Alan Liefting 00:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of doomsday scenarios

Could use votes to save this article, thanks MapleTree 22:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cause vs. Effect

The problem here is simply a matter of perspective. In Emergency Management, emergencies and disasters are categorized by the cause (man-made, technical, natural) not the effect (environmental, financial, human). However, as people, we are drawn to the pathos of the effect: the impact, the damage, the devastation. In Emergency Management, the effect is known as loss. Loss of life. Loss of property. Loss to the enviroment. It is what mitigation seeks to prevent, and what preparedness seeks to minimize.

This article appears to be about a specific kind of loss: diminuation of the natural environment. If viewed from that perspective, it becomes clear that disaster is just one of several causes of Environmental Loss along with illegal dumping and introduction of non-native species for example. I agree with Alan Liefting's suggestion above in NPOV comments that this article should be rewritten to be about specific losses that are of concern to environmentalists.

As an example: the Three Gorges Dam is not a disaster under Emergency Management because it is neither unexpected nor immediate. However, if it were to collapse due to poor construction, people would probably call it both an environmental and a financial disaster (identifying the type of loss). Emergency Management would call it a man-made disaster (because of the unexpected and overwhelming emergent context).

Therefore, I recommend the following:

This page be removed from the Disaster Management Project.
The word "Disaster" be removed from the title,
and replaced with the word "Loss", "Losses", "Diminuation", or whatever word an environmentalist would indicate be a better fit.

Parradoxx 10:03, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No results of disasters

I noticed that there is a list of man-made disasters, but why are the results of those disasters not provided (Like an oil spill poisoning sea life, or something like that)? Mr Pigeon (talk) 05:16, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Time for an Update

Many disasters have occurred; however, the most recent disaster displayed is from 2010. We should dig into some more recent disasters. Mr Pigeon (talk) 05:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Changing Structure

The intro section would benefit from much added detail on how exactly an environmental disaster differs from natural disasters and war disasters. Perhaps there is a more concrete definition out there. The article also suffers from lack of relevance, making its structure contingent on the listing and linking of environmental disasters. This could maybe be moved to a sub-focus of the article, and the article could detail instead how environmental disaster came into the political conversation, trends in advocacy, interest groups, movements related to environmental disasters, etc. Aileenxgui (talk) 18:52, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kapish Singh

Kapish Singh is a creative person who always says something different from others or I had gotten him the different person ever born on this planet. Some of the thought by kapish Singh are as, {the world is not which one can see by her eyes but is is only the part which you are able to understand till now.}

Please

Please do something for better tomorrow the Creation which you are creating would be you habbit after some days and you habbit makes you mentally and the mentally make your nature of response and it makes your fortune so if there is a man who is great then it is you the you within you makes you infinite and the infinite is the best .

He is all rounder for the proof some links are given below --Shivwati (talk) 16:11, 23 November 2017 (UTC)youtube--Shivwati (talk) 16:11, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

^. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRNmKAsJFlbpUjjYixqz-vw

https://mobile.twitter.com/kapishsingh8

https://www.google.co.in/search?source=hp&ei=y_AWWuLhF8SFvQTn446gCw&q=kapish+Singh&btnG=

http://kapishsingh.blogspot.in/?m=1

I think a lot more could be said about environmental disasters, such as how are the EPA and grassroots organizations battling these types of natural disasters? How are we using policy to prevent natural disasters from reoccuring? Savlatt (talk) 18:31, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Minor Addition in regards to Social Vulnerability

This article is very clear and neutral in tone, which are excellent! I think an important part of environmental disasters are how different populations are either more or less vulnerable based upon their social class and standing. I added a brief section discussing this topic along with a few sentences on Hurricane Katrina. I also added sources and made some very minor edits to grammar. Overall this article is a great start, I would love to see just a little more detail. Keep up the excellent work! Mggale (talk) 21:12, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Assignments

environmental disaster vs migration 41.210.146.252 (talk) 10:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]