Risks and Hazards

Hazards, Risks, and Uncertainty

Hazards

• Hazards represent a negative potential that can be described, quantified, and discovered over time.
• They are real, inevitable, and complex, exemplified by wildfires and hurricanes.
• Hazards possess a natural-social essence, as seen in nuclear power and chemical waste.
• Definition: An object, condition, or process that threatens individuals and society in terms of production or reproduction (Robbins, 2022, p. 85).

Historical Approaches to Hazards

• Environmental Determinism (late 19th and early 20th century): Emphasized the physical environment as the primary factor.
• Human Ecology Approach (mid-20th century): Adopted a technocratic and managerial perspective.
• Political Economic Approach (late 20th century): Focused on socioeconomic conditions.

Risk

• Risk is the probability of a negative outcome resulting from a human-made decision.
• Risks are unevenly distributed in space.
• Risks can be transferred between socioeconomic classes or from developed to developing countries.
• Definition: The known (or estimated) probability that a hazard-related decision will have a negative consequence (Robbins, 2022, p. 85).

Key Aspects of Risk

• Risks are produced and managed by humans.
• Human-induced climate change generates risks.
• Risk management involves assessment, prioritization, and mitigation/regulation of risks.
• Effective risk management relies on available information and knowledge about the nature of hazards.

Uncertainty

• Uncertainty differs from risk; it represents the extent to which the result of a decision is unknown.
• Arises due to the unstable nature of hazards (e.g., earthquakes) or the novelty of hazards (e.g., DDT impact).
• Uncertainty can be reduced through increased or new knowledge.
• A degree of uncertainty is inevitable.
• Definition: The degree to which the outcomes of a decision or situation are unknown (Robbins, 2022, p. 85).

Uncertainty and New Hazards

• New hazards typically involve a large degree of uncertainty.
• Example: The COVID-19 pandemic.
• As understanding of the hazard increases, uncertainty decreases, and risk management improves.
• However, a degree of uncertainty remains, such as the long-term effects of COVID-19.

Example: The Fukushima Wastewater Release

• An earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, leading to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
• In August 2023, Japan began releasing treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
• Japan and the IAEA claim the release is "below the operational limit."
• A US expert noted that "compliance with standards does not mean…zero environmental consequences."
• Greenpeace asserts that tritium can have "direct negative effects."
• Korean Haenyeo divers expressed concerns: "Now I feel it is unsafe to dive in."

Risk Perception and Communication Approach

• Risk perception is a discipline that studies the reasons behind varying estimates of danger.
• Risk perception as a phenomenon is fluid and often biased.
• People's perception of risk is frequently irrational and influenced by individual experiences, culture, social and political processes, social media, etc.
• Example: Studies in Australia showed a moderate fear of sharks (6 out of 10 on average), while there are only 1.9 interactions per year on average that have a fatal result.

Key Considerations for Risk Perception

• Uncommon but highly catastrophic risks tend to be more dreaded than small and ongoing risks.
• Example: A 2017 survey found that 42% of Americans were concerned about terrorism affecting them or their relatives, even though lawnmowers pose a greater threat.
• Risk communication that includes affect and emotions can be more effective in influencing rational decisions and reducing risks.
• This approach focuses on individual psychology and assumes universal tendencies.

‘Risk Cultures’

• The ‘risk cultures’ approach understands risk perception as learned and rooted in culture, rather than being universal.
• Culture: "The system of meanings, concepts, and behaviors that people learn from their peers and surroundings" (Robbins, 2022, p. 105).
• Based on ‘cultural theory’ (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1983).
• Cultural perceptions of nature influence perceptions of risks.

Core Tenets of ‘Risk Culture’

• There is no unbiased vs. biased risk perception, but rather different risk cultures.
• Information about hazards may be interpreted and used differently by different cultures.
• Risk cultures can become embedded in institutions and social structures.
• However, it is important to question whether culture is representative of an entire nation or community.
• Risk perception has deep political roots.

Political Economy of Hazards

• Human interactions with environmental hazards cannot be reduced to individual psychology or cultural differences.
• Analysis must extend beyond the time-space boundaries of specific ‘natural disasters.’
• Social, political, cultural, and economic processes play a role in increasing the risk that natural hazards more easily become disasters for specific social groups (Boyle, 2014, p. 267).

Distribution of Hazards and Risks

• Hazards are distributed unequally over space and throughout society, with a structured bias toward vulnerable populations (Robbins, 2022, p. 91).
• Risk appears as imposed by actors who are often disconnected from the location of the hazard and the population exposed to the associated risks.
• This mismatch is embedded in political, social, and economic structures and institutions.

Vulnerability

• Hazards can be more detrimental to some social groups than others (e.g., elders during COVID-19).
• 'Unsafe conditions' can increase vulnerability.
• Root causes of vulnerability are related to access to power and resources, and political and economic structures.
• Definition: Degree to which risk-affected populations are likely to suffer loss (Mitchell, 2003, p. 17).

Case Study: Oil Pollution in the Amazon

• Oil exploitation in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador and Peru has resulted in massive environmental impacts since the 1970s.
• Direct impacts: Deforestation, contamination from oil spills and wastewater discharges, health-related issues
• Indirect impacts: Increased logging and deforestation, disruption of Indigenous people in voluntary isolation.
• There were 566 oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon between 1997 and 2021.

Questions to Consider

• Do communities in the Amazon choose to live nearby these hazardous areas?
• Do they have a say in the decision-making processes about the land and resources?
• Who benefits and who bears the impacts?

Key Takeaway

• The problem lies beyond irrational understanding of or cultural attitudes towards risk.
• Power imbalances in risk-related decisions and structural inequalities underpin these conditions.

Structural Conditions, Vulnerability, and Choice

• Social, political, economic, and ecological constraints surround people's risk decision-making.
• Countries’ decisions can reshape the economy or environment, leading to increasing risks.
• Historical processes play an important role in shaping uneven ‘riskscapes.’

Impact of Processes and Decisions

• These processes and decisions can impact the vulnerability and capacities of people, communities, and countries to deal with hazards.
• People's decisions about or attitudes towards risks can be limited by structural factors.
• Several discourses promote the idea that hazards can be addressed by technocratic and managerial solutions rather than structural changes in society.

Main Structural Factors Increasing Vulnerability

• Poverty
• Social exclusion
• Poor governance
• War and violence
• Rapid urbanization
• Environmental degradation

Political Economy of Information

• Risk-related decisions often entail socioeconomic and political interests.
• Communication about risks and hazards can be used to benefit elite institutions.
• Example: The 1982 “CO2 greenhouse effect: technical review.”
• What happens when risks are miscommunicated or not entirely explained? Who benefits from that?

Key Points and Conclusions

• Environmental hazards and risks emerge from a complex human-nature interaction.
• Risk (estimated or known probability of a negative outcome of a decision) is not the same as uncertainty (unknown features about the nature of a hazard).
• There are different approaches to addressing people’s relation to risk.
• People’s perception of risk is often irrational and influenced by emotions or affect.
• Risk perception cannot be reduced to individual psychology. There are cultural predispositions that can influence people’s relation to risks depending on their view of the world.
• Approaches based on individual psychology and cultural predispositions are however limited – issues of power embedded in socioeconomic structure play an important role on the management of risk and hazards (political economic approach).
• Risk decision-makers are often not the ones vulnerable to risk. This disconnection is embedded in power and social structures.
• The choices and capacities to respond to risks are often constrained by socioeconomic structures historically and geographically embedded.
• Information about risks, hazards, and uncertainty and the way they are interpreted can be susceptible to influences from actors in power with a particular political position.

Suggested Materials

• Costing the Earth - Britain's Dark Waters - BBC Sounds
• What is Environmental Risk? – YouTube
• Movies: Dark Waters (2020)
• Social media: Costing the Earth (BBC), episode “Britain’s dark waters”
• YouTube: What is environmental risk? (RGSIBG).
• Books: The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck, 2000); Salvage the Bones (Ward, 2011)