Hazard Vulnerability of Megacity EnvironmentsAuthor(s): Dennis ParkerSource: Area, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1995), pp. 164-166Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20003550 .

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164 IBG Annual Conference

Turner's paper examined the conflicts involved in the LA21 process, particularly those centred on the varied and often competing interpretations of sustainability, and the difficulties inherent in stakeholders' differential access to information. Given the importance of local authority processes to LA21, Bruder's paper looked at environmental auditing, emphasising the need to understand EA not only as procedure for securing environmental objectives but also as an institutional process with all the consequences of this.

The final paper of the first module, by Simon Guy and Simon Marvin (Newcastle) argued that energy policy is ' disconnected ' in that there seems to be little evidence of coordination between the policy makers and energy providers, and in this vacuum, the privatised utilities are emerging as the real shapers of local energy policy. However, contrary to expectations, this does not always result in increased energy consumption, as the authors' example of Anglesey demonstrated. Although it has been regularly argued that ' green growth' is achievable, one central conflict in environmental policy has been between economic development and 'the environment', and this was the focus of the second module. The three papers examined here different aspects of this debate. David Gibbs and his colleagues (Manchester Metropolitan) reported on their current ESRC project examining the role of English Metropolitan local authorities in linking these two policy areas. A range of difficulties are emerging, not least the practicalities of defining sustainable development.

The role of local authorities was also the subject of the paper by Alan Patteson and Kate Theobald (West London Institute). They showed how the contemporary process of public restructuring, and in particular the Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) legislation, is seriously hindering local authorities in their attempt to secure environmental objectives through LA21. The final paper of the session by Ian Moffat (Stirling) argued for indices of sustainable welfare as an alternative to GNP or GDP as an economic measure for decision

makers, in that ISEWs can include environmental and social justice considerations as well as economic measures of welfare.

To think globally and to act loyally is a central tenet of the environmental canon but, as the papers presented at this session demonstrated, local environmental action is still significantly constrained. Nevertheless, there is room for optimism in that considerable progress at the local level has been achieved in a very short period of time. Given that local authorities worldwide have to prepare their Local Agenda 21s by the end of 1996, the 1997 IBG Conference may be an appropriate time to revisit this debate.

Bob Evans South Bank University

Hazard Vulnerability of Megacity Environments

This four-module session was part of the Environment Research Group's conference programme. Urbanisation is one of the most important causes of world-wide growth of vulnerability to hazardous environmental processes. Material investments and people are pouring into cities that are already exposed to significant physical risks and which are pushing against the limits of environmental and social-technical systems. There is a general loss of indigenous hazard-coping mechanisms, environmental quality is deteriorating sustainable approaches to hazard and urban management are needed. The session aimed to explore the joint implications of recent changes in both the nature of hazard and the nature of urbanisation as reflected in particular cities and to explore new approaches to hazard analysis and

management. The session also acted as the UK meeting of the International Geographical Union's Study Group on the Disaster Vulnerability of Megacities which is chaired by James K Mitchell (Rutgers University, USA). This was the third meeting of the Study Group, and the first at which members from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and Britain have been able to meet in the same room. The Study Group's objectives, which were discussed in the final module, include analysing changes in natural hazards and disasters in cities of over one million people; developing methods for assessing these hazards in the context of other

megacity problems and issues; maintaining a data base on megacity hazards and disasters and

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IBG Annual Conference 165

working collaboratively with researchers in other disciplines and professions to improve planning, management and recovery from megacity hazards and disasters.

Tom Horlick-Jones (LSE) opened the session with a paper on hazard trends in the old megacities drawing upon his experience of both London and New York. He reviewed the influence of local and global restructuring upon hazard vulnerability within the two cities and the emergence of ' risk ghettoes ' located side-by-side with gentrified and wealthy neighbour hoods. There was an erosion of trust among many urban residents and risk management institutions and that this was giving rise to a new risk politics within large cities. James K

Mitchell (Rutgers University, USA) also noted rising public criticism of hazard management agencies and argued that to successfully reduce hazards it was necessary to adopt a ' hazards problematique ' perspective. This analysis hazards in the context of other contemporary urban problems with which they interact. Referring to examples in US cities, he suggested that support for hazard reduction needs to be generated through strategies which address both hazard adjustments and other pressing urban needs, and which stimulate the formation of alliances among hazard and diverse non-hazard constituencies. Susanne MacGregor and Shaminda Takhar (Middlesex) defined hazardous environmental urban conditions as a constant feature in life in megacities in which the poor were most vulnerable, often because of their exclusion from the political formations of their city. Like Mitchell, they also emphasised the importance of partnership, alliance and consortium building to reduce hazard vulnerability.

Sydney (Australia) and Petropolis City (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) provided contrasting examples of cities which had experienced few and many disasters. Although ' psycho-social ' and ' media generated ' emergencies had been relatively common (eg the recent bush fires), John Handmer (Middlesex) believed that key factors in Sydney's avoidance of major damaging disasters were a combination of low rise, low density urban development which reduced disaster vulnerability (but which also introduced sustainability problems), and providence. Antonio Guerra (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) reported that Petropolis City had experienced 1,161 catastrophic events in the past fifty years: mostly landslides, rockfalls and floods triggered by heavy rain on deforested hillsides. He criticised the inadequacy and unsustainability of piecemeal civil engineering projects to stabilise the hillsides and indicated the need for a much broader hazard reduction strategy for the city including environmental education. Ragnar Lofstedt (Surrey) also stressed the importance of environmental education in his discussion of the hazards created by carbon dioxide emissions, and the failure of a

British government energy use reduction campaign. The possibility of the British public altering their lifestyles to reduce energy use and carbon dioxide emissions is limited partly because of lack of environmental understanding amongst the public, especially about energy conservation and the effects of emissions on climate.

Louis Solway (Institution of Civil Engineers, London) explained the Institution of Civil Engineers' megacities project which has focused upon case studies of Karachi, Metro Manila and Jakarta. These cities are all highly vulnerable to disaster because of high population growth rates, fragile infrastructure and widespread poverty. He argued that the profile of disaster mitigation needed raising in all of these cities but was pessimistic about the chances of significantly reducing hazard exposure and vulnerability. Discussion focused upon the merits of focusing upon ' mitigation ' (in an engineering sense) and alternative strategies. Sergio Puente (El Colegio De Mexico, Mexico City) focused upon the relationship between quality of life, vulnerability and natural disasters in Mexico City. In contrast to Solway, he argued in favour of analysing social form (ie forms of community, social processes) rather than urban form (ie visible structure) in understanding differential vulnerability to hazards within the city.

In the final module Robert Nicholls (Middlesex) analysed the implications of rising sea levels on the world's rapidly growing, large, coastal cities demonstrating probable major increases in exposure and vulnerability to hazards associated with sea level rise. Martin

Degg (Chester College) challenged the sustainability of traditional centrally organised ' top-down' approaches towards hazard management, and advocated flexible response at the community and individual level. Here a major challenge faced specialists in providing

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166 IBG Annual Conference

essential information about natural processes and their management in formats accessible to non-specialists.

The session proved successful in bringing together a global network of geographers working upon disaster vulnerability in megacities, exploring the different emphases and preoccupations of three ' megacity networks' (those of the geographers, sociologists and engineers), and searching for fresh contexts for, and ways of, analysing hazard and disaster management problems.

Dennis Parker Middlesex University

The Environment Agenda

This two-module session aimed to display the diversity and interdisciplinarity of current research into the environmental agenda. It also sought to encourage stronger environmental input from geography to balance the more energetic ' greening' of sociology and political science. Matthew Gandy (Sussex) began the session with a detailed exposition of the linkages and tensions between environmentalism and postmodernism. He argued that there were five areas of overlap between the two: teleological visions; pluralism in thought and action; the

micro-level of analysis; the ecological criteria of modernity; place-related concepts of knowledge and action. Yet central obstacles remain in linking environmentalism unproblem atically with postmodernism, principally: the retention of modern ideas in postmodernism; the need to consider epistemologies more fully; the issues of difference and the implications for values; the rejection of universalism.

Stuart Oliver (St Mary's University College, Surrey) then took up the theme of reading the landscape in post-structuralist terms, using landslides in Grassano, Italy, as a case study. He explored how the local landscapes served as signifiers of the changing relationship between society and nature, exemplified in a discourse of ' panic' stemming from the 1980s. Jane

Benton (Nottingham Trent) also pursued the changing human relations with the environment, in her case specifically the role of women in South America. Having been perceived as passive and as victims of their environments, in the 1980s women were beginning to organise and take their own decisions about agricultural and environmental management.

The last three papers turned to a more political interpretation of the agenda. Ian Coates (Bristol) explored the value systems of (UK) Green Party activists and their understandings of ' green politics ;. Focussing on social justice, he showed that the route into green politics for activists can equally well be social equity as environmental considerations. This emphasised the nature of green politics as a package of ideas bound up with social change and not merely one-dimensional environmental sentiment. Activists also adopted green lifestyles as viable alternatives to the materialist, modern way of life, emphasising the micropolitical aspects of environmental action. Judy Benton (UCL) then took us into the politics of environmental economics by considering the operation of Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) in the Pevensey Levels, Sussex. In her discussion groups, people rejected the idea of nature as a commodity, arguing that its values should be arrived at through consensus not through estimates of individuals' ' Willingness to Pay' employed by CVM questionnaires. Although people could not express these ideas through the medium of CVM, they answered the questions anyway, setting up a problem for the interpretation of the results and of the political justification for such methods of garnering public opinion.

Sally Eden (Middlesex) concluded the session with a discussion of another element of environmental politics, specifically the role of business in influencing the environmental agenda. Using a study of business associations in the UK, she suggested that it was possible to characterise their environmental influence in terms of ' subpolitics ', as a peripheral group to central politics that can wield significant power through their cultivated autonomy and objectivity.

Sally Eden Middlesex University

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