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Environmental hazards are defined as extreme events or substances in the Earth and its ecological system that may cause adverse consequences for humans and things they value. These include geophysical and meteorological phenomena such as earthquakes and droughts. Approaches to environmental hazards developed from an initial focus on preventing natural disasters through engineering works, to an emphasis on how human behavior and perceptions influence response and adjustment to hazards, and then to analyses of how political and economic processes and structures make some people and places more vulnerable to extreme events than others. Environmental risks are often defined as the product of a hazard and the likelihood of its occurring, using a simple formula that defines a risk as the product of probability of an event, and its severity measured in terms of the population exposed, and the nature of the consequences. Environmental risk assessment employs a wide range of experimental, statistical, and economic techniques to estimate and compare risks from pollution, technologies, and everyday activities. Critical perspectives on risk point to the limitations of quantitative assessments, including the differences between public and ‘expert’ judgments, the unequal distribution of risk exposure in space and society, and to the ways in which risks are constructed and defined by different interest groups. |
