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why do people continue to live in hazardous environments?, ., 1800 people…
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1800 people were killed in 1986 by carbon dioxide gas that had been silently erupting into Lake Nyos in Cameroon for many years. Now that vulcanologists know about the carbon dioxide, they can easily and safely vent it. Ignorance is more common in LICs where people are not educated about the risks that they face (e.g. many people in Port-au-Prince would not have known their city was built on a fault line).
Many people in LICs are so poor that they have no option but to remain in hazardous environments, either because they cannot afford to move away or because it provides them with a small source of income.
‘Complacency’…the ‘it won’t happen to me’ attitude – most people are inherently optimistic about hazards
Spiritual reasons…the Aeta tribe refused to leave the slopes of Mt Pinatubo because the mountain was sacred to them
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As the world’s population surpasses 7 billion, more and more people are having to live in at-risk marginal environments, and therefore more people (generally the poorest) are exposed to hazards
Benefits linked to the hazard
Volcanoes…fertile soil (citrus fruit trees growing on the Catania Plain in the shadow of Mt Etna on Sicily), tourism (visitors to Vesuvius in Italy or Iceland’s geysers), geothermal power (Iceland/New Zealand), valuable minerals (gold, copper, diamonds) brought to the surface in rising magma