1. Autumn 2011 C:F Competitions
HELL ON EARTH (inspiring change)
The rational way to control disaster in 21st century
Introduction
A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of
substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic
change to the environment. A disaster can be ostensively defined as any tragic event with
great loss stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or
explosions
FLOODS
The word "flood" comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Germanic languages
(compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float; also compare
with Latin fluctus, flumen). Deluge myths are mythical stories of a great flood sent by a deity
or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution, and are featured in the
mythology of many cultures.
Every year a community in some part of the world is devastated by catastrophic flooding.
Communities in coastal regions and land near rivers and lakes are especially prone, but
flooding can happen anywhere it rains.
If we focus on for example what was happening in Bangkok It‘s difficult to estimate the
water volume, but if we can protect the flood barriers in three key points in the next 5 years,
Bangkok should be saved, Prime minister ‖ Yingluck said at Bangkok‘s former international
airport, which has been turned into the country‘s main flood-management center. Prime
Minister Yingluck Shinawatra opened army camps to assist house some of the 2.4 million
people displaced by the floods, asking authorities to accelerate efforts to protect the capital.
The finance ministry yesterday cut its forecast for economic growth to 3.7 percent from 4
percent and said the disaster may cause 120 billion baht ($3.9 billion) of damage.
Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul warned that the situation is ―quite
worrisome,‖ further adding that agricultural industry losses may total as much as 20 billion
baht. The disaster may reduce Thailand‘s gross domestic product by 1 percentage point in the
fourth quarter, increasing the likelihood that the central bank may cut interest rates by as
much as 50 basis points by year-end to aid reconstruction efforts, HSBC Holdings Plc
economist Frederic Neumann wrote yesterday in a report to clients.
Without forests, without trees, floods come easier and faster. There are no longer any forests
to help absorb the water before releasing it slowly into the rivers. Instead, rain comes and
water flows quickly into rivers, thus increasing the chances of flash floods. Filled too
quickly, the rivers break their banks. Water now flows out everywhere forming new paths.As
cities grow, flooding becomes more frequent because their infrastructure cannot
accommodate the drainage needs of land that's paved and highly developed. Moreover, aging

2. dams and levees are prone to failure, leading to the kind of devastation that New Orleans saw
after Hurricane Katrina. There is hope, however. In Japan, England, the Netherlands, and
other low-lying countries, architects and civil engineers have developed innovative new
technologies for flood control.
DROUGHT:
Drought is a period or condition of unusually dry weather within a geographic area where
rainfall is normally present. During a drought there is a lack of precipitation. Droughts occur
in all climatic zones. However, its characteristics vary significantly from one region to
another.
Drought usually results in a water shortage that seriously interferes with human activity.
Water-supply reservoirs empty, wells dry up, and crop damage ensues. Its seriousness
depends on the degree of the water shortage, size of area affected, and the duration and
warmth of the dry period. In many underdeveloped countries, such as India, people place a
great demand on water supply. During a drought period there is a lack of water, and thus
many of the poor die.
Most precipitation depends on water vapour carried by winds from an ocean or other source
of moisture. If these moisture-carrying winds are replaced by winds from a dry region, or if
they are modified by downward motion, as in the centre of an anticyclone, the weather is
abnormally dry and often persistently cloudless. If the drought period is short, it is known as
a dry spell. A dry spell is usually more than 14 days without precipitation, whereas a severe
drought may last for years.
Statistics indicate that every 22 years a major drought occurs in the United States, most
seriously affecting the Midwestern states. The drought of 1933-35, during which large areas
of the Great Plains became known as the Dust Bowl, is an example of a disastrous drought
that took place in the United States. The effect of the drought was brought about by over
cropping, overpopulation, and lack of relief measures.
The most pressing and dangerous issue facing the people of Kenya is the 2011 drought,
which was declared a national disaster by President Mwai Kibaki in April. Access to food
and water has become very scarce, millions of livestock have died, and territorial violence
has increased drastically as people compete for patches of fertile land. When nourishment can
be found, heightened demand raises prices and makes staple goods difficult to obtain. On
June 28th, the United Nations reported that 3.5 million people are in need of humanitarian
relief.
Although drought cannot be reliably predicted, certain precautions can be taken in drought-
risk areas. These include construction of reservoirs to hold emergency water supplies,
education to avoid over cropping and overgrazing, and programs to limit settlement in
drought-prone areas. The Southern Africa Development Community monitors the crop and
food situation in the region and alerts the people during periods of crisis.

3. Bomb attacks
The War on Terror (also known as the Global War on Terror or the War on Terrorism)
is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States
and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) as well as non-NATO countries. Originally, the campaign was waged against al-
Qaeda and other militant organizations with the purpose of eliminating them.[1]
The phrase War on Terror was first used by US President George W. Bush and other high-
ranking US officials to denote a global military, political, legal and ideological struggle
against organizations designated as terrorist and regimes that were accused of having a
connection to them or providing them with support or were perceived, or presented as posing
a threat to the US and its allies in general. It was typically used with a particular focus on
militant Islamists and al-Qaeda.
Objectives
1. Identify, locate and destroy terrorists along with their organizations
2. Deny sponsorship, support and sanctuary to terrorists
3. Diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit
So the question we have to ask ourselves is that HOW TERRORIST AND BOMB
ATTACKS END IN THE 21ST CENCTURY? the reshuffling of international relations that
accompanied the end of the Cold War provided a glimmer of hope that the intractable Israeli-
Palestinian conflict might be resolvable. The waning years of the bipolar contest saw a sharp
increase in popular unrest in the occupied territories. The first intifada, a persistent campaign
of civil resistance strikes and violent demonstrations, began in December 1987. Young men
and children threw stones at the Israelis, reasoning that using firearms would advantage the
better-equipped Israeli Defence Forces and that the resultant media coverage would bring to
mind David and Goliath. The PLO leadership, by this point exiled in Tunis, eventually
regained limited direction of events, but the intifada was not PLOinitiated and, as a result,
religiously oriented groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad dramatically gained
support among Palestinians
When it comes to terrorism, we are asking all the wrong questions. The most important thing
we need to ask about terrorist campaigns isn‘t ―How are we doing?‖ but ―How will it end?‖
Moreover, we should be less concerned with asking ―When will the next attack be?‖ and
instead ask ―What will we do after that?‖ In How Terrorism Ends:
Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns Cronin follows the demise of
terrorist groups over the past two centuries—from the African National Congress to the
Tamil Tigers to the Real Irish Republican Army—and outlines the steps we need to take in
the current fight against al-Qaeda. Understanding the common ways in which terrorism
movements have met their end provides the best example for how we might strategically
approach today‘s terrorist groups, without resorting to fear mongering.
Audrey Kurth Cronin is professor of strategy at the U.S. National War College in
Washington, DC, and senior associate in the Changing Character of War program at the
University of Oxford. She is the author of Ending Terrorism: Lessons for Defeating al-Qaeda
and the co-author of Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy

4. Lessons for defeating terror and bomb attacks
Like all other terrorist movements, al-Qaeda will end. While it has traits that exploit and
reflect the current international context, it is not utterly without precedent: some aspects of al-
Qaeda are unusual, but many are not. Terrorist groups end according to recognisable patterns
that have persisted for centuries, and they reflect, among other factors, the counter-terrorist
policies taken against them. It makes sense to formulate those policies with a specific image
of an end in mind.
Understanding how terrorism ends is the best way to avoid being manipulated by the tactic.
There is vast historical experience with the decline and ending of terrorist campaigns, yet few
policymakers are familiar with it. This paper first explains five typical strategies of terrorism
and why Western thinkers fail to grasp them. It then describes historical patterns in ending
terrorism to suggest how insights from that history can lay a foundation for more effective
counter-strategies. Finally, it extracts policy prescriptions specifically relevant to ending the
campaign of al-Qaeda and its associates, moving towards a post al-Qaeda world
Emergency management is the generic name of an interdisciplinary field dealing with the
strategic organizational management processes used to protect critical assets of an
organization from hazard risks that can cause events like disasters or catastrophes and to
ensure the continuance of the organization within their planned lifetime. Emergencies,
Disasters, and Catastrophes are not gradients, they are separate, distinct problems that require
distinct strategies of response. Disasters are events distinguished from everyday emergencies
by four factors: Organizations are forced into more and different kinds of interactions than
normal; Organizations lose some of their normal autonomy; Performance standards change,
and; More coordinated public sector/private sector relationships are required. Catastrophes
are distinct from disasters in that: Most or all of the community built structure is heavily
impacted; Local officials are unable to undertake their usual work roles; Most, if not all, of
the everyday community functions are sharply and simultaneously interrupted, and; Help
from nearby communities cannot be provided.
Assets are categorized as either living things, non-living things, cultural or economic.
Hazards are categorized by their cause, either natural or human-made. The entire strategic
management process is divided into four fields to aid in identification of the processes. The
four fields normally deal with risk reduction, preparing resources to respond to the hazard,
responding to the actual damage caused by the hazard and limiting further damage (e.g.,
emergency evacuation, quarantine, mass decontamination, etc.), and returning as close as
possible to the state before the hazard incident. The field occurs in both the public and private
sector, sharing the same processes, but with different focuses. Emergency Management is a
strategic process, and not a tactical process, thus it usually resides at the Executive level in an
organization. It normally has no direct power, but serves as an advisory or coordinating
function to ensure that all parts of an organization are focused on the common goal. Effective
Emergency Management relies on a thorough integration of emergency plans at all levels of
the organization, and an understanding that the lowest levels of the organization are
responsible for managing the emergency and getting additional resources and assistance from
the upper levels.

5. CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather
patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in
average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average (e.g., more or
fewer extreme weather events). Climate change may be limited to a specific region or may
occur across the whole Earth
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans
and its related effects. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by
about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F) with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three
decades. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and scientists are more than 90%
certain most of it is caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by
human activities such as deforestation and burning fossil fuel. These findings are recognized
by the national science academies of all the major industrialized countries.
Climate model projections are summarized in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They indicate that during the 21st
century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.5 to 1.9 °C (2.7 to 3.4 °F)
for their lowest emissions scenario and 3.4 to 6.1 °C (6.1 to 11 °F) for their highest. The
ranges of these estimates arise from the use of models with differing sensitivity to greenhouse
gas concentrations.
An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount
and pattern of precipitation, and a probable expansion of subtropical deserts. Warming is
expected to be strongest in the Arctic and would be associated with continuing retreat of
glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely effects of the warming include more frequent
occurrence of extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall
events, species extinctions due to shifting temperature regimes, and changes in agricultural
yields. Warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe,
though the nature of these regional changes is uncertain. In a 4 °C world, the limits for
human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for
adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world. Hence, the
ecosystem services upon which human livelihoods depend would not be preserved.
Proposed responses to global warming include mitigation to reduce emissions, adaptation to
the effects of global warming, and geoengineering to remove greenhouse gases from the
atmosphere or reflect incoming solar radiation back to space. The main international
mitigation effort is the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration
to prevent a "dangerous anthropogenic interference" As of October 2011, 192 states had
ratified the protocol. The only members of the UNFCCC that were asked to sign the treaty
but have not yet ratified it are the USA and Afghanistan
Politics
Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention refers explicitly to "stabilization of greenhouse
gas concentrations.‘‘ In order to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of CO2, emissions
worldwide would need to be dramatically reduced from their present level. Most countries are
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The ultimate

6. objective of the Convention is to prevent "dangerous" human interference of the climate system. As is
stated in the Convention, this requires that GHG concentrations are stabilized in the atmosphere at a
level where ecosystems can adapt naturally to climate change, food production is not threatened, and
economic development can proceed in a sustainable fashion.
The Framework Convention was agreed in 1992, but since then, global emissions have
risen.[124][135] During negotiations, the G77 (a lobbying group in the United Nations
representing 133 developing nations) pushed for a mandate requiring developed countries to
"[take] the lead" in reducing their emissions. This was justified on the basis that: the
developed world's emissions had contributed most to the stock of GHGs in the atmosphere;
per-capita emissions (i.e., emissions per head of population) were still relatively low in
developing countries; and the emissions of developing countries would grow to meet their
development needs. This mandate was sustained in the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework
Convention, which entered into legal effect in 2005.
In ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, most developed countries accepted legally binding
commitments to limit their emissions. These first-round commitments expire in 2012. US
President George W. Bush rejected the treaty on the basis that "it exempts 80% of the world,
including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would
cause serious harm to the US economy."
At the 15th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, held in 2009 at Copenhagen, several
UNFCCC Parties produced the Copenhagen Accord.[139] Parties associated with the Accord
(140 countries, as of November 2010) aim to limit the future increase in global mean
temperature to below 2 °C. A preliminary assessment published in November 2010 by the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) suggests a possible "emissions gap"
between the voluntary pledges made in the Accord and the emissions cuts necessary to have a
"likely" (greater than 66% probability) chance of meeting the 2 °C objective. The UNEP
assessment takes the 2 °C objective as being measured against the pre-industrial global mean
temperature level. To having a likely chance of meeting the 2 °C objective, assessed studies
generally indicated the need for global emissions to peak before 2020, with substantial
declines in emissions thereafter.
The 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) was held at Cancún in 2010. It produced an
agreement, not a binding treaty, that the Parties should take urgent action to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions to meet a goal of limiting global warming to 2 °C above pre-
industrial temperatures. It also recognized the need to consider strengthening the goal to a
global average rise of 1.5 °C
Climate change is one of the greatest environmental issues of our time.
We need to act quickly and take advantage of existing solutions to prevent irreversible
damage to our planet. Natural ecosystems provide significant opportunities to cut emissions
dramatically and to preserve the adaptive potential of our biosphere.

7. GOAL: Curbing emissions and adapting to change
Many factors are contributing to climate change, from fossil fuel use to the burning and
clearing of tropical forests. We need a comprehensive approach to reduce the impacts of
climate change – an approach that decreases emissions across all sectors and enhances the
adaptive capacity of all nations.
Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and stabilizing atmospheric concentrations at
350-450 parts per million CO2 equivalent (ppm CO2e) is essential. The current GHG level
is approximately 390 ppm CO2e.
Scientists have estimated that lowering concentrations to 350 ppm may enable us to avert
tipping points of ocean acidification and the melting of permafrost and arctic ice.
Stabilization at 450 ppm is thought to be the threshold to avoid dangerous warming of more
than 2 degrees Celsius, which would bring potentially catastrophic impacts for natural and
human communities alike.
We are already seeing changing weather patterns impacting food production and species
migration. Fresh water scarcity risks becoming even more acute in drought-stricken countries
and flooding may increasingly threaten our coastal communities and directly impact hundreds
of thousands of people each year. Conflict is increasing over strained ecosystems and local
communities are being forced from their homes.
Solutions are needed now. Our ecosystems must be able to adapt to these changes so that they
can retain productivity, continue to buffer extreme weather events and provide fresh water
and a myriad of other services for all life on Earth. In addition, human communities need the
knowledge and tools to effectively adapt to the impacts of climate change
Our solution: Protection and sustainable management of natural ecosystems
Protecting the Earth's ecosystems can yield immediate, cost-effective climate change
solutions that will be forever lost if we do not take immediate action.
For example, the burning and clearing of tropical forests is a major – though often
unrecognized – source of greenhouse gas emissions. It accounts for roughly 16 percent of
total global emissions, more than all of the world's cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes
combined. It is now generally recognized that it will be impossible to achieve any of the
needed targets for mitigating climate change without significantly curbing the clearing and
burning of tropical forests. In fact, reducing global deforestation by 50 percent by 2020 offers
nearly one-third of the cost-effective, technologically available options to meet 450 ppm
stabilization targets.
In addition, intact forests and other natural ecosystems – including wetlands, peatlands, coral
reefs and mangroves – also reduce the risk of catastrophic impacts like floods and droughts,
contribute to food and freshwater security for both rural and urban communities, allow for
species migration and ecological adaptation, and support the livelihoods of indigenous and
local communities. Maintaining these ecosystems will ensure that humans and other species
can remain as resilient as possible to the impacts of climate change.

8. CONCLUSSION
Disasters Major Events in 21st Century

9. World Disasters, 21st Century Event Map
World Disasters, 21st Century Timeline
World Disasters, 21st Century Map Legend
Event of the Century Significant Event Other Event
Aviation Disasters Earthquake Fire Rescue Environmental
Space Disasters Health Disasters Weather Related Volcano Flood
Sea Disasters Stampede Mine Accident Landslide Explosion
Refugees Structure Collapse Avalanche Animal

10. Tsunami hits Japan: The most devastating natural
disasters of the 21st century
If it seems like there's a new natural disaster claiming the lives of thousands of people every
few months, it's because it's true. Since 2000, more than 20 weather-related catastrophes have
occurred, devastating countries such as Haiti, Indonesia, China, and the United States. From
earthquakes to hurricanes, mudslides to volcanic eruptions, take a look at the most horrific
natural disasters of the 21st Century ...
2011 Japanese Earthquake
A 8.9 magnitude earthquake slammed Japan's northeastern coast, unleashing a 33-foot
tsunami on March 11. Earthquake-triggered tsunamis have spread through the waters from
Japan to Hawaii and California.
Above, houses are shown in flame while the Natori river floods over the surrounding area by
tsunami tidal waves in Natori city, Miyagi Prefecture on March 11, 2011.
‗‗A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination‘‘
By: hashim sheikh abdinoor, University of Nairobi