C. Emdad Haque - Böcker

From the Asian tsunami of 2004 to hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, our century has been fraught with catastrophic natural disasters. Disaster Risk and Vulnerability assesses the human toll and economic losses of natural disasters and reasserts the importance of human collaboration and organization in disaster management. In most cases, policy makers, planners, managers, and regulators who implement disaster risk reduction response planning and management strategies remain detached from local conditions, failing to address them effectively. Presenting case studies from Asia and North America, as well as a broad range of approaches to community mobilization and partnership development, contributors show that local communities, all levels of government, and non-governmental organizations must work collectively in order to reduce the harm caused by disasters. Despite unprecedented progress in science and technology and governments' continued efforts in disaster risk reduction, socioeconomic losses due to environmental disasters continue to rise. Disaster Risk and Vulnerability provides knowledge and information that will benefit anyone working in the fields of environment, disasters, and community mobilization in an effort to reverse this trend.

For these and other reasons the ?ndings reported in this volume will be of large signi?cance as future policy decisions are made in a wide variety of natural and social environments. GILBERT F. WHITE Professor Emeritus Geography and Institute of Behavioral Science University of Colorado, Colorado, USA [2] C Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change (2005) 10: 335–353 Springer 2005 ADAPTATION OPTIONS STRATEGIES FOR HAZARDS AND VULNERABILITY MITIGATION: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE 1,? 2 C. EMDAD HAQUE and IAN BURTON 1 Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 2 Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ? ( Author for correspondense: Tel: 204-474-8375; Fax: 204-261-0038; E-mail: haquece@ms. umanitoba. ca) (Received 15 May 2004; accepted in ?nal form 17 July 2004) Abstract. The broad objective of this special issue of Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change is to address some of the gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the policies, programs, and measures that might be applied to natural hazards and their impacts in an era of climate change. Given the global impacts of climate change and world-wide pattern of increasing losses from natural hazards we necessarily adopt an international perspective. The speci?c goals of the special issue are to: (a) encompass experiential aspects, emphasizing current practice of mitigation and its associated measures, and their results; and (b) explore primary or root causes of alarming shifts in human and economic costs of environmental extremes.