Environmental damage: distinguishing human from geophysical causes

Abstract

During the past two decades it has become increasingly common to attribute 'natural' disasters and other damaging environmental events to proximate or underlying causes that are socially produced. Through an examination of three cases, two of them historical, this paper demonstrates that underlying causes within the geophysical domain are also important. Few types of environmental damage or disaster stem from unalloyed human causes or geophysical ones; complex intermixtures are the rule. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.