GEO Brasil - UNEP

c) Biological: dengue, yellow fever, malaria, Chagas’
disease, cholera, salmonellae, shigelloses, food
poisoning, measles, tuberculosis, meningitis, hepatitis
B and C viruses, acquired immune deficiency
syndrome and other
Mixed Disasters can be related to:
d) External earth geodynamics: ozone layer depletion
belts, intensification of the greenhouse effect, acid rain
and increased air pollution, due to the temperature
gradient inversion in the atmospheric layers
e) Internal earth geodynamics: induced seismicity,
desertification and soil salinisation
The economic crisis that struck the country, specially from
the 70s on, helped generating highly negative reflexes on
the process of social development and the communities’
security against disasters Followed by high unemployment
rates, speculation, famine, malnutrition, uncontrolled
migration, reduced patterns of social well-being, regional
inequities, lack of urban infrastructure and insufficient
fundamental services, the crisis brought about an
atmosphere of uncertainty, causing human disasters related
to urban violence and social conflicts, contributing
significantly to an increased social debt It also led to an
increase in belts of extreme poverty in urban centres, which
affected the country’s general development, having
repercussions such as economic stagnation, reduced tax
revenues and increased cost of living
the state of the environment in Brazil
Since most disasters can cause human, material and
environmental damages, there is no sense in classing them
based on the consequences This way, the environmental
disasters would encompass almost every disaster
2 Human Actions and the Disasters
In Brazil, there has been an increasingly higher number of
disasters Consequently, the enormous damages and losses
have been reflecting on the national development, specially
in the Northeast, stricken by successive droughts and
floods
According to the Brazilian Doctrine of Civil Defence, disaster
is the result of natural or man-caused adverse events on a
vulnerable ecosystem, causing human, material and
environmental damages and subsequent economic and
social losses Therefore, the intensity of a disaster depends
on the interaction between the magnitude of the adverse
event and the vulnerability of the receiving system, and it is
quantified by reason of the characterised damages and
losses Epidemiological studies show that, in the last
century, natural disasters produced damages far superior
than those caused by war, specially in Brazil, a country with
no warlike history
The immediatist and antientropic economic development
which took place in a large number of industrial districts
and the disorganised city growth are two factors that
strongly contributed to the environmental deterioration and
aggravation of the vulnerability of human ecosystems
Because of the social segregation resulted in certain
countries and social classes, the underprivileged – culturally,
socially and economically – suffer the impacts of the
disasters more intensely
Retrospectively, we can see that after many decades of
effort, there were few advances achieved in reducing the
vulnerability of the Brazilian society to disasters, even those
with a cyclic nature Response actions to the disasters and
in terms of rebuilding demand a great sum of money, and
they might consume resources that could be allocated to
development programmes
3 Brazil and Civil Defence Governmental
Actions
in Brazil, the governmental organisation of civil defence
action was created for the protection of the population at
risk of bombings and armed conflicts during the World War
II, when the Brazilian government joined the Anglo-Soviet
Alliance From this moment on, the agencies at the three
government levels – federal, state and municipal – have
gone through various changes and associations
Some large-scale disasters were directly related to the
advances of the civil defence organisation in the states
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