Yesterday’s Euronews dedicated an article to the Sicilian landslide which, by now, killed 26 people. The landslide occurred in the South-East part of the island, nearby Messina and in the hilly areas surrounding it. A torrential rain swept away entire roads and buildings; this time killing residents besides destroying their houses, as it already happened in 2007 and periodically before.
The area of the landslide is considered one of the most hydro-geological risky areas of the already quite fragile Italian peninsula, including her islands. And so Euronews, together with the rest of the international and Italian national media, is giving great relevance to the anger (and sometimes desperation) of the villagers for having been left living in houses constructed on a soil well known for being everything but firm. Keeping this – surely extreme, though meaningful - example of the Sicilian disaster in mind, I would like to reflect one of the crucial points at issue here: can a disaster be entirely natural? More precisely, is it possible to draw a precise line between the natural and “unnatural” causes leading to the sudden loss of human lives?
This question is interesting because, first of all, it denounces the vagueness of the concepts of cause and consequences of hazardous events. These two concepts are often confused together with the exact individualization of the actual hazardous event (is it the very heavy rain? Is it the landslide? or is it the summa of the two plus the bad conditions of the houses …?) along the chain of events preceding a disaster. In more simple words, whereas the Sicilian landslide has surely natural causes (the extraordinarily heavy rain), its consequences were dramatically enhanced by something which is entirely “technological”: the presence of unsafe houses on an unsafe soil. Which is the primary cause of the loss of human lives then – the heavy rain or the unsafe houses? Or is it rather the interaction between the two, considering that the two factors alone would have not been a sufficient condition for leading to such heavy consequences?
These considerations may appear banal – differently, I think they’re not, as depending on the reply we’ll end up with a complete different perception of the possible responsibilities of the actors involved in the tragedy. On a more theoretical ground, they challenge the ordinary opposition “natural vs. technological” which you would find in all disaster prevention handbooks; but fore and foremost, they challenge the concept of causes and consequences of unwanted events as either solely natural, either solely technological. In so doing - which is everything but banal - they question the sharp distinction between “actions of God” and “failure of humans”. Why should this be interesting from an ethical perspective is very simple: if we can’t draw a sharp line between the natural and technological nature of the scenarios we wish to avoid, how can we draw a sharp line between fate and liability?
In the Sicilian case, the Italian media have scrupulously reported all the warnings and bans which were given in the past against the construction and/or expansion of settlements in the Messinian hills where the landslide occurred. Unfortunately, abusive constructions are still a reality in these areas the Southern Italy, together with some relaxation of local authorities in taking measures against them promptly and effectively. In 2007, 1.191 demolitions were planned following the then landslide; none of them has been done though (Corriere della Sera, 4th October 2009). At the end of the day, the houses and roads which collapsed under the rain of last weekend should have not, simply, been there.
It is, of course, very easy to individualize some “unnatural” responsibilities here. However, the more fundamental problem is whether it is ever possible to totally exclude them. In my opinion, a good trajectory for investigating in this direction is provided by Ale and his vision of the man-environment-technology (MET) system as an inseparable system within which the three components of humans, nature and technology are interconnected and interdependent elements (Ale 2006). Taking this perspective, it becomes more difficult to classify unwanted events in the ordinary natural vs. technological categories without loosing an important interpretational instrument: the interdependency among the mentioned three factors. This - let’s say - “holistic” interpretation of the system within which man, technology and nature interact is very relevant to the current global environmental debate (beside, unfortunately, to the Sicilians). Millions of people live in areas which, according to many, may be flooded if climate change keeps worsening; but climate change keeps worsening because of the influence on climate of technological activities, which (it could be claimed) keep being unsustainable only and exclusively because of a human choice.
At the end of the day, once the next devastating typhoon will sweep away kilometers of coastal zones and entire villages with it, would we again look at the sky blaming nature (while absolving ourselves through the rhetoric of “uncertainty"), or would we finally accept that the distinction between nature and our acting into it (Arendt, reported by Smith 2006) is just no longer working?
on March 17, 2010
Sometimes when such events occur we tend to blame nature.Earlier we tended to put all blame on nature and today we tend to also blame technology. But there is a third dimension that of human folly, which is neither natural nor technological, but more by ignorance and in some cases by choice and in few others fed by greed. Those that built their houses on such slopes either didnot have the tech data that these places were unsafe or didnot have the wherewithal to build it anyplace else plus those who permitted such constructions had greed to the fore. So where would one place the ethical question of cause and consequence on a scale??