Recent trends on environmental risks geographic analysis

Abstract

This paper examines some of the more recent contributions of Angloamerican Geography to the study of natural hazards. After rewieving briefly the "human ecology" and "political economy" schools, the text deals with other approaches prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s such as the contextual and meso-scalar views and, more recently, the political ecology and the hybrid views. In the second part, the article focuses on the concept of vulnerability and its multiplicity of meanings in order to show a possible venue for the convergence of previously irreconcilable theoretical approaches. The crux of a renewed interpretation of vulnerability lies in recognizing that this concept is much more than simple physical exposure to the hazard, and that social, political, economic and demographic conditions influence human vulnerability as much if not more than the natural agent triggering the hazard process. Finally, the paper presents three case studies that use this renewed interpretation of vulnerability.