ABSTRACT

The causes and consequences of human-induced environmental risk are not, as Norberg-Bohm and colleagues make clear in chapter 2, evenly distributed over the earth: they converge in certain regions and places where their impacts may threaten the long-term or even the short-term sustainability of human—environment relationships. Global environment risk, in short, is intrinsically geographical. International agencies, scholars, and the popular press have widely recognized this fact: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 1998) of the United Nations, for example, identifies “acute food shortages” on the basis of “required and/or emergency food assistance;” Russian geographers over time have referred to “red data maps” that show the locations of “critical environmental situations” (Mather and Sdasyuk 1991: 159–175, 224); and publications such as the National Geographic Society's map of “environmentally endangered areas” have heightened public awareness (NGS 1989). Lonergan (1998) uses a broad array of indicators, as reviewed in chapter 1, to create an index of vulnerability, allowing him to map countries vulnerable to environmental stress.