Compare and contrast the Philippines and Californian hotspots, giving an opinion as to which is most at risk. A hazards hotspot is an area that is exposed to multiple hazards, both tectonic and hydro-meteorological.

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Compare and contrast the Philippines and Californian hotspots, giving an opinion as to which is most at risk.

A hazards hotspot is an area that is exposed to multiple hazards, both tectonic and hydro-meteorological.  Applying the risk equation, that area must also have high vulnerability and low capacity in order to be of the highest risk from hazards.  California and the Philippines are two of the most high-risk countries from multiple hazards, both suffering from hundreds of natural occurrences every year.

California is an MEDC, the 6th largest economy in the world with a GDP of US$65000 per capita.  However, despite the high risk of hazards it is a very desirable place to live and has a population density of 90.48/km2.  This population is growing mainly due to immigration which means that cities such Los Angeles are becoming more vulnerable.  California does have, though, a high capacity to deal with the high hazard risk.  Primarily, they have the money to invest enormously in hospitals, emergency services and high-tech hazard-resistant buildings.  The high economic exposure to hazards doesn’t actually account for very much of the state’s GDP.  Obviously everyone is encouraged to take out hazard insurance and there are plenty of facilities to make that possible.  However, people have become complacent and demand has gone down since no major earthquake has struck since 1994.  

Yet, in terms of vulnerability I can see that the Philippines is more at risk.  The Philippines is a Newly Industrialised Country (NIC) and has low to middle income of US$5000 per capita.  Their economy is mostly dependant on agriculture (because of the rich, fertile soils on the volcanic hills), manufacturing and tourism, which are all at the mercy of natural disasters.  Although it is only a small group of islands, the population is huge at 91 million (over twice the size of California’s) and has an average population density of 306.6/km2.  Most of the population have a very low income and live in the more vulnerable areas along the coast, or farm on volcanic mountains.  Farmers in particular are often reluctant to evacuate their farms in the instance of disaster as they feel they cannot afford to, which unfortunately raises the death toll.  Deforestation in the area has reduced their once densely forested land to just 18.3% of the land cover which has considerable affects on the severity of flooding and landslides.  The government can only spend so much on risk management as there are so many other more pressing matters that must be prioritised.  Governments of poorer countries often have to take risks and as high magnitude hazards are generally quite rare, the Filipino government has to put other problems higher up the list.  However, that is not to say that the government does not see risk management as an important issue.  The Disaster Risk Management Act, 2009 has only recently been past and “is intended to strengthen Philippine disaster management capability by institutionalising the national disaster risk management framework to decrease disaster vulnerability, increase capability for recovery, and enhance over-all resilience to disasters.”

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Both California and the Philippines lie on plate boundaries and therefore both suffer from severe tectonic hazards.  The Philippines lies on the subduction zone of a destructive boundary between the Eurasian and Philippines plate, and therefore is high-risk area for both earthquakes and volcanoes.  The tectonics is very active in this area being a destructive boundary, evidence of which can be seen by the deep Manila Ocean Trench that lies on the west of the islands. There is a very high density of highly destructive composite volcanoes namely, Mt Pinotubo and Mt Taal.  There are many active volcanoes in ...

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