Land-Use Planning to Minimize Dangers to Citizens and Ecosystems

Abstract

There are hazard events that are caused by people and have an impact on them and their environment, impacts that can be intensified as direct results of human decisions or industrial/manufacturing activities. Many are related to shortcomings in land-use planning likely because the planners were not looking to future changes that could develop from the existing and progressing effects of global warming/climate change. In addition, there can be a lack of foresight on how global warming/climate change will affect growing populations and the need to sustain them at the least with food, water, and shelter. This unconscionable. Of great importance for growing populations is where to encourage or discourage human settlement. Such decisions should consider where to locate industrial facilities so that people and ecosystems would not be affected by their operations with respect to the wastes (emissions, effluents, solids) they would generate and how they would be dealt with as to capture and disposal. Such operations include electricity and heating generating facilities including nuclear facilities, chemical and pharmaceutical plants, mining and ore smelting projects, and agricultural projects including commercial food animal production sites and slaughtered food animal processing plants. The question of how to limit or stop the pollution these and other sources generate, either immediately or over time, was not foremost in the decisions made by early planners.