Lessons from Two Anthropogenic Environmental Disasters in Contemporary Japanese History- Crimson Publishers

Lessons from Two Anthropogenic Environmental Disasters in Contemporary Japanese History- Crimson Publishers

An environmental disaster is a catastrophic event caused by human activity that results in serious effects on ecosystems, agriculture, the economy and human health. In most cases environmental disasters are caused by human error, accident, lack of knowledge and foresight. To distinguish them from naturally occurring disasters, environmental disaster can be termed anthropogenic or man-made environmental disaster.

Mining and industrial pollution have been the cause of so many environmental disasters. One example of the worst environmental disasters, the Bhopal disaster was a gas leak incident on the night of 2-3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India [1,2]. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, which is highly toxic. The estimation of death toll varied from 3,787 to 8000. Another example is Ok Tedi mine [3]. It discharged about two billion tons of untreated mining waste into the Ok Tedi river and the Fly river in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea between 1984 and 2013. The lives of 50,000 people had been disrupted. Two representative environmental disasters in modern Japanese history may be chosen as (1) Ashio Copper Mine pollution; (2) Minamata disease. Although they have been studied extensively [4], some lessons from the two cases are still missing in the literature. The objective of this paper is to highlight some view angles that have been very much neglected so far.

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