Approaches to the environmental management of disasters in mountainous areas of China

SUMMARY

Mountain disaster occurrence has a close relationship with human activities. It is the human activity that aggravates the mountain disasters and environment deterioration. Therefore, during the process of social and economic development, regulating human behaviour, reasonably utilizing and protecting natural resources and environment by means of controlling the human approach, i.e. industrial economy, regional economy allocation, river basin economy, scientific technology and population resettlement, are important approaches to the prevention and management of mountain disasters. The analysis of several cases in China shows that effective combination of civil engineering measures, bioengineering measures and human behaviour could play an important role in ensuring mountain disaster prevention and environmental sustainable develop ment. However, in the long run, prevention of mountain disasters and environmental deterioration is just regulating management of the human effect and human behaviour, but not civil engineering and bio-engineering measures. In 1994, the State Council, China, approved ‘China 21st Agenda’, that regarded disaster prevention and mitigation as important national policies with the goals of ensuring country, society, economy development, and confirmed decreasing nature human disaster losses as the total aim and action plan of country disaster prevention and mitigation management.

Key words:

• Mountain disaster
• human approach
• China
• disaster prevention and mitigation
• disaster management