The 1987 nuclear power referendum was a major political victory for the Italian environmental movement. In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, it led to a moratorium on building nuclear plants in Italy.
Today, the Storm Flood of 1962 forms an integral part of local and national memory culture. Public commemoration events, monuments, and media coverage assure that the disaster is not forgotten.
Horace Herring explores the history of nuclear energy and its reception shortly after a Tsunami hit the North East coast of Japan in March 2011, causing a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima One nuclear power plant.
Research on climatic variations in the sixteenth century has stressed the exceptionality of extreme events, but the case of the lower Po basin, where lack of instrumental data renders the concept of exceptionality complex and relative, shows that this is not necessarily valid.
This essay explores the progression of theoretical models and empirical research linked to the understanding of the capacity of forested systems to regulate the hydrological regimes of a given area.
As the British entered the Mizo hills (part of the Indo-Burmese range of hills, then known as the Lushai hills) to chase the headhunting tribal raiders and try to gain control over them by securing a foothold in the heart of the hills at Aizawl, they witnessed an amazing ecological phenomenon: a severe famine apparently caused by rats.
This paper examines the social history of Kalahandi in western Orissa over the 1800–1950 period, in an attempt to explore the roots of the famine which haunts the region even today.
The author uses a critical realist perspective to investigate relations between social constructions and the dynamics of nature.
By re-visiting the sources for the 1348 earthquake following the studies of Borst (1981) and Hammerl (1992) and looking at aspects of its perception, management and explanation, this article calls into question the supposed ‘medieval’ equation of natural disaster and divine punishment.
Different interpretations of the biblical deluge give us an idea of various modes of perceptions of natural disasters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In analysing these interpretations we learn much about early modern European ways of thinking about nature, mankind and the relationship between both.
