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Vulnerability, refers to the state of being exposed to risk factors or hazards that can harm an individual mentally
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Vulnerability, refers to the state of being exposed to risk factors or hazards that can harm an individual mentally, physically or even emotionally. The vulnerability of a people to the various types of hazards and especially the natural hazards depends on the geographical location where the people reside, the type of natural resources used by the people as well as the type of resources the people are expected to cope-up with during their time of residence in the area. The natural hazards are often mediated by institutional structures, and in general, the increased economic activities do not necessarily reduce the vulnerability to a hazard as well as its impacts. There are two major models of vulnerability that are used to provide insight into the natural hazards, and they include the hazard of a place model and the pressure and release (PAR) models.
The hazard of a place model is one of the vulnerability models that are aimed to provide insight into the vulnerability of people as a result of exposure to natural hazards. The vulnerability model was designed by Cutter 1996, and the model is designed to provide useful insights into the perception of vulnerability in a disaster situation. Cutter considers the vulnerability of a place as a combination of social vulnerability factors that include the demographic characteristics, the biophysical vulnerability factors such as the hazard exposure in a particular geographical location as well as the risk perception. Various elements have been brought up in the model hazard of a place that is essential for the development of the hazard of a place and these elements include; risk, mitigation, hazard potential, geographic contexts such as elevation and proximity, the social fabric such as experience, perception, and the built environment. Other elements in the hazard of a place vulnerability model include biophysical vulnerability, social vulnerability, and the place vulnerability.
From the hazard of a place model, a risk is defined as the probability of a hazard event to occur, while mitigation refers to the measures that are aimed to reduce the occurrence of the risk or its impacts. A hazard potential if created by the existence of both the risk and mitigation, and such hazard potential passes through the geographic context that include the location, proximity and elevation and the various types of social fabrics that include risk perception, socio-economic factors, the built environment and resiliency which have the potential to either moderate or enhance the hazard potential. Social vulnerability, as well as the biophysical vulnerability, are both in conjunction responsible for the development of the overall vulnerability of a place. The hazard of a place model focuses on the geographical location, depicting the overall conditions and at the same time presenting the various elements that contribute to the vulnerability of a particular geographic location.
On the other hand, the pressure and release model perceives the risk-hazard approach, defining risk as a product that is generated by the interaction of a hazard and vulnerability. The model as well claims that the occurrence of a disaster is mainly based on the vulnerable population’s exposure to a hazard. Besides, the model considers hazard as a physically driven problem to which can be mitigated through the eradication of the root causes of vulnerability that include the political, demographic as well as the economic processes. The root cause of vulnerability is said to affect the allocation as well as the distribution of resources among the various groups. The dynamic pressure transforms the political and economic process in a local situation such as migration. The resultant product of the root causes of vulnerability and the dynamic pressure is the unsafe condition that is defined and expressed in time and space. The occurrence of a disaster, therefore, depends on the physical exposure to the natural hazards on one side while on the other side the interaction with the unsafe conditions. According to the authors of the model, they attributed and argued that a hazard is most of the time a physically produced problem that can be mitigated through the elimination of the root causes of vulnerability.
The two models of vulnerability are similar in some aspects in that they are all triggered by natural hazards. The natural hazards such as the unsafe conditions and the place of residence can be attributed as being the main point of argument for both of the models. Another similarity that occurs in the two models is that they both attribute a certain cause of the primary cause of the hazard. In the first model hazard of a place model, there are elements which are responsible for the development or acceleration of vulnerability, while on the second model, the pressure and release model, there are as well the root causes of vulnerability that for this include the processes that alter the allocation and distribution resources making the groups vulnerable. Geographical location as well as a common aspect in the two models as they try to provide an insight on the vulnerability of a population and therefore, the two models have a common base for their arguments differing on the course of action that leads to vulnerability.
Human factors are considered the greatest determinants of vulnerability. The severity of a disaster depends on the physical nature as well as other social nature of the human populations that are affected by the event (Shi & Stevens, 2010). Wealth is one of the risk factors that affect vulnerability; poor people are more vulnerable to disasters as they are unable to afford the basic needs and other infrastructures that are necessary to withstand the extreme events making them more vulnerable. Education, on the other hand, affects vulnerability to hazards in that the less educated individuals are not aware of the ways to cope, avoid or reduce the impacts of the disaster unlike the educated. Governance as well contributes to the vulnerability of a population to hazards, and this is because the governments can advance their policies aimed at the reduction of vulnerability through establishing agencies, education programs as well as the economic development to reduce poverty. Technology is another determinant to vulnerability as they can forecast extreme events, withstand the impacts and as well recover from the disaster. Governance, education and wealth are closely related to technology and therefore work together. Another risk factor is age, children are more vulnerable to disasters than the elderly and this can be attributed to the less physical strength to survive disasters making them susceptible to diseases. Gender, on the other hand, is a risk factor to vulnerability in that women are more vulnerable to natural disaster than men, and this can be attributed to sexism in the society making women be more poor, politically marginalized and less educated. Women are therefore less mobile and less experienced to cope with disasters.
Shi and Stevens assert that a National focus should be placed on vulnerable populations as vulnerability is primarily a social issue (Shi & Stevens, 2010). Vulnerability being a social issue is created through the social forces and resolved as well through the social means as opposed to the individual means. Vulnerability does not reflect personal deficiencies but rather the structural social forces over which most of the people have less or no control at all. The authors argue a point that is made with the increasing frequency in the field of public health that the effective reduction of the vulnerability, as well as the mitigation of the consequences, requires broader health and social policies to which address the societal forces as well as the ecological context of health. Vulnerability being a social matter and as well calling for a social resolution implies that the government which is responsible for the welfare of its people should take measures and therefore shift its focus on solving the social problems such as poverty and education as these are jointly needed to solve the problems. I, therefore, agree with the authors that a national focus should be placed on the vulnerable populations as solving the social problems will reduce the risk of vulnerability to natural hazards.
Reference
Shi, L., & Stevens, G. D. (2010). Vulnerable populations in the United States (Vol. 23). John Wiley & Sons.
Unemployment has become a global issue and to which have left most of the youth unemployed.
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Unemployment has become a global issue and to which have left most of the youth unemployed. Most of the countries have less than 30 percent of the youths being employed either to the white color jobs and the technical jobs. Due to this, there has been a large number of idle individuals in the streets roaming to find jobs to no avail. The high rate of unemployment can be attributed to various reasons that include over-dependence on technology, lack of the necessary skills as well as high population growth (Salami, 2013). Due to this, the high rate of unemployment has resulted in various negative impacts that include high crime rates, poverty, overdependence on foreign aid as well as reduced quality of life.
Developing and developed countries have adopted the use of technology in their countries. The use of technology has replaced the use of human labor in the production process for such jobs such as manufacturing, running errands as well as farming (Frey & Osborne, 2017). The reason behind it is that the companies are in dire need to make huge profits as the adoption of technology reduces the cost of production. Large machinery such as the combined harvesters can replace almost 100 employees in a wheat farm, and this relieves the hiring firm extra financial burden that is used in paying the employees.
Skills are the essential qualifications for a job. Most of the people including the youth lack the essential qualifications and thus lack the necessary experience that is needed for them to be hired in the firms that they wish to work, thereby end up being jobless (Jentsch, 2017). Education equips a person with the relevant skills, and this means that most of the unemployed people are not well educated. As the years progress, the number of people continue to increase and thus the population growth is accelerated. High population growth brings about competition for jobs as the jobs in the market are far much less than the number of people seeking employment. High population growth, therefore, depletes the number of available jobs and renders many more jobless.
The consequences of unemployment are dreadful. High crime rates is one of the consequences of unemployment (Nichols et al. 2013). After a large number of people have been rendered jobless, they have nothing else to do and nowhere to go, and this makes them idle. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop as the unemployed individual may do anything as they are in dire need for money. The people result in engaging in petty crimes eventually graduating to robbery with violence. Increased crime also leads to increased insecurity in a nation. Poverty is another consequence of unemployment. The unemployed personnel live below the poverty line, earning below a dollar in a day.
Low income means that the people are unable to acquire basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter and this increases the number of poor people. Increased poverty in a nation reduces the quality of life in that the people are unable to seek for quality medical attention as they are unable to afford. Quality medicine is a dream, and this means that even life expectancy decreases. Due to the inability to continuously acquire basic needs, the unemployed people rely heavily on foreign aid. The country is unable to feed its population and therefore depends on foreign donors to bring aid to help the people.
Unemployment can be a dangerous problem if not addressed and therefore measures need to be put in place to ensure the rate of unemployment has been reduced. Some of such measures include increasing the number of opportunities parallel to the increasing population, reducing dependence in technology to increase the hiring of human personnel to replace the machines (Maxton & Randers, 2016). Education can be used to increase the effectiveness of hiring as the potential employees will be equipped with the necessary skills and experience needed in job hiring.
References
Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2017). The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?. Technological forecasting and social change, 114, 254-280.
Jentsch, B. (2017). Experience of rural youth in the ‘Risk society’: transitions from education to the labour market. In Young people in rural areas of Europe (pp. 248-279). Routledge.
Maxton, G., & Randers, J. (2016). Reinventing prosperity: Managing economic growth to reduce unemployment, inequality and climate change. Greystone books.
Nichols, A., Mitchell, J., & Lindner, S. (2013). Consequences of long-term unemployment. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.
Salami, C. G. E. (2013). Youth unemployment in Nigeria: A time for creative intervention. International Journal of Business and Marketing Management, 1(2), 18-26.
True Democracy refers to system through which the citizens elect their political leaders in free and fair elections (Stoker,
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True Democracy refers to system through which the citizens elect their political leaders in free and fair elections (Stoker, 2016). The United States does not have a true democracy since the elected representatives make the government’s decisions instead of the people themselves which means that it functions as a representative democracy. Turnout is another significant obstacle in hindering democracy in the US, especially with the poor people who are not able to avail themselves on the voting day. Besides, the candidate with the most votes and popularity loses since they nominate representatives body, the Electoral College, and to who are responsible for choosing a presidential candidate on behalf of the voters. These factors contribute to the fact that there is no true democratic system in the United States since it is only available in the books.
The representatives who are firstly elected by the people for the people tend to make decisions first without discussing and considering the people’s views and decisions. In the US, this form of electing government representatives is considered as reciprocity between the representatives and voters (Drazen & Ozbay, 2016). Therefore, this is not a true democracy since it implies that the voters are eligible to determine their representatives but those representatives decide who should and most significantly, who cannot vote in the next elections. They do this by voter suppression, and this is very easy for politicians to enforce laws and practices that make voting difficult for some people. For example, Republicans have favored the rule that was passed by the former Republican president George W Bush in 2002 on strict voters ID laws named, “Help America Vote Act” which has highly discouraged the minority people, the elderly and the poor people in the society who are democratic voters (Kropf, 2016). The features do not entail in the democratic characteristics.
The other factor that does not encourage true democracy in the US is the turnout of voters during voting, and this is not an easy task for most especially poor people who cannot afford to take time off work or find transportation to the voting polls (Highton, 2017). They have to work, and this does not make them part of the electoral process and most votes are considered spoilt votes. Therefore, it leads to the ones who were to win-lose instead of winning despite having the most popularity amongst the people. For example, according to the PEW Research Centre, only 55.7% of voters in the USA were able to vote in the 2016 presidential election. This issue of voters’ turnout should be addressed seriously in the attempt to achieve true democracy.
In 2016 elections, Donald Trump became a victor in the election despite him losing the popular vote to his main opponent Hillary Clinton who attained almost three million votes. The United States electoral system do not meet the elementary conditioning (Jürgen, 2017). People should elect representatives by some kind of principle of majority voting meaning that the candidates who attain the majority of all votes wins. The oversimplified but confusing truth is that the people of United States do not elect their president directly but rather choose members of a body who thereafter elect a an eligible candidate for the presidential position on behalf of the voters.
In conclusion, by these examples and just a few to mention reasons, it is clear that the great United States of America is not genuinely democratic since true democracy is met and addressed in all factors and to the satisfaction of the people. The elected representatives should be elected for the people by the people and not people’s views should not be suppressed instead. The 2016 elections brought this issue to light, and this system was classified as flawed, and the need for amendments is high.
Reference
Drazen, A., & Ozbay, E. (2016). Does’ Being Chosen’to Lead Induce Non-Selfish Behavior? Experimental Evidence on Reciprocity.
Highton, B. (2017). Voter identification laws and turnout in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 20, 149-167.
Jürgen, H. (2017). Constitutional democracy: a paradoxical union of contradictory principles?. In Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Rights (pp. 29-44). Routledge.
Kropf, M. E. (2016). The Federal Part of the Institution. In Institutions and the Right to Vote in America (pp. 45-63). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Stoker, G. (2016). Why politics matters: Making democracy work. Macmillan International Higher Education.