Events

Past Event

Worldwide Lessons from the La Soufrière Eruption on St. Vincent

April 14, 2021
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
America/New_York
Online

Sustain What?  Worldwide Lessons from the La Soufrière Eruption on St. Vincent

At an international conference on risk communication in 2018, Renato U. Solidum, a leading disaster risk official in the Philippines, was asked how he warns communities in volcano danger zones about the dangers they face. He said he tells them, simply, “The volcano owns the land.”

https://twitter.com/Revkin/status/997191769908568065?s=20

Around the world tens of millions of people live in such situations, with the latest example erupting, literally, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the eastern Caribbean. A mass evacuation is still under way, water supplies are disrupted.

[See the latest via Relief Web: https://reliefweb.int/country/vct]

In this special episode of the Earth Institute Sustain What webcast, longtime risk-focused journalist Andy Revkin and top experts explore the details of this unfolding disaster, in which 20,000 dislocated people are unlikely ever to return to their homes, along with wider lessons applicable anywhere people face this profound, uncertain threat.

Deborah Brosnan, independent sustainability and disaster-risk consultant and scientist http://www.deborahbrosnan.com/

Jenni Barclay, volcanologist and community-preparedness expert at the University of East Anglia https://people.uea.ac.uk/j_barclay

Einat Lev, volcanologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
https://einatlev.wixsite.com/einatlev

A possible drop-in from scientists on the ground in St. Vincent and Henry Fountain, a longtime New York Times reporter focused on geological hazards.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/henry-fountain

Send feedback and ideas for future episodes:
http://j.mp/sustainwhatfeedback

Contact Information

Andy Revkin