Earthquakes in the face of Climate Change: how are those important aspects of life worsened in the event of an earthquake due to climate change?

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon with increasing effects on the natural ecosystem and urban habitats. Earthquakes are naturally occurring disasters with substantial effects on the same aspects of life. Extensive research has been conducted into both subjects and the effects, response, and recovery from these disasters. However, little research has been conducted relating these two phenomena together and their consequential effect on each other. In this paper, an exploration into how the worsening effects of climate change have implicated the effects of earthquakes on key aspects of urban life will be conducted. Calculating a relationship between these two factors can then be used to predict how earthquakes will affect urban living and provide recommendations on how our earthquake response needs to be adapted in the future. In this paper, a comparison will be drawn between the development of two countries in the South Pacific region: New Zealand and Fiji and how climate change has affected these areas which, in turn, will form a relationship with their earthquake measures, for example, frequency, magnitude, and damage. This comparison will be subject to different measures of the nations’ development for example GDP, population density and fatalities.