Putting The BP Oil Spill Into Context: A Governance Challenge

Mike Magee MD

Next week, at the direction of the Commissioner of Health and Human Services, the Institute of Medicine will be convening a two day conference to assess the human health effects of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (1) After listening to all the experts, I’ll be moderating a panel exploring how best to communicate the findings to the general public. In complex communication challenges such as these words and images matter a great deal. But so does context. What is the context for this catastrophe?

Until the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, no natural disaster in our lifetime had generated more powerful and destructive images than did the tsunami that struck Asia and Africa in December of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in 2005. (2) All three of these cases well illustrate both the power of water and the vulnerability of coastal and river basin populations in the face of weak regulations and poor policy on the one hand and the absence of early warning and disaster preparation and response capability on the other. (CONTINUE…)