Natural disasters: most Swiss back forced resettlement
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Natural disasters: most Swiss back forced resettlement
The authorities should be allowed to order forced relocations if there is a medium-term risk of a natural event, according to 58% of participants in a survey.
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A survey for Blick found that 39% of respondents thought it was wrong, or somewhat wrong, for the authorities to force people to leave their residence if there is only a medium-term risk. The remaining 3% did not express their opinion on the matter.
A possible forced resettlement in the event of a medium-term risk met with cross-party approval, as shown in a chart that was also published. Supporters of the centrist Liberal Green Party were the most clearly in favour of the authorities having the necessary powers. The proposal met with the least approval among the right-wing Swiss People’s Party supporters, with 50% of them in favour or somewhat in favour.
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Thomas Egger, director of the Swiss Association for Mountain Regions, could not understand why people should be evacuated in the event of a medium-term risk. The mountain population, who have been living there for years, cannot understand this, he told Blick.
The mountain population is more aware of natural hazards, Egger said. “They deal with the danger differently than in the cities, where the problems seem further away,” he said. According to Blick, the majority of the rural and urban population surveyed were in favour of such a relocation.
According to the newspaper, 5,568 people from German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland took part in the survey in August. Blick conducted the survey in collaboration with the Sotomo research institute.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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