Weather-related disasters that include storms, drought, and floods have taken place almost daily in the last decade – with Asian countries being hit the hardest, according to a new United Nations report.
According to the U.N. report “The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters” released Nov. 23, 90 percent of major disasters over the past 20 years have been due to 6,457 recorded weather-related events. Most of these calamities happened in the United States, China, India, Philippines, and Indonesia.
Since the first climate change conference or COP1 held in 1995, over 600,000 had been killed and 4.1 billion had been injured or displaced, added the analysis compiled by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.
UNISDR head Margareta Wahlström said weather and climate remain the major drivers of disaster risk.
“In the long term, an agreement in Paris at COP21 on reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be a significant contribution to reducing damage and loss from disasters which are partly driven by a warming globe and rising sea levels,” she said.
Wahlström highlighted the ongoing need to manage risks and avoid exposing people and infrastructure to natural hazards in places inapt for human settlement.
Based on UNISDR estimates, the actual economic losses from disasters could lie between $250 billion and $300 billion every year – with data gaps because only 35 percent of records offer economic data.
Between 2005 and 2014, 335 weather disasters were recorded, a 14 percent rise from 1995 to 2004 and almost double the level from 1985 to 1995. Asia took a huge chunk of disaster impacts, including 332,000 lives lost and 3.7 billion individuals affected.
Floods were 47 percent of all disasters from 1995 to 2015, killing 157,000 and afflicting 2.3 billion. Storms were the deadliest and accounted for 40 percent of all deaths. Looking closer, the 89 percent of the death toll due to storms came from lower-income nations.
Droughts savaged Africa more than any other area, including 77 occurrences in East Africa alone.
The report sourced from a database defining something as a disaster if 10 or more are killed, 100 or more are affected, there are calls for international aid, and a state of emergency is declared.
“We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle other risk drivers such as unplanned urban development, environmental degradation and gaps in early warnings,” warned CRED Head, Professor Debarati Guha-Sapir, citing climate change and weather events as threats in achieving sustainable goals to end poverty.
After a series of coordinated attacks last week, Paris is preparing for COP 21, the climate change conference that would likely be the largest summit held outside the U.N. headquarters in New York. The host country is also pushing for “legal force” in the agreement.
The United States remains firm about not inscribing, through an international treaty, its carbon emissions reduction target of 26 to 28 percent from its 2005 levels by the year 2025.
Photo: Mohri UN-CECAR | Flickr
