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10/13/2020 – by the Climate Center
Extreme weather events have increased dramatically and now dominate the disaster landscape in the 21st century, according to a UN report released today to coincide with the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Floods and storms were the most frequent events, according to The human cost of disasters 2000-2019, and the last 20 years saw major floods more than doubled from 1,389 to 3,254, while storms grew from 1,457 to 2,034.
Overall, climate-related disasters increased from 3,656 in 1980-1999 to 6,681 in 2000-2019, an increase of 83%.
There were 7,348 “major disasters on record” in the two decades to last year that claimed 1.23 million lives, affected more than 4 billion people, many of them more than once, and caused losses of nearly 3 billion. dollars worldwide, a sharp increase over the past 20 years.
‘The odds are against us
when we don’t act on science and
early warnings to invest in prevention,
adaptation and risk reduction ‘
There has also been an increase in seismic events, primarily earthquakes and tsunamis, which have also killed more people than any of the other natural hazards examined in the report, which uses data from the University of California’s Emergency Events Database. Leuven of Belgium.
“Disaster management agencies, civil protection departments, fire departments, public health authorities, the Red Cross and Red Crescent and many NGOs are fighting an uphill battle against a growing tide of phenomena. extreme weather, ”he said Mommy Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“More lives are being saved, but more people are affected by the growing climate emergency. Disaster risk is becoming systemic with one event overlapping and influencing another in ways that are testing our resilience to the limit.
“The odds are against us when we do not act on the basis of science and early warnings to invest in prevention, adaptation to climate change and disaster risk reduction.
Ms. Mizutori described the report as a reminder to states of their commitment to strengthen disaster risk governance and to have strategies for disaster risk reduction by 2020 under the Sendai Framework; so far 93 countries had met this objective.
Also to mark International DRR Day, the International Federation’s African Climate Scholarship Program today issued a video presentation of a set of proverbs highlighting traditional wisdom about climate and the environment.
The International Federation itself 2020 World Disaster Report focuses on the humanitarian impacts of climate change and will be published later this year.
‘Common thread’
Welcoming today’s UN report, Climate Center Director Maarten van Aalst said: “Risk reduction is critical and requires leadership from all of us, on many fronts.
“The UN is absolutely right to draw attention to the wide variety of agencies now fighting essentially the same ‘uphill battle’, from the fire services in California to the Red Crescent volunteers in the Horn of Africa.
“That common thread, of course, is climate change, which science has clearly shown is increasing the risk and impact of disasters, and here are the numbers to take home.”
In total, during the last two decades there were 3,068 disasters in Asia, followed by 1,756 in America and 1,192 in Africa; eight of the ten countries most affected by disasters are in Asia.
The top five in descending order are China, the United States, India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all with “large and heterogeneous land masses and relatively high population densities in risk areas,” a UN press release said.
The deadliest event was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, followed by the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti in the middle of the night, killing some 222,000 people and leaving millions homeless.
Meanwhile, an analysis conducted last month by the International Federation and the Climate Center showed that more than 50 million people around the world have been affected by a combination of floods, droughts or storms and Covid-19.
It found that the pandemic was increasing the needs of people experiencing weather-related disasters, compounding the vulnerabilities they face and hampering their recovery.
How the UN report was published today Secretary General of the International Federation, Jagan Chapagain (in the center, facing the camera) was on mission in Sudan, where floods have created a major emergency and what he described as “immense needs.” After meeting with the Secretary General of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, Afaf Ahmed Yahya, he said that the National Society was “providing critical assistance to flood-affected communities with the support of the International Federation,” which last month past threw a emergency appeal for 12 million Swiss francs after a cash allocation of almost half a million Swiss francs. (Photo: SRCS via IFRC)
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