Extreme disasters on the rise
Pastor Dale Morgan
Extreme disasters on the rise*
NATURAL disasters have become more frequent and their impact more
severe, affecting about 250 million people and costing more than $67
By Sian Powell
August 21, 2007 07:00am
* Extreme natural disasters becoming more frequent
* Impact becoming more severe
* Soaking rains could ease water restrictions
EXTREME natural disasters have become more frequent and their impact
more severe, affecting about 250 million people around the world and
costing more than $67 billion a year.
Nine in 10 people affected by natural disasters and seven in 10 of those
killed by natural disasters since 2000 lived in the APEC region, the UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' Asia and Pacific
regional chief, Terje Skavdal, said.
In an address to an APEC Emergency Management chief executives seminar
in Cairns, Mr Skavdal said savage flooding across Asia and parts of
South America, Africa and Europe served as a reminder that recent
decades had brought a higher rate of extreme disasters.
"This was also brought home by the 2004 tsunami and the series of
several record storm seasons in the Atlantic and Caribbean," he said.
The Boxing Day 2004 tsunami, which hit 14 countries on two continents,
accounted for 37 per cent of all recorded fatalities from natural
disasters since 2000, with most of the deaths in APEC states.
"Wars, poverty, and disease ... continue to spread human suffering, and
there are new risks of mass terrorism and pandemics," Mr Skavdal said.
"Nonetheless, the destructiveness of natural phenomena has grown
disproportionately."
He said disaster response collaboration had accelerated after the
tsunami, particularly in the directly affected region, with strong and
growing networks for civil-military collaboration.
Even so, he said, the increased danger of natural disasters required an
increased investment in risk reduction, which to date was falling short
of agreed targets.
Climate change, population growth, urbanisation, environmental
degradation and the rapid transformation of fertile land into desert had
all accelerated the likelihood that natural disasters would have a
serious impact on people's lives.
"More and more people around the world live in an urban setting, and in
Asia, in particular, many urban centres are in earthquake zones or areas
vulnerable to flooding," Mr Skavdal said.
"Risk management in cities is an especially complex endeavour."
Nevertheless, despite the increased frequency and destructiveness of
disasters, the death toll had fallen compared with last century.
In the past decade, fewer than one million people died in natural
disasters worldwide, compared with three million deaths in the same
period 40 years ago.
"It is a tribute to the development of early warning systems and other
preparedness efforts taken in your countries and on a regional level,"
Mr Skavdal said.