UN warns of 'megadisasters' linked to climate change
Pastor Dale Morgan
UN warns of 'megadisasters' linked to climate change*
Holmes said some of the world's biggest cities, housing more than 10
million people each, were highly exposed, since they were located in
coastal areas that would be threatened by rising sea levels or in
earthquake zones.
by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) June 16, 2009
The United Nations on Tuesday raised the prospect of "megadisasters"
affecting millions of people in some of the world's biggest cities
unless more is done to heed the threat of climate change.
"We are going to see more disasters and more intense disasters as a
result of climate change," UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian
Affairs John Holmes said at the opening of a four-day conference on
reducing disaster risks.
The Red Cross joined the UN in urging more investment to ensure that
cities, villages and small communities were better prepared for natural
disasters that are being amplified by global warming.
Natural and man-made disasters killed nearly a quarter of a million
people in 2008 and warnings about looming disasters, particularly
climate change, are not being heeded, the Red Cross said.
At 242,662 people worldwide, this was the second biggest annual toll of
the past decade, according to a report by the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Nine in 10 of those disasters were weather-related and they caused up to
200 billion dollars (145 billion euros) worth of damage, Holmes said,
calling it an "enormous concern".
"The effects of climate change are being felt now, they're not simply
some future threat."
Holmes said some of the world's biggest cities, housing more than 10
million people each, were highly exposed, since they were located in
coastal areas that would be threatened by rising sea levels or in
earthquake zones.
"The risks of megadisasters in some of these megacities are rising all
the time," the UN relief chief warned, predicting a soaring death toll
from future natural catastrophes.
The Red Cross cautioned that only piecemeal progress had been made on
prevention and measures to make communities more resilient to floods,
drought, storms and earthquakes, despite the warnings about more extreme
weather events.
The federation's annual "World Disasters Report" published Tuesday
highlighted climate change as "offering us the ultimate early warning."
"The rising dangers of climate change require a response from
governments equivalent to the one made to address the global financial
crisis," said Bekele Geleta, Secretary General of the federation.
But he warned in the report that there was "much resistance to change",
with the focus still on emergency aid after the event rather than
preparing for the worst.
"This seems to be a lesson that individuals, donors, countries and some
of the 'humanitarian community' have yet to learn," Geleta said.
The measures advocated at the conference include adequate community
flood or weather alerts, shelters, better building standards to resist
bad weather or quakes, and avoiding settlements in high risk areas.
Holmes estimated that about three billion dollars a year could be
mobilised by setting aside one percent of development assistance and 10
percent of global humanitarian aid for precautionary projects.
The 585 natural or man-made catastrophes that occurred in 2008
represented the lowest annual total the past decade.
The overwhelming majority of the deaths occurred in the Sichuan
earthquake in China where more than 87,000 people died, and cyclone
Nargis, which claimed more than 138,000 lives when it swept through
coastal areas of Myanmar.
The Red Cross report likened forecasting the impact of global warming to
rolling a dice: "We never know when a particular number will appear, but
at some point every number comes up."
"Confronted with global warming and growing vulnerability, we also know
the dice is loaded."