More Disasters to Come

  Our people and planet will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes a United Nations report says. Disasters are hitting poorer countries harder than richer ones, with recovery costs taking a bigger chunk out of the economy in nations that can’t afford it, co-author Markus Enenkel of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative said.

“These are the events that can wipe out hard-earned development gains, leading already vulnerable communities or entire regions into a downward spiral,” he said.

If current trends continue the world will go from around 400 disasters per year in 2015 to an onslaught of about 560 catastrophes a year by 2030, the scientific report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said. By comparison from 1970 to 2000, the world suffered just 90 to 100 medium to large scale disasters a year.

The number of extreme heat waves in 2030 will be three times what it was in 2001 and there will be 30% more droughts, the report predicted. Climate change has a huge footprint in the number of disasters, report said.

In 1990, disasters cost the world about $70 billion a year. Now they cost more than $170 billion a year, and that’s after adjusting for inflation,n 

Mami Mizutori, chief of the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction, explained, “If we don’t get ahead of the curve it will reach a point where we cannot manage the consequences of disaster. We’re just in this vicious cycle.”

Not every hurricane or earthquake has to turn into a disaster, Mizutori said. A lot of damage is avoided with planning and prevention. About 90% of the spending on disasters currently is emergency relief with only 6% on reconstruction and 4% on prevention.

For years disaster deaths were steadily decreasing because of better warnings and prevention, Mizutori said. But in the last five years, disaster deaths are “way more” than the previous five years, said report co-author Roger Pulwarty, a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate and social scientist.

That’s because both COVID-19 and climate change disasters have come to places that didn’t used to get them, like tropical cyclones hitting Mozambique, Mizutori said. It’s also the way disasters interact with each other, compounding damage, like wildfires plus heatwaves or a war in Ukraine plus food and fuel shortages, Pulwarty said.  

The sheer onslaught of disasters just add up, like little illnesses attacking and weakening the body’s immune system, Pulwarty said.

Weary of many disasters? UN says worse to come | AP News