The Human Cost of Weather-Related Disasters 1995-2015 | 03 Who We Are

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The Human Cost of Weather-Related Disasters 1995-2015 | 03 Who We Are 1995-2015 the humAn coSt of WeAtheR RelAteD DISASteRS 1995-2015 list of contents foreword 03 Who we are 04 executive Summary 05 Chapter 1 Weather-related disasters 1995-2015 07 Chapter 2 human costs of weather-related disasters 12 Chapter 3 Impacts of weather-related disasters by country 17 Chapter 4 Weather-related disasters & national income 20 Chapter 5 counting the economic costs of disasters 23 Acknowledgements 27 foreword This publication provides a sober and revealing analysis of weather-related disaster trends over a twenty year time-frame which coincides with a period which has seen the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties become an established high- profile annual fixture on the development calendar. The contents of this report underline why it is so important that a new climate change agreement emerges from the COP21 in Paris in December. This would be a satisfying conclusion to a year which started off strongly with the adoption in March of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 which sets out priorities for action in order to achieve a substantial reduction in disaster losses. The Sendai Framework has since been followed by agreements on development financing and the ambition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN Member States in September. Climate change, climate variability and weather events pose a threat to the eradication of extreme poverty and should serve as a spur to hasten efforts not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to tackle other underlying risk drivers such as unplanned urban development, vulnerable livelihoods, environmental degradation and gaps in early warnings. The report highlights many key shortcomings in understanding the nature and true extent of disaster losses, particularly from drought despite the fact that it accounts for more than 25% of all people affected by climate-related disasters. There must be greater support to countries struggling to measure their losses so they can improve both risk reduction efforts and overall understanding of where the focus needs to be to reduce those very losses. The more we understand the causes and consequences of risk generation and accumulation, the better we will be able to adapt, mitigate and prevent in the future, whatever that future may have in store for us. Margareta Wahlstrom Debarati Guha-Sapir Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Professor UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters for Disaster Risk Reduction Institute of Health and Society Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium The Human Cost of Weather-Related Disasters 1995-2015 | 03 Who we are cReD The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) is the world’s foremost agency for the study of public health during mass emergencies, including the epidemiology of diseases, plus the structural and socio-economic impacts of natural and technological disasters and human conflicts. Based since 1973 at the School of Public Health of the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, CRED became in 1980 a World Health Organization (WHO) collaboration centre. Since then, CRED has worked closely with United Nations agencies, inter-governmental and governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research institutes and other universities. Disasters preparedness, mitigation and prevention for vulnerable populations have also gained a higher profile within CRED's activities in recent years. www.cred.be em-DAt CRED’s Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) contains the world’s most comprehensive data on the occurrence and effects of more than 21,000 technological and natural disasters from 1900 to the present day. Created with the support of the WHO and the Belgian government, the main objective of EM-DAT is to inform humanitarian action at the national and international levels in order to improve decision-making in disaster preparedness, provide objective data for assessing communities’ vulnerability to disasters and to help policy-makers set priorities. In 1999, a collaboration between the United States Agency for International Development's Office Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) and CRED was initiated. Since 2014, EM-DAT also georeferences natural disasters, adding geographical values to numeric data which is essential for deeper analysis. Details of EM-DAT's methodology and partner organizations can be found on our website www.emdat.be unISDR The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction was established in 1999 and serves as the focal point in the United Nations System for the coordination of disaster risk reduction. It supports the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 which maps out a broad people-centered approach towards achieving a substantial reduction in disaster losses from man-made and natural hazards and a shift in emphasis from disaster management to disaster risk management. UNISDR and partners produce the biennial Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction which provides evidence for the integration of disaster risk reduction into private investment decision-making and public policy in urban, environmental, social and economic sectors. UNISDR also coordinates the Making Cities Resilient Campaign and Worldwide Initiative for Safe Schools and engages with governments in developing national disaster loss databases. www.unisdr.org 04 | The Human Cost of Weather-Related Disasters 1995-2015 Executive Summary Over the last twenty years, the overwhelming majority (90%) of disasters have been caused by floods, storms, heatwaves and other weather-related events. In total, 6,457 weather-related disasters were recorded worldwide by EM-DAT, the foremost international database of such events. Over this period, weather-related disasters claimed 606,000 lives, an average of some 30,000 per annum, with an additional 4.1 billion people injured, left homeless or in need of emergency assistance. Weather-related disasters are becoming increasingly frequent, of this rise is due to climate change, predictions of more due largely to a sustained rise in the numbers of floods and extreme weather in future almost certainly mean that we will storms. Flooding alone accounted for 47% of all weather- witness a continued upward trend in weather-related disasters related disasters (1995-2015), affecting 2.3 billion people, the in the decades ahead. majority of whom (95%) live in Asia. While less frequent than flooding, storms were the most deadly type of weather-related In order to plan for future risk reduction, two critical factors disaster, killing more than 242,000 people in the past 21 must be kept in mind: population growth will continue to put years; that is 40% of the global total for all weather-related more and more people in harm’s way, while uncontrolled disasters. The vast majority of these deaths (89%) occurred in building on flood plains and storm-prone coastal zones will lower-income countries, even though they experienced just increase human vulnerabilities to extreme weather events. The 26% of all storms. cost of such vulnerability is already evident from mounting death tolls since 1995, which have risen on average despite Heatwaves and extreme cold were particularly deadly in terms an overall decline in the absolute and relative numbers of of the numbers of lives lost in each event (405 deaths per people affected by weather-related disasters. disaster on average). High-income countries reported that 76% of weather-related disaster deaths were due to extreme The true economic cost of weather related disasters is also temperatures, mainly heatwaves. Overall, mortality from bleaker than EM-DAT data suggest (US$ 1,891 billion), since heatwaves helped push the average toll from weather-related only 35% of records include information about economic disasters up to 99 per event in high-income countries. This is losses; in Africa the figure is as low as 16.7%. Overall, annual second only to lower-middle-income countries in terms of the economic losses from disasters are estimated by UNISDR at average number killed per disaster. While this ranking is between US$ 250 billion and US$ 300 billion extrapolating subject to reporting bias (due in part to under-recording in from a study of nationally-reported disaster losses. low-income countries) the data still demonstrate the widespread impact of weather-related disasters on rich and The reporting gaps underline the need for UNISDR and poor alike. partners to continue working with governments to establish robust and well-maintained national disaster loss databases In total, EM-DAT recorded an average of 335 weather-related to improve record-keeping and accountability. Universally disasters per year between 2005 and 2014, an increase of acceptable loss indicators are currently under development 14% from 1995-2004 and almost twice the level recorded during to measure progress in reducing disaster losses as set out in 1985-1994. While scientists cannot calculate what percentage the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The Human Cost of Weather-Related Disasters 1995-2015 | 05 BOX 1 natural disasters In order to be recorded as a natural These statistics and others in this report point to several disaster in EM-DAT, an event must major conclusions: meet at least one of the following criteria: • While better data are required to count the full human cost, EM-DAT records already demonstrate that weather-related
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