Climate disasters killed 1.3 M people in 20 years — report

Climate-related and geophysical disasters mostly earthquakes and tsunamis have killed 1.3 million people over the last 20 years and disaster-hit countries experienced direct economic losses valued at $2.9 billion from 1998 to 2017, according to a United Nations report.

The findings, published by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), also show that people in low- and middleincome countries are seven times more likely to die from natural disasters than those in developed nations.

The UNISDR report evaluates total disaster-related economic losses and fatalities between 1998 and 2017. The report finds that in that period, climate-related and geophysical disasters killed 1.3 million people and left 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance.

While the majority of fatalities were due to geophysical events, mostly earthquakes and tsunamis, 91 percent of all disasters were caused by floods, storms, droughts, heat waves and other extreme weather events.

In terms of the impact of disasters on the global economy between 1998 and 2017, disasterhit countries experienced direct economic losses valued at $2.9 billion. The report said that is more than twice what was lost in the previous two decades.

Illustrating the growing threat from climate change, extreme weather events now account for 77 percent of total economic losses or $2.245 trillion, the report notes.

This represents a “dramatic rise” of 151 percent compared with losses reported between 1978 and 1997, which amounted to $895 billion.

“Overall, reported losses from extreme weather events rose by 151 percent between these two 20-year periods,” the report said.

The report also shows absolute losses relative to the burden on the poor. The findings reveal that inequality is even greater than available losses data suggest because of systematic underreporting by low-income countries.

While high-income countries reported losses from 53 percent of disasters between 1998 and 2017, low-income countries only reported them from 13 percent of disasters. No losses data are available for nearly 87 percent of disasters in low-income countries.

For disasters since 2000, georeferencing has found that in low-income countries, an average of 130 people died per million living in disaster-affected areas, compared to just 18 in high-income countries.

“That means people exposed to natural hazards in the poorest nations were more than seven times more likely to die than equivalent populations in the richest nations,” the report said.

UNISDR said such data demonstrate that while absolute economic losses might be concentrated in high-income countries, the human cost of disasters falls overwhelmingly on low and lower-middle income countries.

“The vulnerability to risk and degrees of suffering are determined by levels of economic development, rather than simple exposure to natural hazards per se.”