Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
2.4
Global Distribution and Impact of Natural Hazards
Natural hazards are occurring all over the world in developing to developed coun-
tries: from the fl oods in Nigeria to the drought in the United States in 2012. As
mentioned in Sect.
2.1
, not all hazards turn into disasters and not all of them have
negative and wide reaching impacts and/or monetary damage. The impact of natural
hazards and, in particular, the disaster risk, when compared on a global level are
unevenly distributed across the globe (UNISDR
2009b
). In general, it can be said
that disaster risk is related to economic development pathways and low-income
countries are most at risk (UNISDR
2011a
). This section illustrates the global dis-
tribution of disaster impacts and risks with numbers and statistics.
2.4.1
Disaster Impact in Numbers
The second biennial Global Assessment Report (GAR) of disaster risk reduction
summarizes the state of the art of disaster risk in the context of the UNISDR and the
Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), an international initiative to improve risk
reduction strategies (UNISDR
2011a
). The main fi ndings are that the overall eco-
nomic costs related with natural hazards are rising, whereas the number of people
killed by these hazards is decreasing (UNISDR
2011a
). This relationship of increas-
ing cost and decreasing number of deaths is however not true for low-income coun-
tries with weak risk governance capacity (UNISDR
2011a
). Over the last few
decades, the majority of fatalities (more than 95 %) related with extreme events
have been recorded in developing countries (UNEP
2012b
). The IPCC (
2012a
,
b
)
SREX report confi rms this by stating that climate extremes cause developing coun-
tries higher death rates and greater impact measured as portion of their gross domes-
tic product (GDP) but higher total economic loss for developed countries.
When considering continents instead of developing and developed countries as a
baseline the distribution again is uneven. Between 2000 and 2008, Asia recorded the
highest number of weather- and climate-related disasters (fl oods and storms being
the most frequent (CRED
2013
)), whereas the Americas recorded the highest eco-
nomic loss (54.6 % of the total loss). Africa's proportion of economic loss was less
than 1 % (IPCC
2012a
). However, these statistics generally do not include estimates
of the cost of lives, cultural damage, or ecological damage, and thus may underesti-
mate losses from disasters, especially in the developing world (IPCC
2012a
).
The year 2012 was overall the third costliest year for the insurance companies
according to data collected by Munich RE (Fig.
2.7
). Hurricane Sandy and the
drought in the United States were the costliest natural catastrophes in 2012, both by
overall losses as well as insured losses (Munich
2013
). Figure
2.8
summarizes the
wide reaching impacts of disasters from 2000 to 2012: 1.2 million people killed, 2.9
billion affected, and a total of 1.7 trillion US dollar damage (UNISDR
2013b
). The
numbers are slightly different than the results from Munich RE as they are based on
a different database. New numbers from the GAR 2013 add that disasters during the
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