NEW DELHI: The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) recently published the Global Assessment Report 2022, which established that the world is set to face 1.5 disasters a day – 560 a year – by 2030. It mentioned that this is happening because humans have put themselves on a spiral of self-destruction by heating up the climate and ignoring risk, which UNDRR said can be attributed to a “broken perception of risk based on optimism, underestimation and invincibility”.
According to the report, somewhere between 350 and 500 medium-sized to major disasters have been recorded annually in the past two decades, but the governments across the world continue to underestimate their true impact on lives and livelihoods. It added that increasingly frequent and intense disasters have killed or affected more people in the last five years than in the previous five-year period. Moreover, this could push an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030.
The report mentioned that disasters around the world have cost roughly US $170 billion each year over the past decade. It noted that most of this loss is incurred in lower-income countries, which on average lose one per cent of their national GDP to disasters each year. Compared to that, wealthier nations lose just 0.1 to 0.2 per cent of their GDP. The region of Asia and Pacific were found to suffer the greatest economic losses due to the disasters. The report said that since the number of disasters is expected to increase, the cost will as well.
Mami Mizutori, Chief, UNDRR, said that disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks. She added that by deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision-making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction.