As of Climate Change If disasters such as cyclones, floods and droughts are more intense, more frequent and hit more places, fewer people will die from such disasters globally due to better warning, planning and resilience, a senior United Nations official said.
The world hasn’t really realized how the kind of storm that once killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people now claims only a handful of lives, said the United Nations’ new deputy secretary-general, Kamal Kishore, who heads the UN office for climate change. disaster risk reduction. Associated press. But he said much more needs to be done to prevent these catastrophes from pushing people into extreme poverty.
“Fewer people die due to disasters and if we look at it as a proportion of the total population, it is even less,” Kishore said in his first interview since taking office in mid-May. “We often take for granted the progress we have made.”
“Twenty years ago there was no tsunami early warning system, except in a small part of the world. Now the whole world is covered by a tsunami warning system” after the 2004 tsunami that killed around 230,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, Kishore said.
People are getting better warnings about tropical cyclones — also called hurricanes and typhoons — so now the chances of dying in a tropical cyclone in a place like the Philippines are about a third of what they were 20 years ago, Kishore said.
As India’s former disaster chief, Kishore points to how his country has reduced the number of deaths thanks to better warning and community preparedness, such as preparing hospitals for a surge in births during a cyclone. In 1999, a supercyclone hit eastern India, killing nearly 10,000 people. Then, a storm of almost similar size occurred in 2013, but only killed a few dozen people. Last year, under Kishore, Cyclone Biparjoy killed less than 10 people.
The same applies to flood deaths, Kishore said.
The data supports Kishore, said disaster epidemiologist Debarati Guha-Sapir of the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, who created a global disaster database. Its database — which it acknowledges has missing pieces — shows that global storm deaths have dropped from a ten-year average of 24 in 2008 to a ten-year average of about 8 in 2021. Flood deaths per event have gone up. ten years. annual averages of nearly 72 to about 31, their data indicates.
While there are fewer deaths globally from disasters, there are still pockets in poorer countries, especially in Africa, where deaths are getting worse or at least staying the same, Guha-Sapir said. It’s much like public health efforts to eradicate measles have been successful in most places, but the areas least able to cope are not improving, she said.
India and Bangladesh are exemplary countries for better dealing with disasters and preventing deaths, especially in cyclones, Guha-Sapir said. In 1970, a cyclone killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh, in one of the biggest natural disasters of the 20th century and now “Bangladesh has done a fantastic job of reducing disaster risk for years and years and years,” she said.
Pointing out victories is important, Guha-Sapir said: “Sadness and misfortune will never get us anywhere.”
While countries like India and Bangladesh have created warning systems, reinforced buildings like hospitals, and know what to do to prepare for and then respond to disasters, much of this is also due to the fact that these countries are becoming richer and more educated and therefore can better deal with disasters and protect themselves, said Guha-Sapir. The poorest countries and people cannot.
“Fewer people are dying, but that’s not because climate change isn’t happening,” said Kishore. “This is despite climate change. And this happens because we invest in resilience, we invest in early warning systems.”
Kishore said climate change is making his job more difficult, but he said he doesn’t feel like Sisyphus, the mythical man who pushes a giant boulder up a hill.
“You are receiving more intense dangersmore frequently and (in) new geographies,” Kishore said, saying places, like Brazil who previously didn’t worry much about the floods are now being devastated. The same goes for extreme heatwhich, according to him, used to be a problem only for a few countries, but which has now become global, pointing to almost 60,000 deaths from heatwaves in Europe in 2022.
India, where temperatures have flirted with 122 degrees (50 degrees Celsius)reduced heat deaths with specific regional plans, Kishore said.
“However, with the new extreme temperatures we are seeing, all countries need to double their efforts to save lives,” he said. And that means looking at the built environment of cities, he added.
Reducing the number of deaths is just part of the battle to reduce risk, Kishore said.
“We are doing a better job of saving lives, but not of saving livelihoods,” Kishore said.
While fewer people are dying, “we look at people who are losing their homes, people who are losing their businesses, a small farmer who runs a poultry farm,” Kishore said. When they are flooded or hit by a storm, they can survive, but they have nothing, no seeds, no fishing boats.
“In this we are not doing as well as we should,” Kishore said. “We cannot accept losses occurring. Of course they will occur, but they can be minimized by an order of magnitude.”
___
Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears
______
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and areas of coverage funded in AP.org.
