Global number of people exposed to flooding each year has more than doubled since 1970
BANGKOK (AlertNet) – The United Nations’ disaster management agency UNISDR launched a second edition of its Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction on Monday. Following are some key facts from the report.
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- An 87-percent rise in the world’s population between 1970 and 2010 – to 6.9 billion from 3.9 billion – increased the average number of people exposed to flooding each year by 114 percent – to 69.4 million from 32.5 million.
- More than 90 percent of those exposed to floods live in South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, but exposure is growing most rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa.
- From the 1970s to the first decade of the 2000s, the global gross domestic product exposed to tropical cyclones tripled from $525.7 billion to $1.6 trillion.
- Estimates suggest at least 66.5 million children are affected by disasters each year. Girls seem to suffer most, with the gender gap in achieving primary education widening significantly after disasters that are localised and frequent but less severe.
- In Colombia, the estimated annual losses from disasters represent almost 1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Although this is less than the cost of cyclical unemployment, it is higher than the cost of 5 percent inflation and is comparable to costs of armed conflict.
- In Mexico, excluding impacts from drought and the agricultural sector, the government is likely to incur weather-related disaster losses of more than $1 million at least 50 times a year, and of more than $1 billion at least once every six years.
- The 2009-2010 agricultural drought in eastern Caribbean was due less to lack of rainfall than to restrictions imposed on agriculture, as water was allocated to other sectors such as tourism, which often uses three to 10 times more water than local demand.
- After successive crop failures in 2007-2009, a million people in Syria left rural areas for cities.
- About 1 billion people worldwide live in informal settlements, many in hazard-prone areas, with this population growing at a rate of 40 million people a year.
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