While no country in the world is entirely safe, the lack of capacity to limit the impact of hazards remains a major burden for developing countries, where over 90 per cent of natural disasters fatalities occur. Twenty-four of the 49 least developed countries still face high levels of disaster risk. At least six of them experienced between two and eight major disasters during each of the last 15 years, with long-term consequences for human development. These figures do not include the consequences of the many smaller and unrecorded disasters that cause significant loss at the local level.

In its annual publication Topics for 2000, the reinsurance giant Munich Re – a member of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Disaster Reduction – looked at the trend of economic losses and insurance costs over a 50-year period. It based its analysis on what it calls “great natural catastrophes.” There were 20 of them that accounted for US$ 38 billion in economic losses (at 1998 values) between 1950 and 1959. However, between 1990 and 1999, there were 82
such major disasters and the economic losses had risen to a total of US$ 535 billion. That is, the number of disasters had multiplied fourfold but economic losses were 14 times higher.

Economic losses in these cases are absolute figures, mostly losses incurred in industrialized countries. When seen as losses by percentage of GDP, it is developing countries that lose most, as shown in the table based on figures provided by Munich Re. For example, the economic losses of the United States from the 1997-1998 El Niño event were US$ 1.96 billion or 0.03 per cent of GDP. The economic losses in Ecuador were US$ 2.9 billion,
but this represented 14.6 per cent of its GDP. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, another ISDR Inter-Agency Task Force member, confirms the worsening trend of human suffering and economic loss during the last decade.

The total number of people affected each year by natural disaster – that is, who at least for a time either lost their homes, their crops, their animals, their livelihoods or their health, because of the disaster – almost doubled between 1990 and 1999.

In this period an average of 188 million people per year were affected by disasters. This is six times more than the average of 31 million people affected annually by conflict even though the number of disasters has more than tripled since the 1970s, the reported death toll has decreased to less than half. It is important also to remember that smaller disasters are generally under-reported and therefore are not ordinarily reflected in global data. Their accumulated consequences likely reflect significant socio-economic tolls.

There is considerable geographic variation in the occurrence and impact of natural hazards. Asia was affected by approximately 43 per cent of all natural disasters in the last decade. During the same period, Asia accounted for almost 70 per cent of all lives lost due to natural hazards. During the two El Niño periods of 1991-1992 and 1997-1998, floods in China alone affected over 200 million people in each period. Nevertheless, in relative terms and considered per capita, Africa is the most heavily affected region, in particular when drought, epidemics and famine are considered.

The most terrible year in human losses during the last decade was 1991, when a cyclone devastated Bangladesh killing 139,000 people, bringing the global deaths for that year to 200,000. Cyclones continue to hit the Bangladesh coasts but such a catastrophe has not happened since. This is in part because the machinery of warning and preparedness – watchful officials, an aware public and a stronger sense of community responsibility – has improved in the last decade.
The worst disaster-related global economic loss of the 1990s was the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in Kobe, Japan. A highly developed and well-prepared nation faced serious setbacks economically by losing important facilities of a primary port. Even eight years after that disaster, the amount of trade passing through Kobe remains 15 per cent less than pre-earthquake totals.

A particular concern emerging from long-term disaster trends is that the number and impact of weather-related disasters have rapidly increased over the last few decades. A comprehensive study undertaken by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) looked at weather impacts for 2002 and examined their complexities and impact on different countries. Notable points from this study were the catastrophic floods in Europe in August, causing losses of about $20 billion (the bulk of the year’s global losses), the severe winter for Mongolia resulting in estimated losses equal to 15 per cent of gross national income, and the tropical storms in the Federated States of Micronesia, where the fatalities reached the exceptionally high national rate of 40 per 100,000 people.