While disasters have become more frequent during the past20 years, the average number of people affected has fallen from one in 23 in 1994-2003 to one in 39 during 2004-2013.This is partly explained by population growth, but the numbers affected have also declined in absolute terms.Death rates, on the other hand, increased over the same period, reaching an average of more than 99,700 deaths per year between 2004 and 2013. This partly reflects the huge loss of life in three mega disasters (the 2004 Asian tsunami, Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and the 2010 Haitian earthquake).
However, the trend remains upward even when these three events are excluded from the statistics.Analysis of EM-DAT data also shows how income levels impact on disaster death tolls. On average, more than three times as many people died per disaster in low-income countries (332deaths) than in high-income nations (105 deaths).
In 2015, 346 natural disasters were recorded in the EM-DAT database. They claimed 22,773 lives, affected over 98 million others and caused economic damages of US$66.5 billion.
The largest disaster of 2015 in terms of mortality was the earthquake in Nepal from April that resulted in 8,831 deaths.
This publication provides a sober and revealing analysis of weather-related disaster trends over a twenty year time-frame which coincides with a period which has seen the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties become an established high- profile annual fixture on the development calendar.
The contents of this report underline why it is so important that a new climate change agreement emerges from the COP21 in Paris in December.
The paper explores the degree to which exposure to natural disasters and poor governance(quality of governance) is associated with absolute child poverty in sixty-seven middle-and low-income countries. The data is representative for about 2.8 billion of the world´s population. Institutionalist tend to argue that many of society’s ills, including poverty,derive from fragile or inefficient institutions. However, our findings show that although increasing quality of government tends to be associated with less poverty, the negative effects of natural disasters on child poverty are independent of a country’s institutional efficiency.Increasing disaster victims (killed and affected) is associated with higher rates of child poverty.
A child’s estimated odds ratio to be in a state of absolute poverty increases by about a factor of 5.7 [95% CI: 1.7 to 18.7] when the average yearly toll of disasters in the child’s country increases by one on a log-10 scale.
Natural disasters and disasters that directly derive from human actions, both evolving and sudden, trace the structural fault lines of the societies that they affect. Disaster outcomes disproportionately impact those with the least access to social and material resources: women and children, and people who are elderly, disabled or impoverished.
Using a disability conceptual framework,the essays in this volume focus on disasters within their social and environmental ecologies, with particular attention to the ways in which conventional disaster planning and responses ensure that existing social inequalities will be perpetuated as consequences of disasters. We argue that by foregrounding the needs of those with the fewest resources, an applied anthropology of disaster points to potential benefits to all when disaster preparedness, response, and recovery plans include the expertise of disabled people.
The aim of these guidelines is to describe the systematic development of an SDR during the initial days and weeks after a disaster.
It is based on ACAPS’ experience in developingSecondary Data Reviews for a number of Sudden Onset Disasters over three years.
