Climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, and political instability are putting the world on a road of devastation, with more than one calamity occurring every day, according to a recent United Nations report,
According to a UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)report, the number of disaster incidents will reach 560 per year – or 1.5 per day, statistically speaking, by 2030, somewhere around the globe.
Over the previous two decades, the number of catastrophes every year has varied between 350 and 500.
“The world needs to do more to incorporate disaster risk in how we live, build and invest, which is setting humanity on a spiral of self-destruction,” said Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.
“We must turn our collective complacency to action,” she said.
According to the UN research, the scope and intensity of catastrophes are growing, with more people killed or impacted by disasters in the last five years than in the previous five.
According to the UN, the burdens of these man-made and natural disasters fall disproportionately on the nations that are least prepared to deal with them. This is particularly true in the Asia Pacific area, where roughly 2% of economic value and development is lost each year.
The research, titled Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future, discovered that implementing disaster risk reduction methods, as outlined in the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, has decreased the number of persons harmed and killed by catastrophes.
However, catastrophes are becoming larger and more intense, with more people dead or harmed in the last five years than in the previous five.
Disasters disproportionately affect poor nations, which lose an average of one percent of their GDP each year, compared to less than 0.3% in rich ones.
The Asia-Pacific region bears the highest cost, losing an average of 1.6 percent of GDP to catastrophes each year, while the poorest suffer the most within emerging countries. Moreover, a lack of insurance to help in recovery efforts exacerbates the long-term effects of disasters.
“Disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks,” said Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR.
“By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision-making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction. “Critical sectors, from the government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk,” she added
Extreme weather occurrences are becoming a significant source of concern due to climate change. According to the UN disaster risk reduction agency, GAR2022 expands on COP26 requests to increase adaptation efforts by demonstrating how policymakers can climate-proof development and investments. Reforming national budget planning to account for risk and uncertainty and redesigning legal and financial structures to promote risk minimization are all part of this.
It also provides examples from which other nations might learn, such as Costa Rica’s unique carbon tax on gasoline, which helped reverse deforestation, a significant driver of catastrophe risks, while also helping the economy.