Weather disasters have claimed two million lives in 50 years
The United Nations World Meteorological Organization revealed on Wednesday that natural disasters have claimed the lives of more than two million people around the world.
Natural disasters such as floods and heat waves, caused by climate change, had increased five-fold over the past 50 years and had caused losses of $3.64 trillion.
WHO says its Atlas is the most comprehensive review of deaths and economic losses from extreme weather, climate and water phenomena.
“The report examined some 11,000 disasters between 1979 and 2019, including major disasters such as the 1983 drought in Ethiopia, which saw the highest death rate from a natural disaster, claiming 300,000 lives, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which recorded the highest economic losses of $163.61 billion.”
The report revealed an accelerating trend, with the number of disasters nearly five times higher than in the 1970s, which increases indications that extreme weather events have become more frequent due to global warming.
“But while the risks have become more expensive and more frequent, the annual death toll has dropped from more than 50,000 in the 1970s to around 18,000 in the first 10 years of the current millennium, suggesting that better planning has paid off.”
The organization hopes that governments will use the report to develop policies to better protect people.
The report said that more than 91% of the two million deaths were in developing countries, pointing out that only about half of WHO member states have early warning systems to deal with various threats.
He also stated that there were “dangerous gaps” in weather monitoring, particularly in Africa, which undermined the accuracy of early warning systems.
