Causes of
disasters
Climate change
Climate change
will create new hazards such as glacier melting, sea level
rise and
extreme weather events in proportions never seen before. This will
aggravate the
existing disaster risks and vulnerabilities and expose millions of
people never
affected before around the world.
The facts
In its Fourth
Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC)
predicted that by 2100:
• Global
average surface warming will increase by between 1.1°C and
6.4°C.
• Sea level
will rise by between 18cm and 59cm; sea-level rise, coupled
with coastal
storms, will increase the risks of flooding and threaten
protective
ecosystems.
• Oceans will
become more acidic and warmer.
• Extreme
heatwaves and heavy rainfalls will become more frequent.
• More
heatwaves will increase death rates among the elderly, very young,
chronically
ill and socially isolated.
• Higher
latitudes will experience more precipitation; subtropical land
areas will
become more arid.
• Tropical
cyclones (including typhoons and hurricanes) will become more
intense, with
higher peak wind speeds and heavier precipitation, as
tropical sea
surface temperatures increase.
• Regions
hardest hit will include the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small
islands,
developing states, Asian deltas and coastal zones.
• Increased
drought in some regions will lead to land degradation, crop
damage and
reduced yields; livestock deaths and wildfire risks will
increase, and
people dependent on agriculture will face food and water
shortages,
malnutrition and increased disease, with many being forced to migrate.
• Greater
rainfall in some areas will trigger more floods and landslides, with
consequent
disruption to agriculture, urban settlements, commerce and
transport.
• Increases in
the number and intensity of powerful cyclones will affect coastal
regions and
threaten very large additional losses of life and property.
• As
temperatures rise, glaciers melt, increasing the risk of lake bursts and
disastrous
floods; as mountain glaciers recede, farmers and towns downstream
that depend in
the summer months on glacial melt water will increasingly be at risk.
What can be
done?
Nations can:
• Make
disaster risk reduction a national and local priority, with strong institutions
to implement
decisions.
• Set up early
warning systems that reach all people, in time for appropriate
action, and
accompany the warnings with helpful advice.
• Incorporate
climate risk in all urban planning and water and forest management
processes.
• Maintain and
strengthen coastal wave barriers, river levees, flood ways and
flood ponds.
• Have
adequate drainage systems to avoid flooding.
• Incorporate
climate risks in infrastructure projects, especially in hospitals,
schools and
water supplies.
• Support
diversification, including new sources of income, new crops and
agricultural
techniques, and new ways to improve water uptake and reduce
erosion.
• Build
mechanisms that will get people out of harm’s way in a hazard and
prepare
shelters to protect them when they are forced to move.
Rapid and
unplanned urbanization
The rapid
growth of cities, combined with climate change and the urban
population explosion,
will create new stresses for urban settlements and make
city dwellers
increasingly vulnerable.
The facts
• One out of
every two people now lives in a city; this proportion will go on
rising; by
2030, 5 billion of the planet’s expected 8.1 billion population will
be urban.
• One in three
of the urban population lives in marginal settlements or
crowded slums
with inadequate access to clean water, sanitation, schools,
transport and
other public services
• One city
dweller in four lives in absolute poverty; by 2030, two-thirds of
humankind will
live in cities and three billion in slums.
• Eight of the
10 most populous cities on the planet are vulnerable to
earthquakes; 6
of the 10 are vulnerable to floods, storm surges and tsunamis.
• Ineffective
land-use planning, inadequate enforcement of building codes
and faulty
construction standards put millions at risk.
• By 2015, 33
cities will have at least 8 million residents; of these, 21 are in
coastal areas
and particularly vulnerable to meteorological hazard driven
by climate
change (e.g. Dhaka, Shanghai, Manila, Jakarta, and Mumbai).
Cities with
weak governance and small and medium-sized urban areas are
more
vulnerable to disasters as they have weaker capacities to manage
urban growth,
deforestation and destruction of coastal systems.
According to
UN-HABITAT, up to 3,351 cities around the world are located in
low-lying
coastal zones that may be affected by rising sea levels. Six out of the
10 largest
cities are also located along seismic fault lines.
What can be
done?
Nations can:
• Have
national and local budgets to systematically integrate disaster risk
reduction in
all aspect of urban planning
• Plan
urbanization and avoid building in risk areas.
• Avoid the
development of slums, offering safe lands to low-income families.
• Have safer
schools, hospitals, roads, bridges than can withstand any type
of hazard.
• Identify
high-risk areas, build disaster risk reduction into development
programmes and
implement effective disaster recovery policies.
• Integrate
seismic risk assessment in the construction of buildings in areas
exposed to
earthquakes.
• Involve
people at risk by educating them on disaster risk reduction and in
making their
own neighborhoods safer; this effectively empowers people
and increases
their capacity to respond to disaster.
• Protect
communities by installing early warning systems.
• Make
warnings more effective with regular drills and increase community
ability to
foresee, prepare for and cope with disasters.
• Give poor
communities access to financial mechanisms to protect houses
and incomes.
Making Cities
Resilient
UNISDR
launched a worldwide campaign in 2010 to make cities more
resilient. The
campaign proposes a checklist of Ten Essentials for Making
Cities
Resilient that can be implemented by mayors and local governments.
The checklist
is derived from the five priorities of the Hyogo Framework
for Action
2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities
to Disasters,
a key instrument for implementing disaster risk reduction.
Achieving all,
or even some, of these Ten Essentials will help cities to
become more
resilient.
Poverty
Poverty and
socio-economic inequalities are aggravating disaster factors. They
not only make
poor people more vulnerable to disasters but they trap them in a
vicious circle
of poverty.
The facts
• Disasters
hit poor people the hardest. It is not only true in developing
countries but
also in developed countries. Levels of vulnerabilities are
highly
dependent upon the economic status of individuals, communities
and nations.
The most affected people during the Katrina hurricane in the
United States
were the poor communities. During the hurricane season
in 2008, Haiti
was the hardest hit among the Caribbean states.
• Fifty-three
per cent of affected people by disasters live in developing
countries
while 1.8 per cent lives in developed countries. Over 95 per
cent of the
people killed by disasters lived in middle and low-income
countries,
using World Bank classification based on gross national
income (GNI)
per capita.
• Disasters
affect poor countries and poor communities disproportionately.
The World Bank
reports that: “This disproportionate effect on developing
countries has
many explanations. Lack of development itself contributes
to disaster
impacts, both because the quality of construction often is low
and building
codes, and registration processes, and other regulatory
mechanisms are
lacking, as well as numerous other development
priorities
displace attention from the risks presented by natural events” (
Hazards of
Nature, Risks to Development, World Bank 2006).
• A country’s
level of development has a direct impact on the damage
natural
hazards inflict on populations. Less-developed countries suffer
most, as they
are more frequently hit and more severely affected. Their
weak
infrastructure and limited capacity for prevention makes them more
vulnerable than
wealthy, industrialized nations.
One half of
the world population is vulnerable to disasters because of
their social
living conditions. Slums and poor urban settlements are the
most exposed
to disasters.
• An estimated
1 billion people worldwide live in slums and shanty towns,
which are
vulnerable to disasters.
• Extensive
research shows the poor are more likely to occupy dangerous,
less desirable
locations, such as flood plains, river banks, steep slopes
and reclaimed
land because the price is cheaper.
• Poor people
tend to live in poorly built and unprotected building that will be
the first to
collapse in any disaster.
• Losses from
disasters are most devastating to the poorest people.
• Disasters
have long-term consequences on poor people as they have less
means to
recover. Poor people not only lose their family members, houses,
main source of
income and livelihoods when disasters happen but also
become more
vulnerable to future disasters.
What can be
done?
Nations can:
Establish
urban development programmes that reduce the creation of
slums in risk
areas and prevent the growth of housing on dangerous
slopes or
flood plains.
Provide the
poor with access to lands that are safe.
• Involve the
poorest communities in building their own capacity to resist
disaster since
they have most to lose, and to give them a greater political
stake in the
community.
• Give the
poorest people full access to early warning systems, preparedness
measures and
at the same time access to financial mechanisms that can
help them
protect their homes, health and livelihoods
Environmental
degradation
Communities
can all too often increase the probability and severity of disasters by
destroying the
forests, coral reefs and wetlands that might have protected them.
The facts
• Forests once
covered 46 per cent of the Earth’s land surface – half of these
have
disappeared; only one-fifth of the Earth’s forests remain undisturbed.
• Coral reefs
are home to one-fourth of all marine species; 60 per cent of
coral reefs
could be lost in the next 20-40 years.
• The
expansion of deserts and the degradation of land threaten nearly
one-quarter of
the planet’s land surface; more than 250 million are directly
affected by
desertification and 1 billion are at risk.
• Global
warming could be accompanied by widespread species loss,
ecosystem
damage, flooding of human settlements and greater frequency
and severity
of other disasters due to vulnerability to natural hazards.
What can be
done?
Nations can:
• Undertake
land-use planning with an ecosystem approach.
• Recognize
the risk reduction function of ecosystems in environmental
policies and
legislation.
• Identify and
protect natural buffers such as forests, wetlands and coral reefs.
• Restore
forests and plant mangroves to shield communities from hazards
such as storm
surge, coastal flooding and tropical storms.
• Manage
forests to reduce wildfire risk.
Why we should
protect the environment
Wetland and
forest ecosystems function as natural sponges that absorb and
slowly release
surface water, rain, snow melt, groundwater and floodwater.
The
destruction of such natural buffers can put tens of thousands at risk.
Mangroves,
dunes and reefs, for example, act as natural physical barriers that protect
communities
from coastal hazards. As they disappear, communities become at greater
risk of
flooding. Likewise, deforestation makes flooding more severe because slopes
stripped of
tree cover are less able to hold water. As a result, soil erosion lowers the
productivity
of farmland, amplifies drought and eventually leads to desertification.
“The six countries that have best addressed the underlying risk drivers of badly
planned and managed urban development, ecosystem decline and poverty and
which have strong governance are Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland,
Norway and Finland. The bottom six countries (Afghanistan, Chad, Haiti,
Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea) are low-income nations
that are experiencing or have recently experienced conflicts or political crisis.”
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