UN warns of more catastrophes and disasters in coming years

According to the new reportHumanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress in a ‘spiral of self-destruction’, finds new UN report the United Nations, catastrophes and disasters have become noticeably more frequent in recent years and will only increase in the near future.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) cites statistics that from 1970 to 2000, on average, world recorded from 90 to 100 different disasters per year, and from 2001 to 2020 this figure rose to 350-500 disasters.

This includes earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, extreme weather, crop failures, epidemics and many other biological, geophysical and natural disasters. At the same time, “small-scale” disasters that affect only local communities and do not require national or international assistance were not taken into account by the UN.

Never in modern history has humanity faced so many familiar and entirely new risks and dangers.

The report notes that human activity has increased the rates of these disasters. Thus, an earthquake or flood becomes catastrophic only when damage is caused to people or communities. But populations are booming in many endangered regions, such as disappearing coastlines more vulnerable to storms. Therefore, many natural disasters that could previously be left unattended can now cause devastating damage.

Human-induced climate change has also increased nature's wrath. For example, higher global temperatures have made heat waves and wildfire seasons more intense. As a result, natural disasters have resulted in more deaths in the last five years than in the previous five years.

If everything continues to develop according to the same scenario, then 2030 could be much more gloomy. The number of accidents related to extreme temperatures could triple since 2001. And the total number of disasters will increase to about 560 per year, or, roughly speaking, about 1.5 natural disasters per day.

The fault is a misperception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility”, which leads to the adoption policy and financial decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people at risk, the report says.

Measures to prevent natural disasters and early risk reduction today have minimal funding. Between 2010 and 2019, only $5.5 billion was spent on this, and $7.7 billion was spent on restoration work. These are paltry amounts compared to the money earmarked for temporary emergency response, which has approached $120 billion over the same period.