Email 
Print 
Disasters rising, but don't just blame climate change
Written by: Ruth Gidley
Residents of Kanchipara in Bangladesh wade through flood water, September 2007. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman
Natural catastrophes are on the rise, a new report by disaster experts confirms, with the number of recorded floods, storms and other weather emergencies increasing by 7.4 percent a year on average. But 2007 bucked the general trend, seeing a slight fall in disasters and the lowest death toll in a decade. Many scientists predict climate change will trigger more floods and droughts, but the report's researchers say global warming is only partly to blame for the general rise. "Climate change is probably an actor in this increase but not the major one," the report from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) School of Public Health in Belgium says. The fact that information about natural disasters is more accurate than it used to be is another reason behind the rise, according to the researchers who are based at the Catholic University of Louvain. Last year the number of natural disasters dropped to 405 from 423 in 2006. The death toll was around 17,000 and 211 million people were affected. The lower numbers were partly because there were fewer earthquakes and volcano eruptions than usual. Hydrological disasters like floods and storms killed nearly 9,000 people in 2007, with Asia hit hardest. Cyclone Sidr was the deadliest disaster of the year, killing 4,234 people in Bangladesh. Some 14 percent of the country's population was affected by natural disasters - the highest rate in Asia. But other countries had their share of major events too, with Mexico, Uruguay and Zambia experiencing their worst flooding since CRED began keeping disaster records in 1988. The two floods that hit the United Kingdom were exceptional, affecting more than 370,000 people, but Europe's experience of natural disasters is nonetheless relatively mild compared to most of the rest of the world. Despite the global upward trend in recorded disasters, the number of people affected remains more or less the same - an average of 234 million people a year between 2000 and 2006. CRED's analysts don't know if the relatively stable death toll over time means governments and communities are better at warning and response, or whether victims are more likely to be reported and recorded these days. You can find CRED's full disaster statistics online.
Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.
Leave a Reply
When you submit a comment to us we request your name, e-mail address and optionally a link to a website. Please note where you submit a website address, we may link to it via your name. By sending us a comment, you accept that we have the right to show the comment and your name to users. Although we require your email address, this will not be published on the site, and is only required to enable us to check facts with you, e.g. if you are making a claim we can not confirm easily. Additionally, if you would like your comment removed at anytime, you'll have to use this e-mail address when you contact us. To remove a comment at any time please e-mail us at blogs-(at)-reuters-(dot)-com (address obscured to avoid spam) specifying who you are and what you would like removed. We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information. We reserve the right to edit comments in order to maintain the quality of the comments, and may not include links to irrelevant material. We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous. Reuters will use your data in accordance with Reuters privacy policy. Reuters Group is primarily responsible for managing your data. As Reuters is a global company your data will be transferred and available internationally, including in countries which do not have privacy laws but Reuters seeks to comply with its privacy policy.
Unlike some other content on this website, the written content in this article may be republished or redistributed by any means free of charge. Any use of photographs and graphics on this website is expressly prohibited. You must check whether written content contained in other articles on this website may be republished or redistributed without the express permission of Reuters or the relevant third party provider.
Ruth Gidley has been on the AlertNet team since late 1999. Before that, she lived in Guatemala, working first with a small local NGO and then as a journalist for a Central American news service. Ruth, who has a Masters in Latin American Studies, has edited a book on human rights in Guatemala, and written chapters for books on truth monuments and on Native American traditions.
