Countries in the Asia-Pacific region, like Vietnam pictured here, suffer the most from costly disasters.By 2030, the world may be experiencing around 560 disasters, ranging from fires to chemical accidents, every single year. That’s an average of more than one major disaster each day. And even this might be an underestimate as climate change worsens over the course of the next crucial decades.
But it hasn’t always been so. So why have disasters become such a giant issue in today’s world? Policymakers have poorly assessed the risks of disasters, on account of their “optimism, underestimation, and invincibility,” the authors write. “These are the events that can wipe out hard-earned development gains, leading already vulnerable communities or entire regions into a downward spiral,” co-author Markus Enenkel of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative toldThe situation with insurance is also dire. Only 40 percent of disaster-related losses since 1980 were insured, with that number sinking devastatingly close to zero in some developing countries, according to the report.
“Disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks,” Mizutori said in the UN release. “By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction. Critical sectors, from government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk.