Natural Disasters Displaced 22 Million People Last Year, 3 Times More Than War

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/17/3568447/natural-disasters-displaced-22-million-people/

by Ari Phillips Posted on September 17, 2014
In 2013 natural disasters displaced some 22 million people, with more than four-fifths of those being in Asia, according to a new report. Using four decades of data, the study by the Norwegian Refugee Council found that floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and other hazards now cause twice as many people to lose their homes as in the 1970s. Over the last decade an average of 27 million people have lost their homes to disaster each year, and in 2010 that number rose to 42 million. In an especially bad year of violent conflict, 2013 saw three times more people lose their homes to natural disaster than war; this ratio has been as high as ten times in the past.

“Basically, the combination of mega natural disasters and hundreds of smaller natural disasters massively displaces people in many more countries than the countries that have war and conflict,” Jan Egeland, the secretary of the Norwegian refugee council, told The Guardian.

In a statement released with the report, Egeland said that this trend will continue as more people live and work in hazard-prone areas, and that “it is expected to be aggravated in the future by the impacts of climate change.”

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While climate change is understood to worsen many weather-driven natural disasters, much of the increase in disaster displacement comes from the rapid urbanization of rural populations across the world, especially in Asia and soon to be in Africa where the population is expected to double by 2050. According to the report the global population has grown by 96 percent since 1970 and the urban growth rate in developing countries has been more than three times that figure. This means more people are concentrated in countries that are especially vulnerable to natural disasters. Asia’s mega-cities are the most disaster-prone on the planet.

“These vast urban areas become traps when a natural disaster hits,” Egeland said. “People are crammed together and there is no escape. They live in river deltas, they live on hurricane beaches, they live along river beds that are easily flooded, they live where there are mud slides, and so on.”

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According to Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis response, costs related to natural disasters have increased from $50 billion a year in the 1980s to $200 billion in the last decade. Earlier this year she said only four percent of spending for natural disasters goes to prevention and preparedness, with the rest spent on response. She also said that “evidence shows every dollar spent on prevention brings at least $4 in savings on damage.”

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