NEW DELHI: Around 4 crore million new internal displacements were recorded in 2020, of which over 75 per cent were displaced due to disasters driven by climate events like tropical cyclones, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, according to the State of Global Climate 2021 report by World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) released Wednesday.
The report said that the average annual number of dead and missing persons in the event of a disaster per 100 000 people has fallen from 1.98 during 2005-2014 to 1.32 during 2011-2020. Nonetheless, in absolute terms, disaster-related mortality remains high.
In the last three years alone (2018-2020), a total of about 250 000 disaster-related deaths and missing persons were reported by an average of 74 countries. There is a growing vulnerability and conflict, humanitarian needs are at their highest ever with one in every 33 people globally in need of assistance and protection.
The single largest event with highest mortality in 2021 was the earthquake in Haiti resulting in over 2500 deaths. However, the impact of climate change and variability continues to manifest in the form of hydrometeorological disasters.
“In 2021, floods resulted in around 1200 deaths in India, over 350 deaths in China, and over 200 deaths in Germany and Belgium. At the same time, over 600 people lost their lives due to heatwaves in Northern America,” it said.
In the last three years (2018-2020), a total of approximately 319 million people were affected due to disasters as reported by an average of 66 countries each year. Recurrent droughts continue to affect millions of people around the world, in particular in countries in Africa and Asia.
On the economic cost of disasters, the report says in the last three years (2018-2020), total economic losses of about USD 148.32 billion have been reported by an average of 53 countries each year.
“That this is an underestimation (due to limited reporting on loss and damage), can be ascertained from the fact that global disaster losses from natural hazards in 2020 alone is estimated to be USD 210 billion by the insurance sector, which was over 25 per cent higher than in the previous year87. In fact, over a four-decade period starting 1980, total losses due to such disasters have been estimated to be USD 5.2 trillion,” it added.
In 2019, the agriculture sector accounted for 60 per cent of recorded losses, followed by the housing infrastructure sector. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that between 2008 and 2018, disasters cost the agricultural sectors of developing-country economies over USD 108 billion in damaged or lost crop and livestock production.