The Asia-Pacific region suffered US$ 1.5 trillion loss in a total of 5,000 natural disasters in the past 45 years, says a latest United Nations report.
It accounts for 41 per cent of the total global disaster harms, according to the survey that also counted loss of lives at some two million in these calamities.
The report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) described the cyclones in Bangladesh in 1970 and 1990 as worse than all of these disasters from the perspective of loss of life and their impacts on people.
'The Overview of Natural Disasters and their Impacts in Asia and the Pacific 1970 - 2014' was shared at the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan.
It mentioned that cyclone Bhola killed 300,000 people and affected 3.6 million more.
Though the report rated the Bangladesh cyclone in 1990 as second-largest storm regarding fatalities for killing 138,000 people and affecting 15 million others, it, however, said notably less people died in the disaster due primarily to disaster-risk-management efforts in the country.
The ESCAP prepared the report from the point that 88 per cent of the people affected by natural disasters worldwide in the past 45 years live in the Asia and Pacific region.
It illustrates how floods, storms, earthquakes and tsunamis have been the most violent natural disasters in the region, claiming 92 per cent of lives lost and 76 per cent of economic losses.
The Overview of Natural Disasters and their Impacts in Asia and the Pacific 1970 - 2014 shows a decline in the average number of fatalities per event, despite a rise in the number of such disasters.
However, the economic losses in the region have surged significantly from US$ 5.0 billion per year in the 1970s to around US$ 75 billion a year in recent years.
It is revealed that six billion people from the region were affected by disasters over the same period, which accounts for 87.6 per cent of globally affected people.
Four types of disasters - earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and storms - were responsible for 91.8 per cent of the total economic losses, the report says.
Economic losses from natural disasters increased from 0.09 per cent of the global GDP in the 1970s to around 0.27 per cent in recent years.
The report suggests building resilience to natural disasters in Asia and the Pacific "as an imperative for economic growth to continue at the current pace".
Between 1970 and 2014 the world saw 11,985 natural-hazard events affecting six billion people.
Of these, 5,139 natural disasters took place in the Asia-Pacific region, 1,652 in South and South-West Asia (the highest number of cases) followed by a total of 1,000 for South- East Asia and East and North-East Asia combined.
The UN agency finds that the least-developed countries and small island developing states are highly exposed to disaster risk.
"LDCs lost on average US$ 592 million per year, a significant part of their GDP," says the report.
Another fatal natural disaster is considered cyclone 'Nargis' that hit Myanmar in 2008, which killed a similar number of people like Bangladesh in 1990.
The Philippines is often devastated by typhoons, including the Super Typhoon "Haiyan" in November 2013 which killed over 6,000 people and displaced approximately 4 million people.
Earthquakes and tsunamis have wrought devastation over the period, with some of the worst events being the 1976 Great Tangshan Earthquake which killed almost 242,000 people in China, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that killed over 220,000, and, more recently, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that killed almost 20,000 people and affected the lives of around 369,000.
smunima@yahoo.com
