Economic risks of disasters soar over $1.5 trillion: UN

GENEVA, May 10 (AFP): More than $1.5 trillion of the world's wealth is exposed to harm from natural disasters, as the economic risks soar despite signs that efforts to reduce the human toll are working, the UN said Tuesday. A report for a biennial UN conference on disaster risk that opened here estimated that the amount of global GDP exposed to harm by disasters had nearly tripled from $525.7 billion 40 years ago to $1.58 trillion. Meanwhile, the risk of economic losses in wealthy (OECD) countries due to floods has increased by 160 per cent over the past 30 years, while for tropical cyclones the risk has grown by 262 per cent, the report estimated. "The risk of losing wealth in disasters is actually increasing faster than that wealth is being created," said Andrew Maskrey, coordinator of the 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. "Losses from disasters are often at least as great as those a country is experiencing through high inflation or armed conflict for example," Maskrey told journalists. About 2,000 experts from around the world are attending the four-day conference. It includes a discussion spearheaded by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on preparations for nuclear accidents, following the destruction wrought by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on the Fukushima-Daiichi atomic plant. The report by the UN's disaster reduction unit said the damage inflicted by mainly natural disasters on housing, infrastructure and public assets such as schools and hospitals was "soaring in many low and middle income countries."