Disasters in numbers – 2011 wasn’t that bad a year, just 207 million people affected
admin January 22nd, 2012
Welcome to 2012. However, this year is unlikely to be better than 2011.
The thing about major disasters is that whilst we don’t know exactly where the next one is going to hit, we can be certain that there will be a next one – and even take some well-informed guesses about where it might hit.
That said, the picture in 2011 was somewhat different from that of recent years. The annual report produced by CRED (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters) shows that the total number of natural disasters was down from just under 400 in 2011 to 302 last year. This compares with a peak of 432 natural disasters in 2005.
And there was a disproportionate tendency for the 2011 disasters to affect developed rather than developing countries – think of the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, the massive Japan quake and tsunami, severe storms and tornadoes in the United States. The result being that, at $366bn, the economic damage caused by natural disasters in 2011 was the highest ever – topping 2005’s $243bn by nearly 50%. Clearly this dollar total was largely driven by the $210bn cost of the Japanese earthquake.
Japan also suffered the most deaths from natural disasters in the year – 19,846 as a result of the earthquake and tsunami.
But the ‘intensity’ of natural disasters still falls most heavily on developing countries – nearly half of the population of Somalia were affected (or killed) by natural disasters in 2011 and the other most heavily affected countries were Cambodia, Djibouti, Niger and Thailand.
Many of the stats produced by CRED show that 2011 was a ‘below average’ year compared with the first decade of the new century. The total number of people affected by disasters – 206 million – was down on the 232 million average for the 2001-10 period. And the 30,000 people killed by disasters were well down on the 107,000 average.
The Philippines had the highest number of disasters (33), followed by China (21) and the USA (19).
So, fingers crossed for whatever 2012 has in store for us all.
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