admin November 7th, 2011
African countries prone to floods, droughts and cyclones – and that’s most of them – had another dose of bad news last week when the latest global carbon emissions data was released by the US Department of Energy.
Emissions in 2010 jumped by the biggest amount on record – so much for the fine words of the Copenhagen and Cancun summits.
This means that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just four years ago. And that means that the risk of extreme weather events has also risen. Since these extreme weather events disproportionately affect poorer countries in general and Africa in particular, the inability of the developed world – and that includes China and India who are now both major emitters – to reduce emissions has a direct effect on African lives and livelihoods.
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Tags: Cancun, Carbon emissions, China, Climate change, Copenhagen, cyclone, Drought, Floods, Global warming, India, IPCC, Kyoto Protocol, natural disasters, USA
admin June 29th, 2010
The number of natural disasters around the world fell year-on-year in 2009 according to the Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2009 produced by CRED (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters). And it also fell below the 2000-08 average.
But CRED, which is a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre, warns that although the upward trend in disaster occurrence has stabilized in 2009 it is not possible to identify a trend from this fact: “In general, a high variation exists in the reported number of deaths and victims from one year to the next. This is mostly due to single disaster events that cause a tremendous human impact.” In 2009 there were no events like the 2002 drought in India (300 million victims), the 2004 Tsunami (226,408 deaths across 12 countries) or cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar in 2008 causing 138,366 deaths.
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Tags: China, CRED, cyclone, Drought, earthquake, Floods, Global warming, India, Indian Ocean Tsunami, Myanmar, natural disasters, Storm, WHO
admin January 15th, 2010
As the news this morning reports rising anger in Haiti at the ongoing failure of aid and relief supplies to arrive on the island, one thing is clear – the world was not ready.
That is not to say that we should all have foreseen a ‘once-in-200-years’ event. Or that we should have known that it was going to happen this week on Haiti. And it is not to underplay the devastation to an already weak infrastructure that has been caused by the earthquake. The level of devastation is such that it clearly makes it even harder to get such goods as are available onto the island.
But it is still true to say that we were not ready. There were not sufficient stockpiles of basic goods and medical supplies nearby, or even in the same hemisphere. None of this is the fault of the aid agencies who are, as always, achieving miracles with the resources that they have available. But the way that the emergency relief system operates works against them.
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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Haiti, Human Development Index, Myanmar, natural disasters
admin January 10th, 2010
Northern Malawi was hit by a number of earthquakes in the course of December, with 4,600 families needing assistance. Now Madagascar is bracing itself for the probable arrival of tropical cyclone Edzani, which is being forecast will hit the island on January 14th.
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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Madagascar, Malawi, UN
admin December 15th, 2009
The map below, published last week, is from the Global Climate Risk Index 2009 (CRI), produced by Germanwatch and re-insurance giants Munich Re. Taken at face value it appears to show that the continent with the lowest climate risk in the world is Africa.
Asia has the highest risk, with China and India at the forefront, but even Europe is shown to be at greater climate risk than Africa. Only Mozambique and Madagascar appear within the top 50 countries in the world.
But, as in so many things statistical, all is not as it seems.
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Tags: China, Climate change, cyclone, Floods, Global warming, Mozambique, Munich Re, Myanmar, Storm, USA
admin November 26th, 2009
The island state of Madagascar is the African country where the highest number of people are made homeless by natural disaster according to an analysis of EM-DAT data by Advance Aid. And this year things could be even worse for the islanders.
The continent’s top ten for the 2000-08 period are listed in the table below:
Average Annual Homeless by Natural Disaster, 2000-08
1 Madagascar 58,964
2 Uganda 42,108
3 Somalia 25,889
4 Sudan 24,253
5 Algeria 22,444
6 DR Congo 15,663
7 Mozambique 8,610
8 Mali 7,391
9 Zimbabwe 7,333
10 Malawi 7,129
Source: EM-DAT
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Tags: cyclone, Floods, Madagascar, natural disasters, Pre-Positioning, Storm
admin October 14th, 2009
The sheer scale of the devastation caused by the cyclones that hit the Philippines continues to shock and amaze. The cyclones left 648 dead, with many still missing, and affected more than six million people, some 300,000 of whom are still housed in makeshift evacuation centres.
Now the UN is to revise its appeal made on 7th October. Initially it called for $74m, but now it says that this “was clearly not enough” and the UN is stressing that this number would be revised upwards when more detailed reports come in from the field.
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Tags: cyclone, earthquake, Floods, Indonesia, Philippines, Samoa, South East Asia, tsunami, UN