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The second Wednesday of October has been designated International Day For Disaster Reduction (IDDR) by the United Nations. This year, the focus is on Making Children & Youth Partners in Disaster Risk Reduction.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for this year’s IDDR states:
"Vulnerability to disaster is growing faster than resilience.[...] Disaster risk reduction should be an everyday concern for everybody. Let us all invest today for a safer tomorrow."
According to United Nations report dated 12-Aug-2011 called Implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction:
- The increasing financial, social and political cost of disasters is evident. Mortality risk associated with weather-related hazards is declining at the global
level, while economic losses continue to increase across all regions.
- Economic loss risk is growing faster in higher-income countries. Since 1980, economic loss related to tropical cyclones increased by 262 per cent in high-income countries, compared to 155 per cent in low-income countries.
- In the period 1970-2010, the world population increased by 87 per cent. During the same period, the population growth in flood-prone river basins increased by 114 per cent, and in cyclone-prone coastlines by 195 per cent.
- Half of humanity is now living in cities. By 2050, urbanization will rise to 70 per cent and urban risk will continue to increase.
As the world’s population expands, there are simply more of us in harm’s way. Earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, cyclones, and other natural disasters have the potential to affect a greater number of people every year.
The UN News Centre published the following report yesterday focusing on Europe’s vulnerability to disaster.+
Europe’s vulnerability to natural disasters quickly rising – UN agency
11 October 2011 –
The number of natural hazards taking place in Europe increased significantly last year, the United Nations disaster risk reduction agency says, warning that the region’s governments need to implement prevention platforms to significantly reduce the danger they pose to their populations.
“In 2010, Europe saw the biggest increase in disaster events – plus 18.2 per cent – compared to the decade’s averages,” chief of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) Margareta Wahlström told participants at a forum yesterday in Skopje, the capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
“In terms of economic damages, it accounted for 14.3 per cent of reported global disaster losses in 2010, with most of the damages caused by climatological and hydro meteorological events.”
Earlier this year, in UNDP: Supercities At Seismic Risk I wrote about a warning that half of the world’s supercities (urban areas with 2 million – 15 million inhabitants) were at high risk of seismic activity.
Geohazards International, a non-profit organization that for the past 20 years has been dedicated to reducing the loss of life and suffering around the world in communities most vulnerable to earthquakes, has a good deal of information on at-risk cities as well.
The following comes from their Vulnerable Communities page.
And last August, in Weathering Heights: Billion-Dollar-Plus Weather Disasters I outlined the 9 (now 10) billion-dollar-plus weather disasters in the United States in 2011.
When you add the the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, the horrendous Port-au-Prince earthquake of 2010, the floods in Pakistan, and the heat-wave & fires in Russian last year, and scores of other disasters over the past 24 months, you can see just how vulnerable our population really is.
While community resilience requires action by local, national, and international authorities, there are also steps that individuals and businesses can take.
- Having a family or business disaster plan, and being properly prepared for a variety of emergencies, can contribute to your community’s resilience.
- Making your homes, and businesses, safer during an earthquake or other disaster can save lives, and reduce costs and downtime.
- Participating in local emergency drills, such as the upcoming Shakeout earthquake drills (see A Whole Lotta Shakeouts Goin' On), or local IDDR events helps promote community resilience.
- And learning basic first aid skills, and CPR, can mean you can help provide immediate assistance during a disaster.
For more ideas, visit the IDDR archives page, where you’ll find resources on earlier campaigns.
Earthquakes, like Hurricanes, Tornados, Floods, and yes . . . even pandemics . . . are hazards everyone should be aware of, and prepared to deal with.
Everyone should have a disaster plan. Everyone should have a good first aid kit, a `bug-out bag’, and sufficient emergency supplies to last a bare minimum of 72 hours.
For more on disaster preparedness, I would invite you to visit:
In An Emergency, Who Has Your Back?
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