- The United Nations said that drought caused the most deaths among the deadliest weather-related disasters in the world.
- A new report released on Tuesday emphasized that weather-related disasters have increased, but the death toll has decreased.
- More than 90% of deaths occur in developing countries.
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According to a United Nations report, drought is the leading cause of death from the world’s worst disasters in the past 50 years. World Meteorological Organization Released on Tuesday.
The United Nations agency’s report considered more than 11,000 weather disasters in the past half-century, highlighting the four specific droughts that occurred in East Africa in the 1970s and 1980s as the main killers. A total of 650,000 people died in the drought. The second leading cause of death from disasters is storms, which killed more than 575,000 people.
According to the report, disasters related to weather, climate or floods now occur five times more frequently than in the 1970s, but the number of deaths caused by them has decreased significantly.
In the 1970s and 1980s, an average of 170 people died a day, which dropped to 90 in the 1990s. In the 2010s, 40 people died every day due to weather disasters.
According to the report, more than 90% of deaths occur in developing countries.
The report states that at the same time, the economic losses caused by these disasters have increased sevenfold in the past 50 years. The six worst disasters were caused by hurricanes in the United States, with economic losses totaling more than R7 trillion.
“Due to climate change, the number of extreme weather, climate and water events is increasing and will become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world,” WMO Secretary-General Professor Petri Taras said in a statement. “This means more heat waves, droughts and forest fires, as we have recently observed in Europe and North America. There is more water vapor in our atmosphere, which exacerbates extreme rains and deadly floods. The ocean is changing. The warmth affects the frequency and the area where the strongest tropical storm exists.”
He said that due to improvements in multi-hazard early warning systems, the global community has become better at saving lives, even though only half of the 193 WMO member states actually have these systems.
