Avoiding disasters in a dangerous world

For the Malawians, Cyclone Freddy was an absolute disaster. In March this year, the storm struck the African country twice during its destructive track in southern Africa, which set a record length of one month.

This extreme weather event and its long duration would have been difficult for any country to cope with, but for Malawi, one of the most vulnerable developing nations in the world, it was devastating. Hundreds of people died, more than half a million were displaced and thousands of hectares of crops were destroyed.

As of early April, hundreds of people were still missing and around 1.1 million were in need of humanitarian aid. In addition, the severe storm hit during the worst cholera outbreak in two decades, adding to the pressures on an already severely overstretched health system.

That same month, a group of UN human rights experts called for more humanitarian aid, but also called on Malawi to “develop durable solutions to prevent, minimize and address displacement due to disasters through climate adaptation measures, preparedness and risk reduction.

Most severe, costly and deadly disasters

The Freddy impact is just one example of the growing number of complex and costly catastrophes that led 187 countries to sign an international agreement to reduce their risk in 2015.

The Sendai Framework, named after the Japanese city where it was adopted, is an international UN agreement designed to reduce losses from disasters, whether natural or man-made. Its objective is to substantially reduce deaths from these accidents, reduce damage to infrastructure and establish better early warning systems. All this by 2030.

However, eight years later, little progress has been made: according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), there has been an 80% increase in the number of people affected since 2015 and many of the lessons from past misfortunes seem to have been ignored.

mid-term report

A high-level meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on May 18-19 will provide an opportunity to outline the many challenges that have stalled progress and chart a course towards a more secure world.

Delegates at the event will have perused the report of the Mid-Term Review of the Framework’s implementation, which lays bare the scale of the problem. Published in April to mark the halfway point between its release and the 2030 deadline, it’s not an encouraging read.

The report emphasizes the escalating impacts of climate change since 2015, and the brutally uneven consequences, which are much more severe in developing countries; a case in point is the floods in Pakistan in 2022, which affected more than 33 million people and damaged millions of hectares of agricultural land, causing widespread food insecurity.

The increasing interconnectedness of the world’s societies, environments and technologies means that disasters can spread extremely quickly. The report points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a prime example, which began as a local outbreak in China in 2019, before rapidly spreading around the world, killing some 6.5 million people by the end of 2022.

“You don’t have to look far to find examples of how disasters are getting worse,” says Mami Mizutori, UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction and director of UNDRR. “The sad reality is that many of these disasters are preventable because they are caused by human decisions. The Mid-Term Review call to action is that countries must reduce risk in every decision, action and investment they make.”

© UNICEF/Muhammad Sohail

An eight-year-old girl near a school destroyed by flooding in Quetta, Pakistan.

countries at the forefront

Clearly not enough is being done: The costs of disasters continue to rise, but funding for risk reduction is not growing anywhere near the pace needed to deal with them.

However, as the report shows, there are many examples of countries implementing national plans to protect their citizens.

To date, preparedness plans have been enacted in 125 countries: from legislation in Costa Rica allowing all institutions to allocate budgets for emergency prevention and response, to Australia’s Disaster Fund, which will invest up to $200 million Australian dollars per year between 2023 and 2024 in resilience and prevention initiatives, and Barbados’ disaster clauses, which allow for an immediate debt freeze in the event of an economic shock caused by a catastrophe.

In fact, while the number of people affected continues to rise, the proportion of deaths has been reduced by more than half. The disaster-related mortality rate in the decade 2005-2014 was 1.77 per 100,000 global population, and in the decade 2012-2021 it dropped to 0.84, excluding COVID-19.

The recommendations of the Mid-Term Report and the measures being taken at the national level will be the basis of the discussions at the High Level Meeting. They include evidence that a safer world is possible by 2030 by investing in risk reduction.

Less than half of the least developed countries and only one third of small island developing States have a multi-hazard early warning system.

The UN helps in reduction of risk

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction helps decision makers around the world better understand risks and change their attitudes to them.

The UN agency’s expertise and presence in five regional representations are used to build and foster relationships with national and local governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society and the private sector.

The Office collects, collates and shares the latest high-quality information and technical data on risk reduction and resilience building more effectively. Hundreds of experts who work on the Office’s science and technology advisory groups are essential partners for governments and other stakeholders around the world.

Developing and deploying inclusive and accessible multi-hazard early warning systems is a key part of their work. Such systems save lives: On average, when a disaster strikes, death rates in countries that do not have them are eight times higher than in countries that have implemented them.