Economic risks of disasters 'soar over $1.5 trillion'

AFP: More than $1.5 trillion of the world's wealth is exposed to harm from natural disasters, as the economic risks soar despite signs that efforts to reduce the human toll are working, the UN said on Tuesday. A report for a biennial UN conference on disaster risk that opened here estimated that the amount of global GDP exposed to harm by disasters had nearly tripled from $525.7 billion 40 years ago to $1.58 trillion.

Meanwhile, the risk of economic losses in wealthy (OECD) countries due to floods has increased by 160 percent over the past 30 years, while for tropical cyclones the risk has grown by 262 percent, the report estimated. "The risk of losing wealth in disasters is actually increasing faster than that wealth is being created," said Andrew Maskrey, coordinator of the 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

"Losses from disasters are often at least as great as those a country is experiencing through high inflation or armed conflict for example," Maskrey told journalists.

…The report by the UN's disaster reduction unit said the damage inflicted by mainly natural disasters on housing, infrastructure and public assets such as schools and hospitals was "soaring in many low and middle income countries."

Maskrey suggested that the costs were growing largely because prevention or mitigation measures -- such as land planning in hazard areas or resistant housing, schools or hospitals -- were failing to keep pace with faster and broader economic growth. In one example, the United Nations estimated that the amount of disaster losses absorbed by each Mexican government in power since 1982 has doubled from an average of $10 billion to $20 billion….

A sign in Rangoon toppled by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, shot by a US State Department employee, Wikimedia Commons