Natural disaster loss equals financial crisis

Not all the disasters mentioned here are weather- or climate-related, but you get the idea. Syahid Latif in VivaNews.com (Indonesia): The Natural Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) revealed that the loss due to the natural disasters in some Asia Pacific countries approximately of 1 percent on average of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the case of Indonesia, from the tsunami disaster in Aceh to the eruption of Mount Merapi, the loss and damage caused by the natural disasters were estimated to total Rp95.96 trillion. Meanwhile, the government’s budget for disaster relief is only Rp4 trillion a year.

"For Indonesia, the impacts of the disasters are very palpable. The impacts are enormous," said BNPB Head of Information Data and Public Relations Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, in a press statement received by VIVAnews.com, Thursday, August 4, 2011.

Quoting the 2011 Global Assessment Report (GAR), BNPB stated the loss due to the catastrophes amounted to 1 percent of the GDP annually, equivalent to the losses suffered by the countries experiencing the global financial crisis in 1980 and the 1990s.

In fact, according to Asia Pacific Disaster Report 2010 report prepared by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) and United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, noted that the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia, produced a quarter of the world’s GDP....

The destroyed Nutsspaarbank after the earthquake of 1926, from the Tropenmuseum Collection via Wikimedia Commons