Better preparation is preventing deaths despite worsening climate disasters, UN says

Climate disasters are getting worse, but fewer people are dying thanks to better warning systems and planning, says a top UN official.

"Fewer people are dying of disasters and if you look at that as a proportion of total population, it's even fewer," the new United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Kamal Kishore, head the UN's office for disaster risk reduction, said.

“Twenty years ago there was no tsunami early warning system except for one small part of the world. Now the whole world is covered by a tsunami warning system," he said, referring to the 2004 tsunami that claimed approximately 230,000 lives in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.

According to Kishore people are getting better warnings about tropical cyclones - also called hurricanes and typhoons - so now the chances of dying in a tropical cyclone in a place like the Philippines are about one-third of what they were 20 years ago.

Better hospital preparation and general improvements have also reduced deaths and handled a surge in births during cyclones.

In 1999, a super cyclone in eastern India killed nearly 10,000 people. A similar storm in 2013 killed only a few dozen. Last year, under Kishore's watch, Cyclone Biparjoy killed fewer than 10 people.

The same goes for flood deaths, the former disaster chief for India, Kishore pointed out.

Global deaths per storm event have dropped from a ten-year average of about 24 in 2008 to a ten-year average of about 8 in 2021, according to a global disaster database created by disaster epidemiologist Debarati Guha-Sapir of the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels,

Flood deaths per event have decreased from ten-year averages of nearly 72 to about 31, her data indicates.

While there are fewer deaths globally from disasters, there are still pockets in the poorest of countries, especially in Africa, where deaths are worsening or at least staying the same, Guha-Sapir said.

Countries like India and Bangladesh have developed warning systems, reinforced infrastructure like hospitals, and have disaster preparedness plans due to growing wealth and education. However, poorer nations and communities lack resources to adequately protect themselves, she noted.