2010 among deadliest years for disasters, says UN

(January 26, 2011) The United Nations has said that 2010 was one of the deadliest years for natural disasters in the past two decades. UN’s top disaster reduction official said on Monday that unless better preparations are put in place now, many more disasters can be expected in years to come.
Some 373 natural disasters claimed the lives of more than 296,800 people last year, affecting nearly 208 million and costing nearly $110 billion, according to annual data compiled by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) and supported by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, UNISDR, the UN body charged with helping coordinate efforts to achieve substantive reduction in disaster losses and build resilient nations and communities. “These figures are bad, but could be seen as benign in years to come,” said the head of UNISDR and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström. She said “Unless we act now, we will see more and more disasters due to unplanned urbanization and environmental degradation. And weather-related disasters are sure to rise in the future, due to factors that include climate change.”