Natural disasters, at the origin of 606 000 deaths in the last two decades

A few days before the COP21, UN conference on climate change to be held in Paris from November 30 to December 11, 2015, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) has published a report in which it presents statistics related to damage caused by natural disasters over the past 20 years.

Over the period going from 1995 to 2015, 606 000 persons perished in climatic or geological events, an average of 30 000 deaths per year, the majority of which (89%) in low-income countries. The Asian continent alone cumulates more than half of the casualties. As a reminder, Cyclone Nargis (Myanmar, 2008) caused the death of 138 000 people.

The number of injured people, becoming homeless, or receiving emergency assistance during natural disasters, is equal to 4.1 billion, or 56.94% of the world population.

Referring to the same report, the economic losses (insured and uninsured) generated by these events are estimated at 1.891 trillion USD.