Philippines landed as the fourth country with the highest number of disasters in the last 20 years according to a report released by the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters or CRED).
Based on the report entitled “Human Cost of Disasters: An Overview of the Last 20 years 2000-2019”, 7,348 disasters have been recorded worldwide according to CRED’s Emergency Event Database (EM-DAT) and the economic loss clinched to $2.97 trillion.
Approximately 1.2 million lives were lost and 4.03 billion people were affected by the disasters.
It also appears that the number of disasters that occur each year is at least 367, of which 44% is due to flooding and 28% due to typhoons.
On seven continents, Asia leads with the highest number of disasters with a total of 3,068 events between 2000 and 2019.
The report also shows that the Philippines is the fourth most populous country with 304 catastrophic events.
China, the origin of coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 is leading with 577 disasters. The United States followed with 467, and India with 321.
Indonesia came in fifth with 278 calamities.
UNDRR and CRED noted that the Philippines and the other four countries have large and diverse landmass and high population density which is why disaster is common.
Meanwhile, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) is urging government agencies, civil society, environment activists, and experts to promote national and local climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies and policies that will help reduce and prevent the occurrence of disasters.
The report was released at the height of International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on Tuesday, October 13.
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