GENEVA / DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
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STORY: GENEVA / DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
TRT: 01:55
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 23 NOVEMBER 2015, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
23 NOVEMBER 2015, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Aerial shot, Palais des Nations
2. Wide shot, press briefing in progress
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Debarati Guha-Sapir, Professor at Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain:
“The phenomenon, in fact, is two sides of the same coin, floods and droughts and they, in fact, affect the largest number of people. We will see some statistics on that afterwards, and they are in fact 80 percent of all weather related disasters. So over 3.4 billion people in the period that is covered by the report, have been affected by these two phenomena.”
4. Med shot, press briefing in progress
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Debarati Guha-Sapir, Professor at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain:
“They have enormous socio-economic effects on communities. We must not overlook that it’s not just a flood that happens and the media comes in on it, and after, you know, five days the waters go down and it is no longer interesting. That is not what happens. What actually happens is that harvest gets lost, people don’t have any food to eat any more. But this only shows up a month or two months after the phenomenon, right? So it is no longer an extreme event, it is an impact on the population that happens after one month or two months. So we must have longer-term solutions.”
6. Close up, press briefing in progress
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Debarati Guha-Sapir, Professor at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain:
“90 percent of all disasters are due to weather, due to climate, this is not just a marginal phenomenon. It takes a very large seat in the problematic of natural disasters. And, in fact, and we want to underline the fact, and in fact the problematic of development”.
8. Med shot, press briefing in progress
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Margareta Wahlstrom, Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR):
“It’s nothing new that the agreement is very important. But since 2015 is a symbolic year with all these major global policy instruments in very close proximity timewise, and they are very inter-related”.
10. Med shot, press briefing in progress
A new report issued today (23 Nov) by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) shows that over the last 20 years, 90 percent of major disasters have been caused by 6,457 recorded floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other weather-related events.
The report, entitled The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters finds that the five countries hit by the highest number of disasters are the United States, China, India, Philippines, and Indonesia.
The report and analysis compiled by UNISDR and the Belgian-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) demonstrates that since the first UN climate change conference (COP1) in 1995, 606,000 lives have been lost and 4.1 billion people have been injured, left homeless or in need of emergency assistance as a result of weather-related disasters.
Floods accounted for 47 percent of all weather-related disasters from 1995-2015, affecting 2,3 billion people and killing 157,000. Storms were the deadliest type accounting for 40 percent of global weather-related deaths.
Debarati Guha-Sapir, Professor at CRED told at a press briefing in Geneva that “the phenomenon, in fact, is two sides of the same coin, floods and droughts and they, in fact, affect the largest number of people. We will see some statistics on that afterwards, and they are in fact 80 percent of all weather related disasters. So over 3.4 billion people in the period that is covered by the report, have been affected by these two phenomena.”
The report also highlights data gaps, noting that economic losses from weather-related disasters are much higher than the recorded figure of US$1.891 trillion, which accounts for 71 percent of all losses attributed to natural hazards over the twenty-year period.
Only 35 percent of records include information about economic losses. UNISDR estimates that the true figure on disaster losses – including earthquakes and tsunamis – is between US$250 billion and US$300 billion annually.
Debarati Guha-Sapir explained that natural disaster “have enormous socio-economic effects on communities. We must not overlook that it’s not just a flood that happens and the media comes in on it, and after, you know, five days the waters go down and it is no longer interesting. That is not what happens. What actually happens is that harvest gets lost, people don’t have any food to eat any more. But this only shows up a month or two months after the phenomenon, right? So it is no longer an extreme event, it is an impact on the population that happens after one month or two months. So we must have longer-term solutions.”
Guha-Sapir emphasized that “90 percent of all disasters are due to weather, due to climate, this is not just a marginal phenomenon. It takes a very large seat in the problematic of natural disasters. And, in fact, and we want to underline the fact, and in fact the problematic of development”.
Expecting for an agreement among the participants at the end of the COP 21 meeting in Paris, the Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Margareta Wahlström concluded that “it’s nothing new that the agreement is very important. But since 2015 is a symbolic year with all these major global policy instruments in very close proximity timewise, and they are very inter-related”.
The development year started last March with the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year package endorsed by the UN General Assembly, which sets out clear targets for a substantial reduction in disaster losses, including mortality, numbers of people affected, economic losses and damage to critical infrastructure including schools and hospitals.