Facts and Figures 2002- Canadian Red Cross

Facts and Figures 2002

A Decade of Disasters

Nearly 40,000 people were killed by disasters in 2001 - nearly double the figure for the previous year but lower than the decade average of 62,000. (WDR table 2 - CRED)

Deaths from natural disasters fell from nearly 2 million in the 1970s to just under 800,000 in the 1990s. (WDR figure 1.1 - CRED)

But the number of people affected by natural disasters has nearly tripled from just over 700 million in the 1970s to nearly 2 billion in the 1990s. (WDR figure 1.1 - CRED)

However, the number of people affected by disasters last year - 170 million - was below the decade's average of 200 million. (WDR table 3 - CRED)

2000-2001 have seen the highest number of weather-related disasters over the past decade. (WDR table 5 - CRED)

The decade average of estimated damage from disasters is $69 billion although in 2001, the figure is well below that at $24 billion. (WDR table 4 - CRED)

Disasters Hit The Poor Hardest

In 1998, the last major El Niño year, Peru suffered storm damage to public infrastructure estimated at 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and in 1999, landslides in Venezuela were estimated to cost more than 10 percent of GDP. (WDR chapter 2)

In the 1990s, countries classified as low human development nations accounted for only one-fifth of disasters but more than half the fatalities. (WDR chapter 8 - CRED)

The Role Of Donors

Expressed as a percentage of donor countries' Gross National Product (GNP), development aid remained static during 2000 at just under 0.39 percent. (WDR chapter 8 - CRED/OECD)

Only Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Luxembourg exceed UN development aid target of 0.7 percent of GNP. (WDR chapter 8 - CRED/OECD)

A separate ECHO disaster preparedness budget set up in 1994, spent only $7 million last year, just 1.5 percent of the total ECHO humanitarian aid budget. (WDR chapter 1 - ECHO)

Of the money Mozambique requested to replace simple river and rain gauges destroyed by floods in 2000, donors promised just 15 percent; yet in all they pledged $470 million for reconstruction. (WDR chapter 3)