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Current threats to urban safety and security17settlements and forcibly evict households from their shelter.It operates on both sides of the supply-and-demandequation, constraining the supply of investment in newhousing and the demand for new housing and improvementsto existing housing. 71With these concerns in mind, Chapters 5 and 6 of thisGlobal Report will examine the problem of insecurity oftenure, assessing the scale of urban evictions and their distributionaround the world, as well as examining the range ofremedies to insecurity of tenure. These remedies includefull ownership to varying forms of short- and longer-termoccupancy permits. One important issue here involves theidentification of housing units and plot boundariesthemselves. An interesting experiment has been the streetaddressing programme undertaken in Dakar, Senegal, wherehousing units are given addresses, which offers some form oflegal recognition and, hence, a degree of security; but havingan address does not, by itself, imply legal ownership orunlimited occupancy. 72Number of disasters600500400300200100NATURAL AND HUMAN-MADE DISASTERS019751980 1985 1990 1995 2000The third threat to urban safety and security addressed inthis Global Report is the growing frequency of natural andhuman-made disasters. The number of major disasters in theworld grew from under 100 in 1975 to almost 550 in 2000(see Figure 1.4) 73 The economic costs of natural disastershave also grown, some 14 times more than during the1950s, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimatingmaterial losses to be US$652 billion during the 1990s(see Figure 1.5). 74 Studies estimate that a total of 4.1 billionpeople in the world were affected from 1984 to 2003, with1.6 billion affected from 1984 to 1993, and the numbergrowing to almost 2.6 billion from 1994 to 2003. 75 Thesenumbers have increased, as well, with the increasedfrequency and scale of natural disasters during the 2004 to2006 period, including the toll of death (220,000 people)and homeless (1.5 million) from the Indian Ocean Tsunamiof December 2004 and the Pakistan earthquake of October2005, which killed 86,000 people and left millionshomeless. 76 It is important to note that 98 per cent of the211 million people affected by natural disasters annuallyfrom 1991 to 2000 were living in developing countries. 77The location of these disasters in developingcountries is particularly important because of the impact ontheir already low levels of income and poverty. Data on thedistribution of these disaster ‘hotspots’ is presented inChapter 7. While the tsunami reduced Indonesia’s GDPgrowth only marginally, by 0.1 to 0.4 per cent, the provinceof Aceh lost capital stock equivalent to 97 per cent of itsGDP. The Kashmir earthquake caused estimated losses ofUS$5 billion, or roughly equivalent to total developmentassistance to Pakistan, a large country of over 150 millionpeople, for the previous three years. The periodic floodsaffecting Bangladesh and Mozambique continue to wipe outthe agriculture and infrastructure in two of the world’spoorest countries. These differences in country circumstancesmean a lot. Landslides in Venezuela and storms inFrance in December 1999 both caused about US$3 billion indamages; but France is much richer than Venezuela, with thecosts of individual buildings also likely to be higher. Similarly,Venezuela lost 50,000 people, while the death toll in Francewas only 123. 78 An Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development (OECD) study concluded that outsidepost-disaster financing and donations usually represent lessthan 10 per cent of the disaster losses, so the event is ‘apermanent loss of development momentum.’ 79The increasing frequency of these events, therefore,is a matter of great concern. Patterns of climate changeresulting from global warming, rises in sea temperatures andresulting weather patterns have all contributed to a 50 percent increase in extreme weather events from the 1950s tothe 1990s. 80 This includes heat waves that have produceddramatic losses of life in Chicago, France and south India(see Chapter 7). For example, during the last 15 years, morepeople have died in the US from heat stress than from allUS$ billions, 2001 values75050025001950–59Figure 1.4Natural disasters areincreasingSource: World Bank, 2006a, p4Figure 1.5The rising cost ofdisasters1960–69 1970–79 1980–89 1990–99Note: The data is for ‘great’disasters in which the ability ofthe region to help itself isdistinctly overtaxed, makinginterregional or internationalassistance necessary.Source: World BankIndependent Evaluation Group,2006, p5.