The 21st Century climate challenge

Box 2.1Under-reporting climate disastersFigures on climate-related disasters come from the EM-DATInternational Disasters Database maintained by the Centre forResearch on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). The databasehas played a valuable role in improving the flow of information ondisasters over time. However, it has certain limitations.Sources for EM-DAT range from government agencies and theUN system to NGOs, insurance companies and press agencies.Some events are more reported than others: high-profi le disasterslike Hurricane Katrina attract more media attention than localdroughts. Similarly, some groups are almost certainly underreported:slum dwellers and people living in remote or marginalrural areas are examples.The criteria for an event being categorized as a disaster arerestrictive. Eligibility requirements include numbers killed oraffected (at least 10 and 100 respectively), the declaration of anational emergency, or a call for international assistance. Someclimate disasters do not meet these criteria. For example, during2007, just over 1 million people in Ethiopia were receiving droughtrelief under international aid programmes that registered onthe climate disasters database. Seven times this number werereceiving support under a national programme to protect nutritionlevels in drought-prone areas. That programme did not fi gure in thedatabase because it was not counted as humanitarian aid.There are wider sources of under-reporting. During 2006a crisis caused by late rains in Tanzania did not fi gure in theCRED database. However, a national food security vulnerabilityassessment found that the event and rising food prices had left 3.7million people at risk of hunger, with 600,000 destitute. Disasterstatistics also fail to expose the imminent risks faced by the poor.In Burkina Faso, for example, a good harvest in 2007 meant that thecountry did not make an emergency food aid appeal. Even so, theUnited States Agency for International Development (USAID) foodsecurity assessment warned that over 2 million people were at riskof food insecurity in the event of any disruption to rainfall.Finally, the disasters database provides a snapshot of numbersaffected immediately after the event, but not subsequently. WhenHurricane Stan struck Guatemala in October 2005, it affectedhalf a million people, the majority of them from poor, indigenoushouseholds in the Western Highlands. They figured in the databasefor that year. During 2006, food security assessments showed thatmany of those affected had been unable to restore their assetsand that production by subsistence farmers had not recovered.Meanwhile, food prices had increased sharply. The result was anincrease in chronic malnutrition in areas affected by Hurricane Stan.That outcome represented a local disaster that was not recordedin the database.2Climate shocks: risk and vulnerability in an unequal worldSource: Hoyois et al. 2007; Maskrey et al. 2007; USAID FEWS NET 2006.brunt. Floods frequently claim far more femalevictims because their mobility is restrictedand they have not been taught to swim. WhenBangladesh was hit by a devastating cyclone andflood in 1991, the death rate was reportedly fivetimes higher among women. In the aftermathof a disaster, restrictions on the legal rights andentitlements of women to land and property canlimit access to credit needed for recovery. 14Reported economic losses also paint a distortedpicture. While over 98 percent of peopleaffected by climate disasters live in developingcountries, economic impacts are skewed towardsrich countries. The reason for this is that costsare assessed on the basis of property values andinsured losses, which have been rising steeply(figure 2.3). All eight of the climate disastersregistering more than US$10 billion in damagesreported since 2000 took place in rich countries,six of them in the United States.Insurance markets under-report losses indeveloping countries, especially those sustainedby the poor. This is because loss claims reflectthe value of the assets and the wealth of thoseaffected. When tropical cyclones sweep acrossFlorida, they hit one of the world’s prime realestate locations, with properties protected byhigh levels of insurance coverage. When thesame cyclones hit slums in Haiti or Guatemala,the market value is lower and the real estate ofthe poor is largely uninsured.Is climate change implicated in the increasein climate disasters? Direct attribution isimpossible. Every weather event is the productof random forces and systemic factors. IfHurricane Katrina had stayed out at sea itwould have been just another powerful tropicalcyclone. However, climate change is creatingsystemic conditions for more extreme weatherevents. All hurricanes gather their strength fromthe heat of the oceans—and the world’s oceansare warming as a result of climate change. Moreintense storms with higher peak wind speedsand heavier precipitation are a predictableoutcome. Similarly, while individual droughts insub-Saharan Africa cannot be directly attributedHUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2007/2008 77