The Anatomy of A Silent Crisis The Anatomy of A Silent Crisis

60 Forum 2009: Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis
Figure 10 — Physical and socio-economic vulnerability to climate change
Source: Maplecroft climate vulnerability indices; Dalberg analysis
Adaptation can reduce overall vulnerability, in particular among the world’s poorest. This can be
through policies of investing in early warning and evacuation systems to prepare people for storms,
or assisting farmers to modify the crops grown and the timing of planting and harvesting. The good
news is that there are some success stories of poor countries reducing vulnerability to the impacts of
climate change. Bangladesh, one of the countries most naturally vulnerable to climate change, has
taken steps over the past few years to become better prepared, and thus, less vulnerable. These
steps helped reduce mortality in Bangladesh during Cyclone Sidr in 2007 which killed approximately
forty times fewer people than a similar scale cyclone in 1991 (3,400 deaths versus 138,000) and that
is despite the subsequent population increases over the intervening period.
Poor countries suffer the vast majority of human impact of climate change
To illustrate how unevenly the human impact of climate change is distributed, figure 11 shows some
basic statistics on the burden of disasters. 98 percent of those affected in disasters between 2000 and
2004 and 99 percent of disaster casualties in 2008 were in developing countries. 36,188 Unequal access
to property insurance is another example of how people with low incomes are more exposed to the
impacts of climate change. Less than 3 percent of the insured property losses189 from disasters are in
low and lower middle income countries. Low-income households consider their biggest risk to be the
incapacitation of the main breadwinner190 which means that a disaster constitutes one of the greatest
risks they encounter.