Disaster-resilient Societies
Disasters caused by earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and more can have devastating impacts on people, environments and economies.
But resilience – the ability of people and places to withstand these impacts and recover quickly – remains possible. Smart choices help us recover from disasters, while poor choices make us more vulnerable. These choices relate to how we grow our food, where and how we build our homes, how our financial system works, what we teach in schools and more.
With a quickening pace of disasters taking a greater toll on lives and property, and a higher degree of concentration of human settlements, a smart future means planning ahead and staying alert.
Facts and figures
- More than 226 million people are affected by disasters every year.
- From 2000 to 2010, economic damage as a result of disasters amounted to around US$ 1 trillion.
- Less than 0.7 per cent of total relief aid goes to disaster risk reduction.
- Of the 33 cities that will have at least 8 million residents by 2015, 21 are in coastal areas.
- Women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men during a disaster.
- More than 680,000 people died in earthquakes between 2000 and 2010 due mainly to poorly-built buildings.
- Since 1980, drought and associated famine have claimed nearly 558,000 lives and affected more than 1.6 billion people.
- In East Asia and the Pacific, the risks of dying from floods and cyclones have decreased by two thirds since 1980.
- On average, 102 million people are affected every year by floods, 37 million people by cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons, and nearly 366,000 by landslides.
- Most of the 3.3 million deaths from disasters in the last 40 years have been in poorer nations.
- Infographic: Impacts of Disasters since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit
Stories
- Cape Town: What it takes to be a role model city
- Saijo City Japan 'Steps Up' with school disaster risk reduction education programme
- Children's Charter for DRR: Protecting your village
- China and Africa Step Up Cooperation on Drought Risk Reduction
Videos
Related
- United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
- UNEP Disasters and Conflicts
- PreventionWeb
Want to get involved?
Do you have a vision of a world where all our communities are resilient in the face of disasters? Are you looking for ideas to reduce disaster risk?
Then join the global conversation and connect on Twitter using #futurewewant