Economic losses from natural hazards amount to $3.5 trillion

The Government of Japan and the World Bank have called on national governments to foster a culture of prevention by integrating disaster risk management in development policy and investment programs to meet economic losses from natural hazards that now amount to trillions of dollars.

Integrating risk management is meant to help accelerate efforts to manage growing disaster risks, notes a joint statement from the Government of Japan and the World Bank, released during the Sendai Dialogue, part of the 2012 World Bank Group/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Annual Meetings from Oct. 9 and 10. Economic losses caused by natural hazards have more than tripled over the last three decades and amount to $3.5 trillion, the statement notes.

“No country can fully insulate itself from disaster risk, but every country can reduce its vulnerability,” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said in Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku Region, which bore the brunt of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Swiss Re reported in March that insured losses for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was estimated at $35 billion.

“Better planning can help reduce damage, and loss of life, from disasters, and prevention can be far less costly than disaster relief and response,” Kim said.

Japan probably has the best early-warning system and best prevention system of any country in the world, he noted. “Still there was enormous damage.”

Over the last 10 years, the World Bank financed almost $18 billion in activities focusing on natural disasters, the joint statement notes. More than two-thirds of the World Bank’s country partnership strategies have started to incorporate disaster risk management, and the goal is to bring that figure to 100%.

There is an urgent need to communicate the dangers of climate change in light of the rapidly changing environment and some “frightening” data, Kim said at a press conference in Tokyo on Oct 11.

Responding to a question, he noted that since becoming head of the World Bank he has looked into the data on climate change and has been surprised to find that, even in the last six months to a year, “the data on climate change has become ever more frightening. Things that we thought would happen only with higher degree change in the average temperature are happening now. And as a scientist, I feel that it is my moral responsibility to be very clear in communicating the dangers of climate change.”

Kim suggested that lessons learned on disaster risk management can be shared and applied elsewhere. “The world is interconnected,” he noted. “Knowledge gained in one part of the world can apply to another.”