Latin America and the Caribbean is the second region in the world most affected by disasters. In just 23 years there have been 681 floods, 400 storms, 92 earthquakes, 78 landslides, 77 droughts, 49 episodes of extreme temperatures, 42 volcanic events and 36 forest fires. This is what the report reveals Panorama of Disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean 2000 – 2022recently published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
At least 190 million people were affected by 1,534 disasters recorded during the last 23 years. Floods are the most common disasters and the most affected countries have been Brazil, Colombia and Peru. It is also noted that since 2000, 12 of these events each caused more than $1 billion in total damages.
The next most common disasters are storms. For example, The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record with 30 named storms, including 14 hurricanes and 7 major hurricanes. The earthquakes that caused strong damage in the last 23 years in the region continue, since 65% of those that exceeded magnitude 8.0 were recorded in South America.
According to the report, another of the most devastating events is drought. It is the disaster that has affected the most people (53 million since 2000), causing 82% of all agricultural production losses between 2000 and 2022.
Drought in Bolivia. 2021. Photo: Native Foundation.
Saskia Carusi, head of external affairs for the Latin American office of UNDRR, highlights that there are several factors that increase the risk of disasters, among them the fact that the region has uneven economic development, that poverty rates have increased considerably as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and that climate change is increasing the risk in areas of unplanned urban growth, to the point that World Bank figures indicate that, by 2050, more than 17 million people in the region could be displaced.
“We have extensive experience responding to disasters in our region. However, in certain cases we see a cycle, where recovery from one disaster does not yet end when another arrives. The population served generally presents persistent and recurrent vulnerabilities,” says Shelley Cheatham, head of OCHA for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The enormous impact of disasters
One of the main messages of the report is that, in addition to high physical exposure to threats such as droughts, floods, landslides and earthquakes, Latin America and the Caribbean has a complex environment of risk factors, among which are climate change, the dense urban population, slow economic growth, increased inequality and poverty, political instability, displacement and mass migration, as well as high levels of violence. “These intertwined risks create situations of vulnerability and have a strong impact on the population’s ability to prepare, respond and recover from a disaster,” the document reads.
Both risk factors and disasters are increasing. Between 2019 and 2022, storms have increased by 38%, floods by almost 20%, volcanic activities by about 17% and earthquakes by 7%.
One of the retaining walls in Putumayo (Colombia), to prevent landslides, has cracks and gaps that have allowed nature to reappear. Photo: María Fernanda Lizcano.
“Although Latin America and the Caribbean is the second region in the world with the most disasters (after Asia and the Pacific), we are the first in terms of impacts and economic costs of disasters. Last year, we suffered 70% of the economic cost of disasters in this region,” says Nahuel Arenas, head of UNDRR for Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is estimated that, since 2000, the region has lost an average of 1.7% of annual GDP due to climate-related disasters. If you look only at the Caribbean, where exposure to severe weather events is much higher, this figure increases to 3%.
Tropical storms and hurricanes are the events that have increased the most in the last four years. In more than two decades of UNDRR and OCHA analysis in the region, 47 million people were affected, 910,000 were left homeless and 9,500 died.
Disasters caused by storms and hurricanes pose great challenges because there is very little recovery time between one event and another. For example, Dominica was still not recovering from the impact of Tropical Storm Erika in 2015, when in 2017 it was completely devastated by Hurricane Maria, which claimed 64 lives and affected the entire estimated population living on the island (71,293 people ).
Impact of Hurricane Iota in Providencia. Photo: Courtesy Teleislas.
Another example of the severity of storms and hurricanes occurred in 2020, a year that broke records in the recorded number of these events. when hurricanes Eta and Iota hit Central America and the Colombian island of Providencia less than two weeks apart. “These devastating Category 4 hurricanes resulted in more than 400 deaths and affected almost 9 million people in Central America, leaving a total of $1.4 billion in damages in just a few days,” the report mentions.
Floods are the most common disaster in the region. Only between 2019 and 2022, 133 (20%) of the 681 documented since 2000 were recorded. The OCHA and UNDRR report highlights that despite the relatively low number of deaths directly associated with the floods, they have caused total damage of almost 28 billion dollars. Many of these floods are sudden, which combined with high speed and little predictability, produce devastating consequences for the affected communities.
In 23 years of analysis, Colombia was the country most affected by this type of events, which affected 10.5 million people, followed by Brazil with 9.2 million and Peru with 4.5.
Landslides also cause disasters. “Since 2000, Latin America and the Caribbean have been affected by 78 landslides that have caused almost 3,000 deaths. “A third of the deaths from landslides have occurred in Colombia.” Only the tragedy of Mocoa, Putumayo, in 2017, left 349 dead in the South American country.
Aerial shot of the effects of the landslide in the Independencia sector. Tragedy of Mocoa, Putumayo, Colombia. April 2017 Photo: Corpoamazonía.
Droughts, for their part, caused damages of 19.6 trillion dollars between 2000 and 2022. One of the great challenges is that their appearance is slow, without a clear beginning or end, since they can last for several months. or even years. Since 2000, the most people have been affected by drought in Brazil (more than 33 million), followed by Guatemala (more than 5.6 million), Haiti (more than 4.6 million), Mexico (2 .5 million) and Paraguay (more than 1.7 million).
The El Niño event, which has already begun to develop and is expected to have its greatest impacts at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024, is a factor that will worsen droughts in Latin America and the Caribbean. “The El Niño phenomenon contributes to drought in South America, including the Andean areas of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, as well as northeastern Brazil. […] “It is an event that exceeds the capabilities of a single organization or government and therefore requires strategic alliances as part of a concerted effort by the international community to assist those most affected by the drought,” the report states.
Saskia Carusi of the UNDRR says that El Niño represents irregularities in rainfall throughout the region, which has consequences for agriculture and human access to water. “It not only affects the availability of water for agriculture or human consumption, but also, for example, the availability of water for the Panama Canal, which puts trade at risk. El Niño can also affect tourism and the supply of electricity when there is dependence on water resources. You have cascading impacts in different sectors,” she says.
(File) The Yungas Forest near Orán, north of Salta (Argentina), is covered in smoke, fire and ashes, devoured by the advance of flames that, favored by drought, become uncontrollable. Photo: Greenpeace Argentina.
Financing for humanitarian and disaster prevention plans
Carusi believes that Latin America and the Caribbean have improved their ability to save lives in disasters, thanks to technology, early warnings and community preparedness. He also highlights that, if he compares the current situation with that of 20 years ago, there are now more countries with national and local risk management plans. However, he considers that there is a lot to improve in the economic aspect, since these plans need financing to be implemented and many of them do not have it.
Shelley Cheatham assures that humanitarian care and response plans are also a great challenge in terms of financing and affirms that in 2023 only six countries will have one: El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela and Haiti. In 2018 only one country had it.
“The six plans are very underfunded. Of the funds they require to serve people in need, they only have 17% funded. In Haiti, where we see so much poverty, violence, tropical storms and earthquakes, the plan is 26% funded,” says Cheatham, adding that “there are so many crises that it is impossible to address disasters with humanitarian funds alone,” so it is necessary work in parallel to overcome the vulnerabilities of the populations.
“We need funds for humanitarian plans to address immediate emergencies, but we need to invest in risk reduction and improve basic services,” says Cheatham.
Thousands of goats have died from lack of food due to drought in Putaendo, Chile. 2019. Photo: Michelle Carrere.
Nahuel Arenas insists that if there is no financial commitment, in the end there will be serious problems with all the plans generated by the countries. “One of the keys is to change the narrative and understand investment in prevention not as an expense, but as an investment to protect our investments from risk,” he says. For him, this lack of financing in prevention is reflected in the fact that, between 2010 and 2019, investment in this area was only 0.5% of the total investment in development worldwide.
Arenas also comments that we must continue strengthening early warning systems, since with a 24-hour alert the economic damage can be reduced by up to 30%.
Another important aspect for experts is the strengthening of the social fabric to increase resilience against new natural events that, due to lack of management, can lead to disasters. For Cheatham, the humanitarian response must be strengthened for when it is necessary, but we must work on resilience to achieve risk reduction so that, when the next event occurs, everyone is more prepared and stronger.
The head of OCHA for Latin America and the Caribbean also highlights the urgency for actions at the political level to be taken in the long term and go beyond the time of government of the authorities in power.
“I am hopeful that we will use science more for forecasting and early warnings,” says Cheatham, and Arenas adds that “the challenge is for the contribution of science to be transformed into decisions that impact policies and strategies at all levels. If we assume that disasters are not natural and that they are our social construction, that will lead us to a more responsible and, therefore, much more preventive approach.”
*Main image: The floods that occurred mainly in the northern coastal regions of Peru, due to Cyclone Yaku in March 2023, left around 21 thousand houses affected. Photo: Ministry of Defense of Peru.
Originally published in Mongabay Latam
2023-09-27 07:26:06
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