Empirical evidence of declining global vulnerability to climate-related hazards

The number of fatalities and economic losses from natural hazards continues to increase in many parts of the world. In order to reduce the future impacts of natural disasters, it is crucial to understand the variability in the space and time of the vulnerability of people and economic assets.

Thus, based on a spatially explicit global framework that integrates the dynamics of the population and the economy into one of the most complete databases of natural disaster loss, mortality and loss rates have been quantified at all levels of income and in this way its relationship with wealth has been analyzed.

The results show a clear decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability, with average mortality rates and global economic loss that have decreased by 6.5 and almost 5 times, respectively, from 1980–1989 to 2007–2016.

Convergence in vulnerability

It clearly shows a negative relationship between vulnerability and wealth, which is stronger at lower income levels. This has led to a convergence in vulnerability between higher and lower-income countries. However, there is still a considerable vulnerability gap to climate hazards between the poorest and richest countries.

In addition, it is important to mention that natural hazards continue to cause increasing damage and loss of life. The costs of natural disasters worldwide reached US $ 314 billion in 2017, more than double the average annual cost during 2007–2016. The key drivers of increased losses are changes in exposure in terms of population and risk capital increase, as well as better reporting, while the evidence is increasingly anthropogenic.

Recently, much effort has been devoted to creating spatially explicit datasets for the dynamic quantification of exposure, such as population, gross domestic product and land use, from the country to the continental and global scale. The maps, although often limited in temporal resolution and sometimes in spatial resolution, are spatially explicit and provide added value to understand trends in natural disaster risk. In the last decade, the explosion of earth observation data from space provides more detailed information to quantify the exposure of communities to natural hazards.

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Source: Giuseppe Formetta & Luc Feyen | ScienceDirect