Drought affected more than 1 billion people between 1994 and 2014, or about one in four people affected by all natural disasters. Yet droughts accounted for just 5 per cent of disaster events. Some 41 per cent of drought disasters in that period were in Africa. In absolute numbers, the United States and China recorded the most natural disasters between 1994 and 2014, due mainly to their size, varied landmasses and high population densities. Among the continents, Asia bore the brunt of disasters, with 3.3 billion people affected in China and India alone. If data are standardized to reflect the numbers of people affected per 100,000, Eritrea and Mongolia were the world’s worst-affected countries that are not island States. Haiti suffered the largest number of people killed both in absolute terms and relative to the size of its population due to the toll of the 2010 earthquake. While disasters have been recorded more frequently during the past 20 years, the average number of people affected has actually fallen from one in 23 between 1994 and 2003, to about one in 39 between 2004 and 2014.
43% Flooding caused 43 per cent of reported disasters between 1994 and 2014, affecting nearly 2.5 BILLION PEOPLE
Drought affected more than 1 BILLION people between 1994 and 2014, or about ONE IN FOUR PEOPLE affected by all natural disasters
Disaster-related deaths higher in poorer countries
TSUNAMIS
EARTHQUAKE
79 4 VS. DEATHS DEATHS per
1,000 people affected Photo © UNFPA/Ben Manser
The Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters’ data also show how income levels impact disaster death tolls. On average, more than three times as many people died per disaster in low-income countries (332 deaths) than in high-income ones (105 deaths). A similar pattern is evident when low- and lower-middleincome countries are grouped together and compared to high- and upper-middle-income countries. Taken together, higher-income countries experienced 56 per cent of disasters but lost 32 per cent of lives, while lower-income
Making tsunamis almost 20 TIMES deadlier than land-based earthquakes, over two decades
THE STATE OF WORLD POPULATION 2015
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