But the gales that hit western Europe in October 1987 heralded a series of windstorm disasters which make losses of ten billion dollars seem commonplace. Hurricane Andrew, for instance, left in its wake insured losses estimated at nearly twenty-one billion dollars (1999 prices) with estimated total economic losses of nearly thirty-seven billion dollars. Figure 1.2 shows the costs of weather-related disasters2 over the past fifty years as calculated by the insurance industry. It shows an increase in economic losses in such events by a factor of over 10 in real terms between the 1950s and the 1990s. Some of this increase can be attributed to the growth in population in particularly vulnerable areas and to other social or economic factors; the world community has undoubtedly become more vulnerable to disasters. However, a significant part of it has also arisen from the increased storminess in the late 1980s and 1990s compared with the 1950s.
Windstorms or hurricanes are by no means the only weather and climate extremes that cause disasters. Floods due to unusually intense or prolonged rainfall or droughts because of long periods of reduced rainfall (or its complete absence) can be even more devastating to human life and property. These events occur frequently in many parts of the world especially in the tropics and sub-tropics. There have been notable examples during the last two decades. Let me mention a few of the floods. In 1988, the highest flood levels ever recorded occurred in Bangladesh, eighty per cent of the entire country was affected; China experienced devastating floods affecting many millions of people in 1991, 1994–5 and 1998; in 1993, flood waters rose to levels higher than ever recorded in the region of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the United States, flooding an area equivalent in size to one of the Great Lakes; major floods in Venezuela in 1999 led to a large landslide and left 30 000 people dead, and two widespread floods in Mozambique occurred within a year in 2000–1 leaving over half a million homeless. Droughts during these years have been particularly intense and prolonged in areas of Africa, both north and south. It is in Africa especially that they bear on the most vulnerable in the world, who have little resilience to major disasters. Figure 1.3 shows that in the 1980s droughts accounted for more deaths in Africa than all other disasters added together and illustrates the scale of the problem.
Global Warming: What Does It Mean?
