Sat Feb 25, 11am-1pm EST (Toronto, New York)
Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/971381033
Natural disasters are responsible for, on average, 0.1% of all deaths or approximately 45000 people, annually. As many of the major killers (earthquake, large storms, volcanic eruptions) are sporadic, the number of deaths can be very low – often less than 10,000, and accounting for as low as 0.01% of total deaths. But we also see the devastating impact of shock events: the 1983-85 famine and drought in Ethiopia; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; Cyclone Nargis which struck Myanmar in 2008; and the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake in Haiti. Each of these events pushed annual global disasters deaths over 200,000 – more than 0.4% of deaths in these years.
The good news: the world has seen a significant reduction in disaster deaths through earlier prediction, more resilient infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and response systems. It has been almost 60 years since natural disaster deaths topped 500,000 in any year and most years fall under the 20,000 mark.
The bad news: human impacts from natural disasters are not fully captured in mortality rates. Injury, homelessness, and displacement can all have a significant impact on populations. These effects can create situations that lead to famine, disease outbreaks, violence and wars.
More bad news: Climate change effects are creating more intense storms and more extreme temperatures that produce droughts, landslides and wildfires, and coupled with rising sea levels, more widespread flooding.
Even more bad news: Natural disasters are not the disasters that Canada is most susceptible to. Our highly integrated society is even more vulnerable to industrial accidents, transportation accidents, chemical spills and criminal or terrorist attacks. These can cause serious disruptions to food, fuel or energy delivery with serious personal consequences.
Those at low incomes are often the most vulnerable to disaster events: improving living standards, infrastructure and response systems in these regions will be key to preventing deaths from natural disasters in the coming decades. But beyond deaths, natural disasters create huge monetary costs to all societies that eat up money available for all other endeavours. The poorer the country, the more natural disaster response costs bite into core expenditures that affect citizens’ quality of life.
Questions:
1. What is Canada’s responsibility to the global community for disaster preparedness and response? What justifies this level?
2. Even though Canada’s vulnerability to natural disasters is low, there are these other disaster situations for which we need to be prepared. What dislocations have you thought about and prepared for?
3. Have you been through any form of natural disaster yourself? What lessons did you learn?