  Credit: Maplecroft
By Erna Wolf
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN (IDN) - Bangladesh, Indonesia and Iran are most at risk from extreme weather and geophysical events, according to a new study ranking 229 countries on their vulnerability to natural disasters.
The Natural Disasters Risk Index (NDRI), released by London-based global risks advisory firm Maplecroft, has been developed to enable businesses and investors to identify risks to international assets. It is calculated by measuring the human impact of natural disasters, in terms of deaths per annum and per million of population, plus the frequency of events over the last 30 years.
The methodology has been refined to reflect the likelihood of an event occurring and covers disasters including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms, flooding, drought, landslides, extreme temperatures and epidemics.
There are 15 countries rated as "extreme risk" in the ranking, including N11 members Bangladesh (1), Indonesia (2) and Iran (3), with Asian heavyweights, India (11) and China (12) also in the highest risk category.
The N11 (Next Eleven) are eleven countries -- Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam -- identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank as having a high potential of becoming the world's largest economies in the 21st century along with the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
The bank chose these states -- all with promising outlooks for investment and future growth, on December 12, 2005.These are the same countries that are projected to set leading growth trends amongst emerging economies.
Goldman Sachs used macroeconomic stability, political maturity, openness of trade and investment policies as well as the quality of education as criteria. The N11 paper is a follow-up to the bank's 2003 paper on the four emerging BRIC economies.
According to IMF estimates, Bangladesh recorded an economic growth of 5.49 percent in 2009, Indonesia 4.54 percent and Iran 1.82 percent, whilst China grew 8.73 percent and India 5.66 percent. These countries also form important links in the supply chains of many companies.
Poverty is an important factor in countries where both the frequency and impacts of natural disasters are severe," says Maplecroft Environmental Analyst, Dr Anna Moss. "Poor infrastructure, plus dense overcrowding in high risk areas like flood plains, river banks, steep slopes and reclaimed land continually result in high casualty figures."
Over the last 30 years Bangladesh has seen 191,637 deaths as a result of major natural disasters, with storms claiming 167,178 lives.
Indonesia has lost 191,105 lives over the same period, but 165,708 of these casualties were caused by the tsunami in December 2004. Earthquakes are the major vulnerability factor in Iran where approximately 74,000 deaths have occurred as a result of seismic events.
India is subject to a wide variance of events 141,961 of people have been killed in major natural disasters since 1980. These included 50,000 to earthquakes, 40,000 to floods, 15,000 to epidemics and 23,000 to storms.
China has suffered more losses than India, with 148,417 lives lost, but a high concentration of these occurred during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake where 87,476 people were killed.
CLIMATE CHANGE
"Due to climate change, extreme hydro-meteorological events are predicted to increase," says Dr Moss.
"Business risks include damage to assets; interruptions to operations from the breakdown of infrastructure like transport and power networks; plus there can be devastating impacts on local workforces. This makes it essential that businesses plan for the possibility of a disruptive natural disaster," she adds.
According to Maplecroft's study, it is not just developing nations that organisations need to have contingency plans for. Three of the G8 member states are also rated as "high risk."
France (17) and Italy (18) are the most vulnerable countries in Europe; mainly because of the heat waves in 2003 and 2006 where over 40,000 people died, whilst the U.S. (37) is highly susceptible to hurricanes and storms, which have claimed 8,400 lives over 30 years.
Japan (41), Germany (50), Russia (54) and Canada (107) are all rated "medium risk," whereas the UK (111) is considered "low risk."
The NDRI is the central index of Maplecroft's Natural Disasters Series, which also includes the Geophysical Disasters Index, the Hydro-meteorological Disasters Index and the Natural Disasters Economic Losses Index.
Data sources for the NDRI include EM-DAT: The International Disaster database, Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, World Bank and IMF.
Since 1988 the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) has been maintaining an Emergency Events Database EM-DAT. EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the WHO and the Belgian Government.
From January 2010, CRED has established 20 MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with specific institutions who wish to have an access to the raw EM-DAT data on a yearly basis.
The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. It is an initiative aimed to rationalise decision making for disaster preparedness, as well as providing an objective base for vulnerability assessment and priority setting.
EM-DAT contains essential core data on the occurrence and effects of over 18,000 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to present. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies.
According to CRED director Debarati Guha-Sapir, in 2009, 328 natural disasters were recorded in the EM-DAT database. They killed more than 10 thousand people, affected nearly 113 million others and caused almost 35 billion US$ of economic damages.
No mega-disasters occurred in 2009, the event ranking highest in death toll being the earthquake in Indonesia on September 30 which killed over 1,100 people, followed by a series of typhoons and floods that caused many deaths, making Asia once again the most affected continent.
In fact, six of the top ten countries with the highest number of disaster-related deaths were in Asia.
However, when looking at the top 10 countries in terms of number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, the Islands of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga topped the list.
Compared to previous years (2000-2008), says Guha-Sapir, there is a reduction in 2009 in disaster mortality with 10,443 killed, which is below the annual average of 85,541; as well as the number of affected, with 112.8 million compared to the annual average of 230.4 million.
In terms of economic impacts, disasters' costs were also below the 93.8 billion 2000-2008 annual average and were mainly attributed to winter storm Klaus which hit France and Spain in January (5.1 billion US$), the L’Aquila earthquake in Italy in April (2.5 billion US$) and a tornado in the United States in February (2.5 billion US$).
Guha-Sapir notes: "Even if 2009 appears as a relatively quiet year, we cannot draw conclusions based on one single year. Individual major events happening in a specific year can influence disaster statistics, as was already shown by the disastrous losses caused by the earthquake in Haiti in early 2010. Longer-term statistics on disaster occurrence and impacts can shed light on the underlying trends." (IDN-InDepthNews/08.06.2010)
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External links:
http://www.maplecroft.com
http://www.emdat.be
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