Natural disasters

What exactly happened?

• More people worldwide are now displaced by natural disasters than by conflict.

• In the 1990s, natural catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, and fires affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide-a loss greater than during the previous four decades combined.

The fact

• "By degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate, we are unraveling the strands of a complex ecological safety net," said Senior Researcher and author of Unnatural Disasters Janet Abramovitz.

Reasons

• For example, China now recognizes that forests are ten times more valuable for flood control and water supply than they are for timber, and has halted logging in the Yangtze River watershed.

• The loss of 85 percent of the forests in the upper Yangtze River worsened the 1998 flood that affected 223 million people.

Example

What do we wish had happened instead?

Improve the environment

Make friends with animalEcotourism

What is happening now, as a result?

• Scientists believe the increase in hydro-meteorological disasters is due to a combination of natural and human-caused factors. Global warming is increasing the temperatures of Earth's oceans and atmosphere, leading to more intense storms of all types, including hurricane, El Niño and La Niña.

What's going on?

What do you wish were happening?

Electricity

industrialization

How to prevent many so-called natural disasters?

• Be mindful of the world around you.Be aware of your impact on the world around you and the fact that you are connected with the world around you. Everything we do to world around us, whether destructive or creative, will eventually be reflected in that world.

• The best way to avoid natural disasters is to learn to live in greater harmony with the nature world, respecting its natural cycles of "destruction" which are actually crucial to life on Earth.

• Stop blaming nature for poor human planning