The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters

Over the last twenty years, the overwhelming majority (90%) of disasters have been caused by floods, storms, heatwaves and other weather-related events. In total, 6,457 weather-related disasters were recorded worldwide by EM-DAT, the foremost international database of such events. Over this period, weather-related disasters claimed 606,000 lives, an average of some 30,000 per annum, with an additional 4.1 billion people injured, left homeless or in need of emergency assistance. This report provides an analysis of weather-related disaster trends over a twenty year time-frame which coincides with a period which has seen the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties become an established high- profile annual fixture on the development calendar. The contents of this report underline why it is so important that a new climate change agreement emerges from the COP21 in Paris in December.