Natural Disasters Are Surging—It’s Time to Protect Our Nations

These alarming numbers raise a vital red flag we should heed if we hope to protect communities from escalating harm. We know that climate change and biodiversity loss are making these disasters worse, and yet we continue to abuse the planet in ways that accelerate these crises. Politicians and business leaders must improve the governance around disaster risk reduction to limit further damage to the planet before some of those losses become irreversible.

As some of the deadliest recent disasters have shown—such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, 2008’s Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, each of which took more than 100,000 lives—the impact of these events can be felt not just in loss of human life but also in declines in human health and loss of biodiversity (which can in turn make regions more vulnerable to disaster). These damages are often not always fully considered and go well beyond the documented financial costs, putting a severe strain on government resources.

According to the UNDRR, only 93 countries have implemented disaster risk strategies at a national level. The report indicates that there has been some success in protecting vulnerable communities from isolated hazards, thanks to more effective early warning systems, disaster preparedness and response protocols. But projected global temperature rises could make these improvements “obsolete in many countries,” the agency warned. Taking preemptive action to protect vulnerable communities with better early warning systems and additional responses is imperative, and nature is a powerful ally in that endeavor.

This year was expected to provide a real opportunity to address these challenges through the UN Convention on Biodiversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings, but the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed those forums back until 2021 at the earliest. We cannot afford to wait for these discussions. Seemingly every week we receive new reports of storms or other disasters ravaging our global population. It is the responsibility of governments and business leaders to think proactively about disaster risk preparation and look beyond their own borders and landscapes to better integrate solutions for community resilience and adaptation.

A global shift in the way we allocate resources and finance early protection measures, including investments in nature itself, is the only way to prepare ourselves, while simultaneously taking ambitious climate action to minimize global temperature rise and lower carbon emissions, which should hopefully decrease frequency and amplitude of disasters over time. We know the steps to take. We cannot stagger forward; we must run confidently and assertively.