Dec 13, 2007, 1:58 GMT
Geneva - Climate change has led to a sharp rise in natural disasters during the last 20 years, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Thursday.
There were around 60 per cent more such disasters reported in the 10 years to 2006 compared with the previous decade, up from 4,242 to 6,806 incidents, according to IFRC's World Disasters Report 2007.
During the same period the number of reported deaths doubled from more than 600,000 people to more than 1.2 million, and the number of people affected increased by 17 per cent from 230 million to 270 million.
'This trend is confirmed by the International Federation's own statistics,' said Markku Niskala, secretary-general of the Geneva- based federation.
From 2004-06 the organization responded to 70 per cent more disasters, mostly flooding and other weather events.
By October 2007, the federation had already recorded 410 disasters, 56 per cent of which were weather-related.
There were slightly fewer disasters in 2006 (427) compared with 2007 (433), and the combined death toll fell nearly 75 per cent to 23,833 people. However, the IFRC believe this belies the long-term trend.
The IFRC said it wanted to highlight the problem of discrimination in disasters, where governments and aid agencies were failing the elderly, ethnic or religious minority groups and other vulnerable segments of society.
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JohnDec 13th, 2007 - 12:13:20
Hurry up SP4 - tell them global warming isn't happening so all these additional disasters must be in their imagination
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