Reality check: Worldwide deaths from natural disasters have been on a long-term downtrend, with up to 10 times more fatalities in the 1930's than the present:
Total worldwide deaths from natural disasters shows a long-term downtrend with up to 10 times more fatalities in the 1930's than in 2010. Source: The International Disaster Database |
A total of five million people, mostly children, may die by 2020 because of climate change unless the authorities take action against it, said today the humanitarian research organization DARA Spanish in a report.
About 350,000 people are killed by current issues related to climate change, but the world may well suffer a million deaths per year from 2030 if no corrective actions put in place, says the study “climate vulnerability Monitor 2010."
The document was released today at the XVI Conference of the Parties to the UN Climate Change (COP16) held in the Mexican city of Cancun.
The research, developed by DARA with the support of the Climate Vulnerability Forum, an organization that brings together leaders from countries likely to suffer the worst impacts of global warming, reveals the particular vulnerability of a total of 184 countries and the impacts that might have in the short term.
The report brings together the nations according to their “low”, “moderate”, “high”, “severe” or “severe” vulnerability, which is determined based on the estimated impacts that these countries may experience health, climate, disasters, human habitat loss and “stress” economic.
In the group of 54 countries that have a vulnerability “acute” are Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Honduras, Kenya, India, Morocco, Nicaragua, Somalia, Pakistan, North Korea, Nigeria and Vietnam, among others, and island countries like Maldives, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
The 28 “severe” are represented by countries like the Bahamas, Bolivia, Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, Nepal, South Africa and Tunisia, and 50 with vulnerability “high” for Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Republic Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Spain, Venezuela, United States and Russia.
A “moderate” level instead has 33 countries as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Poland, Paraguay, Turkey, Uruguay, Paraguay, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
However only 19 have low levels of vulnerability, such as Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Holland, Portugal and the UK, like other countries like Japan and New Zealand.
“Within 20 years almost every country in the world will have a vulnerability ‘high’ in at least one sector, as the planet warms,” says the report.
Currently, however, most of the impacts are concentrated in some 50 low-income countries that need “urgent assistance” he insists.
In fact, according to data from the report, 80% of all deaths attributed to climate change are of children in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, “who succumb to malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria.”
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