Although the world’s focus has been on the coronavirus pandemic, the presence of natural disasters has persisted, and in some cases, compounded with COVID-19, becoming even costlier.
A record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season, flash floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and wildfires plagued already reeling communities from Australia to Turkey this year, as thousands of people lost their lives.
According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reductions, there has been a rise in climate-related disasters during the past 20 years. Between 1980 and 1999, there were 3,656 climate-related events, as opposed to 6,681 between 2000 and 2019. Those differences are reflected in the number of floods, which has more than doubled in the past 20 years, while the incidence of storms increased from around 1,457 to around 2,034.
