Thursday, 08 August 2024.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) publishes yearly Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) on worldwide effort to mitigate disaster risk.
Closing a series of three articles focusing on the insurance industry, today we refer to their two latest editions, GAR2023 and GAR2023.
Entitled “Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future”, GAR2022 revealed that over the past two decades between 350 and 500 medium- to large-scale disasters took place every year. By 2030 this number is expected to reach 560 a year, or 1.5 disasters a day.
GAR2022 also blamed these disasters on a broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, besides putting people in danger.
These disasters disproportionately impact more developing countries.
Developing countries lose an average of 1% of GDP a year to disasters, compared to 0.1-0.3% in developed countries. The highest cost is borne by the Asia-Pacific region, which loses an average 1.6% of GDP to disasters every year. Besides that, the poorest suffer the most.
The lack of insurance to aid in recovery efforts to build back better is indicated as leading to long term impacts of disasters.
Since 1980, just 40% of disaster-related losses were insured while insurance coverage rates in developing countries were often below 10%, and sometimes close to zero, the report said.
Comprehensive risk assessment, risk insurance and risk-sharing facilities are important mechanisms to reduce the financial impact of disasters on Governments and societies, both in urban and rural areas.
Here you can download GAR2022.
Click here to read more about GAR2022, in a press release from the UNFCCC titled “Humanity’s Broken Risk Perception Reversing Global Progress in ‘Spiral of Self-destruction'”
Among actions to reduce vulnerability, the GAR2023 “Mapping Resilience for the Sustainable Development Goals” include:
• Social protection
• Livelihood diversification
• Hazard-proof housing and infrastructure
• Insurance solutions
Here GAR023 for download.
Click at the image below for the full series of GAR reports.
The GAR is the product of the contributions of nations, public and private disaster risk-related science and research, amongst others.
Wondering what will be included in the next GAR2024 report.
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