The Philippines has the 4th most number of disaster events linked to natural hazards globally in the last 20 years, a new report released by the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) has shown.

The report titled "Human Cost of Disasters: An Overview of the Last 20 years 2000-2019" found that 7,348 disaster events were recorded worldwide by CRED's Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) leading to approximately US$2.97 trillion in economic losses, up from 4,212 disasters worldwide with economic losses totaling US$ 1.63 trillion for the period 1980 to 1999.

The disaster events claimed a total of approximately 1.2 million lives and affected more than 4.03 billion people.

On average, there were 367 disaster events each year, the majority of which were floods and storms (44 percent and 28 percent, respectively), the report showed.

Asia suffered the highest number of disaster events with a total of 3,068 events between 2000 and 2019.

The report also showed that the Philippines was fourth in terms of countries with the most number of disaster events (304 events), next only to China (577 events), United States (467), and India (321) among the countries most affected globally.

Indonesia had 278 events. 

The UNDRR and CRED noted that the Philippines and the other four countries "all have large and heterogenous landmasses and relatively high population densities in at-risk areas."

With these results, the Philippines' Climate Change Commission (CCC) urged government agencies, civil society, environment activists, and experts to anchor national and local climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies and policies on science to effectively reduce levels of and avoid the creation of new risk of disasters.

The report was released in time for the observance of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on Tuesday, Oct. 13.

The day was first declared in 1989, after a call by the United Nations General Assembly for a day to promote a global culture of risk-awareness and disaster reduction.

It recognizes how people and communities around the world are reducing exposure to disasters, raising awareness about the importance of reining in these risks, and promoting the culture of becoming climate-friendly to reduce the chances of environmental disasters.

The event is also an opportunity to acknowledge the progress being made toward reducing disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods, and health in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Japan in March 2015.

The Sendai Framework has seven strategic targets and 38 indicators for measuring progress on reducing disaster risk and losses.

These indicators align the implementation of the Sendai Framework with the implementation of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In 2016, the UN Secretary-General launched "The Sendai Seven Campaign" to promote each of the seven targets over seven years. 

The target for the year 2020 is Target E which is "Substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020" which lays the foundation for the implementation of the Sendai Framework and is closely linked with Priority for Action 2: "Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk."

The CCC said this year’s target is about conveying the message that many disasters can be avoided or prevented if all of the local government units fully understand and appreciate the risk and vulnerability that prevails in their communities, and let science inform their local plans of action and ensure that investments build local resilience.

The Commission reiterated its call for the integration of the Sendai Framework in the local plans and programs for DRR to contribute to the achievement of not only target E, but of all the following seven global targets: (A) reduce disaster mortality; (B) reduce the number of affected people; (C) reduce direct economic loss in relation to global GDP; (D) reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services; (E) increase the number of countries with national and local DRR strategies; (F) enhance international cooperation to developing countries; and (G) increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and DRR information assessments.