This publication provides a sober and revealing analysis of weather-related disaster trends over a twenty year time-frame which coincides with a period which has seen the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties become an established high- profile annual fixture on the development calendar. The contents of this report underline why it is so important that a new climate change agreement emerges from the COP21 in Paris in December.
This would be a satisfying conclusion to a year which started off strongly with the adoption in March of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 which sets out priorities for action in order to achieve a substantial reduction in disaster losses. The Sendai Framework has since been followed by agreements on development financing and the ambition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN Member States in September.
Climate change, climate variability and weather events pose a threat to the eradication of extreme poverty and should serve as a spur to hasten efforts not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to tackle other underlying risk drivers such as unplanned urban development, vulnerable livelihoods, environmental degradation and gaps in early warnings.
The report highlights many key shortcomings in understanding the nature and true extent of disaster losses, particularly from drought despite the fact that it accounts for more than 25% of all people affected by climate-related disasters.
There must be greater support to countries struggling to measure their losses so they can improve both risk reduction efforts and overall understanding of where the focus needs to be to reduce those very losses.
The more we understand the causes and consequences of risk generation and accumulation, the better we will be able to adapt, mitigate and prevent in the future, whatever that future may have in store for us.

Asia accounts for the lion’s share of disaster impacts including 332,000 deaths and 3.7 billion people affected. The death toll in Asia included 138,000 deaths caused by Cyclone Nargis which struck Myanmar in 2008.

In total, an average of 335 weather-related disasters were recorded per year between 2005 and 2014, an increase of 14% from 1995-2004, and almost twice the level recorded during 1985-1995.

The extent of the toll taken by disasters on society is revealed by other statistics from CRED’s Emergency Events Data Base, or EM-DAT: 87 million homes were damaged or destroyed over the period of the survey.

Floods accounted for 47% of all weather-related disasters from 1995-2015, affecting 2.3 billion people and killing 157,000. Storms were the deadliest type of weather-related disaster, accounting for 242,000 deaths or 40% of the global weather-related deaths, with 89% of these deaths occurring in lower-income countries.

Overall, heatwaves accounted for 148,000 of the 164,000 lives lost due to extreme temperatures. 92% of heatwave deaths occurred in high-income countries, with Europe accounting for 90%.

Drought affects Africa more than any other continent, with EM-DAT recoding 136 events there between 1995 and 2015, including 77 droughts in East Africa alone. The report recommends that there needs to be improved data collection on indirect deaths from drought