Natural disasters have tripled in half a century

Muhammad Ali Bukhari, CNMNG News

Toronto, March 21: A report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on Thursday states that the world has been facing one disaster after another in recent years. The world has to deal with various disasters including corona pandemics, floods, droughts, fires, and locust attacks. People are now facing three times more natural disasters than the seventies and eighties from the last century. The agricultural sector is the most affected by these disasters.

The report said that the Covid-19 pandemic, which last year damaged the agricultural food system to the extent of natural disasters such as adverse weather, wildfires and locust attacks, had never occurred in history. Such a catastrophe has never been seen before in such a frequent, intense and complex form.

The report said that 63 percent of the adverse effects of the disaster were on the agricultural sector. It is said that the livelihood of agriculture is being disrupted due to the disaster. It is having an impact from household to the national level, which may be passed on from generation to generation.

The least developed and low and middle-income countries have suffered the most from natural disasters. Between 2006 and 2017, more than $108 billion was lost to developing countries in grain and livestock.

The highest loss during this period was $49 billion in Asia. This was followed by a loss of $30 billion in Africa and $29 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Agricultural production has suffered the most from the drought. Since then, more damage has been caused by floods, storms, pests, diseases and fires. Grain and livestock production has been affected by 34 percent due to insufficient rainfall in certain seasons. The loss of biodiversity has been 9 percent. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing problems.

As a result, natural disasters have damaged the economies of many countries, as well as food security and nutrition. For the first time, an FAO report has shown that economic losses are converted into calories and nutrients. It found that the loss of grain and livestock in the least developed and low and middle-income countries from 2008 to 2018 was equivalent to the loss of 6.9 trillion kilocalories per year. This equals the annual calorie intake of seven million adults.

That is why the report calls for investment in capacity building to reduce the damage to agriculture in natural disasters and investment in disaster risk reduction, which has paramount importance to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving a sustainable future.

Source: UN FAO news reports – https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1087702