Global warming has become a reality. This has led to climate change and a massive increase in the frequency of occurance of natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires etc. A recent study by UK-based charity organisation Oxfam has revealed that weather-related disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades.
The report, published on Sunday says that the average number of natural disasters per year during early 1980s was about 120. But now the number has increased to nearly 500. Oxfam feels that this rapid and massive increase is due to rise in unpredictable weather conditions because of global warming.
Oxfam’s director Barbara Stocking said,
This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people. This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people.
Stocking emphasizes that human factors were involved in climate change and disasters and not some freak galactic phenomena. The increase in the number of disasters has resulted an growing number of people being directly and indirectly affected by them. The increase has been pegged at about 68 percent.
The increase in sheer numbers is just overwhelming from an average of 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994 to 254 million a year between 1995 to 2004. This is alarming considering the fact that population of the world is increasing and so is the exploitation of nature and destabilizing of fragile ecological balance.
Stocking further said,
Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse,
Oxfam is pitching to the UN conference on Climate Change scheduled for December in Bali to pass a mandate to negotiate a global deal to provide assistance to developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change and reduce green house gas emissions.
It is dangerous to note the kind of beating developing countries are facing at the hands of weather. But development and nature don’t go hand in hand. Developing countries want to go ahead and get industrially advanced, but this means compromising natural resources and leading to global warming and change in climate.
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