Disaster Risk Factors: Climate Change

Climate Change and Disasters

• Climate change increases disaster risk by altering frequency and intensity of hazard events, affecting vulnerability, and changing exposure patterns.
• Human activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and other practices that increase carbon footprint and concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contribute to climate change.

Environmental Degradation and Disasters

• Environmental degradation influences frequency and intensity of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability to these hazards.
• Deforestation of slopes can lead to increased landslide hazard, while removal of mangroves can increase damage from storm surges.
• Overconsumption of natural resources results in environmental degradation, reducing effectiveness of essential ecosystem services, such as flood and landslide mitigation.

Globalized Economic Development and Disaster Risk

• Globalized economic development increases exposure of assets in hazard-prone areas.
• Risk-sensitive development strategies, such as investing in protective infrastructure, environmental management, and upgrading informal settlements, can reduce risk.
• Dominance and increase of wealth in certain regions and cities are expected to increase hazard exposure.

Poverty and Inequality in Disaster Risk

• Impoverished people are more likely to live in hazard-exposed areas and are less able to invest in risk-reducing measures.
• Lack of access to insurance and social protection forces people in poverty to use limited assets to buffer disaster losses, driving them into further poverty.
• Poverty is both a cause and consequence of disaster risk, with drought being the hazard most closely associated with poverty.

Urban Development and Disaster Risk

• Poorly planned and managed urban development can lead to creation of risk, especially in hazard-exposed countries.
• The growing rate of urbanization and increasing population density in cities can lead to overlap with areas of high-risk exposure.
• Urbanization provides new opportunities for resilient investment.

Weak Governance and Disaster Risk

• Weak governance zones are characterized by public sector actors being unable or unwilling to assume their roles and responsibilities.

Explore the role of climate change in increasing disaster risk, including its impact on hazard frequency, vulnerability, and exposure patterns. Learn how human activities contribute to climate change and its effects on the environment.