Europe ‘increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters’

Unpublished

The number of natural hazards taking place in Europe increased significantly last year, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction has said, warning that the region’s governments need to implement prevention platforms to significantly reduce the danger they pose to their populations.

“In 2010, Europe saw the biggest increase in disaster events – plus 18.2 per cent – compared to the decade’s averages,” chief of the UNISDR Margareta Wahlström told participants at a forum yesterday in Skopje, the capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

“In terms of economic damages, it accounted for 14.3 per cent of reported global disaster losses in 2010, with most of the damages caused by climatological and hydro meteorological events.”

Wahlström said that although this was cause for concern, there was evidence that European governments were slowly implementing adequate disaster risk reduction measures, and they will have a much greater chance of succeeding at minimising the costs of natural hazards.

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