GAR 2019: "our very survival is in doubt"

The world faces new, emerging, and much larger threats than ever before, linked to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growing potential for one disaster to produce or exacerbate another, says a new report from the United Nations.

The Global Assessment Report 2019 (GAR2019) published by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, outlines major risks to human life and material property, ranging from air pollution and biological hazards, through to earthquakes, drought, and climate change.

“Extreme changes in planetary and socioecological systems are happening now; we no longer have the luxury of procrastination. If we continue living in this way, engaging with each other and the planet in the way we do, then our very survival is in doubt,” said Mami Mizutori, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The report warns that unsustainable patterns of economic activity hide the build-up of systemic risks across sectors citing, for example, dangerous overdependence on single crops in an age of accelerating global warming.

“We witness severe inequalities of burden sharing between low and high-income countries, with the poorest bearing the highest toll and greatest costs of disasters. Human losses and asset losses relative to GDP tend to be higher in the countries with the least capacity to prepare, finance and respond to disasters and climate change, such as in small island developing States,” the report argues.

There is growing potential for one disaster to produce or exacerbate another as happens often in the case of heavy rains which trigger landslides and mudslides following wildfires or periods of the long drought, says the new report launched at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.

If governments do not adopt appropriate strategies to manage risk, then these threats could slow or even reverse progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably eradicating poverty and hunger, and action on climate change.

The complexity of our global economy and the interactions between human and natural systems means that one disaster can quickly provoke another. Population growth and rising consumption are set to put more pressure on the world’s ecosystems than ever before. Drought is likely to emerge as a complex risk due to its wide-ranging, slow-building, and cascading impacts.

Read and download the Global Assessment Report 2019 (GAR2019)

Original source: UNDRR
Published on 14 May 2019