World Risk Report: Where are natural disasters most common?

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, drought, frequent typhoons and floods: in the Philippines, natural disasters are almost a part of everyday life. Most recently, Typhoon Yagi, locally called Enteng, has caused rivers to flood their banks and set off landslides, killing at least 15 people. This is the fifth typhoon to lash the Philippines since May.

Katrin Radtke, a senior researcher specializing in disaster preparedness at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, said the Philippines is rated as a "very high risk" country. She is the scientific lead of the annual World Risk Report, published jointly by the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict and an alliance of nine German development organizations, Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft. The technical report has a World Risk Index, which breaks down the disaster risk of 193 countries.

The Philippines tops this year's ranking of high-risk countries, followed by Indonesia, India, Colombia, and Mexico. "These countries are affected by extreme natural disasters that are very frequent and have a high intensity," Radtke told DW. "We call this a high exposure."

But the frequency and intensity of storms, earthquakes and droughts are not the only decisive factors — another is a country's vulnerability to natural disasters. "That's the case when societies have little means to face such natural hazards. Sometimes that's because they are poor, for example, or have high levels of corruption, or poor health care, or inadequate disaster preparedness," she said.

When it comes to the most vulnerable countries, according to the World Risk Index, eight of the 10 are on the African continent. The remaining two, Afghanistan and Yemen, have been exhausted by war for decades. In such countries, there may be fewer health providers and hospital beds, for example, meaning more people are likely to die in the case of a natural disaster.

Vulnerability can be reduced

But if a country invests in disaster preparedness, a natural hazard does not necessarily lead to a catastrophic impact for many people. This explains why wealthy countries like the United States or Australia aren't ranked higher in the World Risk Index, despite their high exposure to natural disasters such as drought, earthquakes and storms.

"China has shown that lessons can be drawn from crises and catastrophes, thereby reducing the nation's overall disaster risk," said Radtke. The country currently scores 22nd on the World Risk Index — that's 12 places better than last year.

"Mostly, that's because China was able to markedly reduce its vulnerability in response to the COVID-19 pandemic," she explained, pointing out that the Chinese government invested heavily in its health care system, building new hospitals and launching large-scale vaccination campaigns, among other things.

"But what we cannot depict on our World Risk Index is the fact that this also happened at the cost of civil liberties," Radtke added.

War worsens natural disasters

The World Risk Index only covers natural disasters, not the dangers of human-caused disasters such as war and conflict.

"But we are increasingly noticing connections," said Radtke, explaining they had observed an increasing number of natural disasters, in part due to climate change, striking conflict zones and having a more detrimental impact. In such events, the World Risk Report speaks of multiple crises.

Studies show, for example, that armed groups grow larger following natural disasters, suggesting that they recruit people who have become suddenly impoverished or displaced. Also, struggles over scarce resources like water, food, energy or relief supplies may intensify, in some cases making conflicts worse.

"But it's also possible for extreme natural events to create windows of opportunity for conflict parties to come to an agreement," Radtke pointed out — for example, when all parties involved realize they have to cooperate in order to receive emergency relief and manage reconstruction. This is how the decadeslong insurgency in the Indonesian province of Aceh came to an end following the devastating 2004 tsunami.

Faith, solidarity can ease hardship

When countries seek to lower their vulnerability to natural disasters, it's not enough to beef up classical disaster prevention measures, such as dams, warnings systems and rescue services. "Investing in education and health, and decreasing social inequality can have a large impact on reducing vulnerability," said Radtke.

She added that reducing corruption also helped shield a population against the effects of natural disasters and pointed out that, luckily, there was a wide range of measures governments could take. But not all could be quantified and depicted in an index, she cautioned. In the Philippines, for example, faith and mutual support among family and community members plays a large role in recovering from natural disasters, she said.

Radtke highlighted that humanity could also take measures to reduce our exposure to natural disaster — that is, the likelihood of one taking place. "That's because our exposure, at least to certain natural disasters, is directly linked to climate change," she said.

This article was originally written in German.