Disaster Prevention

Natural disasters are an unavoidable fate. We can, however, learn to deal with them better. The Tsunami wave in South Asia in late December 2004 showed once again that well-developed risk awareness would have saved many human lives.

The statistics speak for themselves: natural disasters have risen dramatically worldwide in recent decades, not only in frequency but also in intensity. As for the resultant losses, the picture is the same worldwide. The losses to national economies and the insurance industry are increasing significantly, sometimes even exponentially. More and more often, earthquakes, storms and floods devastate entire regions. The United Nations (UN) recognised this trend early on and declared the 1990s to be the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR).

Today, numerous national and international initiatives like the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) or the ProVention Consortium, practically an amalgamation of private and public organisations and governments, are concerned with disaster preparedness. And even though there are certainly some highly visible successes – protection against storm surges in Bangladesh is a key example – many sustainable solutions are still lacking. Many factors indicate that the scale of disasters will continue to grow. These include:

• the increase in the world population;
• higher potentials for loss as living standards rise;
• the concentration of population and material assets due to urbanisation;
• the settlement and industrialisation of exposed areas such as coasts and fluvial plains;
• the greater vulnerability of modern societies and technologies; and
• altered environmental conditions such as climate change.

Disasters have the devastating potential to set the development of entire regions or countries back for years. Today, every year, thousands of people in emerging countries fall victim to natural disasters, the resultant damage placing very heavy burdens on the economy, especially in such developing countries.

The Munich Re Foundation supports people at risk, making use of Munich Re's expertise in the area of disaster management. The aim is to make this knowledge accessible to the wider public and develop workable solutions for those affected.