Economies at risk from natural disasters

Natural mayhem can create havoc not only to human lives, but also to economies. The Recent disaster in Japan vouches for this.

Recently  an ‘analysis and mapping’ firm maplecroft released a report stating that emerging economies like India, China, Philippines and Indonesia face the highest economic risk from natural disasters.

Despite the US and Japan having the highest economic exposure to natural hazards, the aforementioned emerging economies are proportionately at greater risk from them as they lack the capacity to combat the impact of a major disaster.

According to the Natural Hazards Risk Atlas 2011 released by Maplecroft, 196 countries were ranked with respect to their economic exposure to natural hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis, tropical cyclones, floods and drought.

As per the ranking, USA (1), Japan (2), China (3) and Taiwan (4) were categorised as “extreme risk” in terms of their absolute economic exposure to natural hazards. Mexico (5), India (6), Philippines (7), Turkey (8) and Indonesia (9) and Italy (10) were classified as “high risk”.