Increasingly natural disasters are raising concerns of man's impact upon the ecological balance. Is there cause for concern? What lies ahead in the next century?
by Mario Seiglie
In a dramatic message, the International
Red Cross recently admitted their alarming statistics showed a notable
rise of unusually large natural catastrophes they call "super-disasters." They
consider mankind is partly to blame for the increase of these mega-cataclysms.
"Everyone is aware of the environmental
problems of global warming and deforestation on the one hand," said
Dr. Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies, "and the social problems of increasing
poverty and growing shanty towns on the other. But when these two factors
collide, you have a new scale of catastrophe. At the Red Cross and
Crescent alone, we have a huge increase in the number of people
needing our assistance due to floods and earthquakes. In the last six
years, it has risen from less than half a million to more than five
and a half million" (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Society
press release, The World Disasters Report for 1999, emphasis
added throughout).
Summary of 1999 Red Cross
World Disasters Report
The first chapter in The World Disasters
Report for 1999 ominously stated, "Compared to the 1960s, the
past decade has seen the number of great natural catastrophes triple, costing
the world's economies nine times as much-the bill for 1998
alone was over US$90 billion… From tsunamis and earthquakes
to floods and famines, humankind is increasingly threatened by the
forces of nature. With almost a billion people living in unplanned
urban shanty towns, deforestation wrecking ecological defenses against
catastrophic natural events, and global warming making the forces
of wind, rain and sun even harder to predict and counter, the world
is at risk as never before."
