Philippine 5th in Asia in housing loss during disasters

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines ranked fifth in the list of 10 countries in South and Southeast Asia with the highest risk of future displacement and loss of housing due to disasters, according to a new study conducted by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center of the Norwegian Refugee Council and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

The study, using probabilistic risk models for disasters that have been used to calculate estimates of future economic losses from a range of natural hazards, warned that 720,000 people in the Philippines face the risk of displacement and loss of housing.

The UNISDR said this is the first time that these techniques have been applied to forecast potential average numbers of people made homeless over long periods of time. Slow-onset disasters attributed to drought and sea level rise are not included.

The study, covering 204 countries and territories, shows that eight of the 10 countries with the highest risk of future displacement and loss of housing are in South and Southeast Asia.

In India, 2.3 million people face such risk, followed by China with 1.3 million; Bangladesh, 1.2 million; Vietnam, one million; the Philippines, 720,000; Myanmar, 570,000; Pakistan, 460,000; Indonesia, 380,000; Russia, 250,000 and the United States, 230,000.

The UN-backed study, released on the International Day for Disaster Reduction last Friday, also warned sudden-onset disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and tropical cyclones are likely to displace nearly 14 million people worldwide each year.

“This is an important baseline against which we can measure progress in reducing disaster risk. The findings underline the challenge we have, to reduce the numbers of people affected by disasters,” UN Secretary-General’s Disaster Risk Reduction special representative Robert Glasser said.

“Apart from death or severe injury in a disaster event, there is no more crushing blow than the loss of the family home which is often a place of work in many of the countries worst affected,” he added.

The study said the numbers of internally displaced people, refugees and migrants are at an all-time high. Besides conflict, disasters trigger a significant percentage of such movements.

Unless disaster risk is managed better, homelessness among people in the world’s most disaster-prone countries is predicted to continue rising.