In 2023, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded a total of 399 disasters related to natural hazards. These events resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. The economic losses amounted to US$202.7 billion. The 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and the Syrian Arab Republic was the most catastrophic event …
On an average, disasters killed more than 1.2 lakh people and affected more than 135.5 million people every year between 1971-1995. Floods killed the maximum number of people in Asia, particularly in China and Bangladesh. In Africa, drought and famine continued to dominate, accounting for almost one-third of the disaster …
international smuggling of chlorofluorocarbons (cfcs) - gases used as a coolants in refrigerators and air-conditioners that lead to global warming - are generating a lot of heat in political circles. September 16, 1997 marked the 10th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol, a path-breaking global agreement to phase out cfcs after …
Leaded gasoline causes about 90 per cent of airborne lead pollution in cities, the rest of which comes from factories, power plants, lead pipes, lead-based solder and paint. In the developing countries, about 15 million children may be suffering from permanent brain damage due to lead poisoning. About 80 per …
global population growth is slowing down contrary to the expectations of the propagators of demographic disaster, says a study published in the British science journal Nature . The study shows that the world's population will not double in the next century. Population will increase from 580 crore at present to …
Of the estimated 52 million deaths worldwide in 1996, about 40 million were in the developing world, including nearly nine million in the least developed countries. Of the 40 million deaths in the developing world in 1996, more than 17 million were due to infectious and parasitic diseases. Studies indicate …
Ecological devastation in China is rampant: acrid, blackened air in industrial cities; rain that turns inky and corrosive with acidity; noxious mounds of untreated garbage and hazardous sludge spewed out by millions of township enterprises; dead fish in the Huaihe river; carbon dioxide emissions that account for one-tenth of the …
India is the second most populated country in the world. In 195 1, the National Family Welfare Programme was launched with the objective of reducing the annual birth rate, by AD 2000, to 21 per thousand; the annual death rate to nine per thousand; the annual growth rate at 1.2 …
By the end of the century, China will emerge as a society comprising aged people. The number of people aged 65 and above is rapidly increasing in China reflecting a change in the age structure of the population, according to a recent nationwide sample survey. The survey, based on one …
Six years after the International Labour Organizatio6 (ILO) launched the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), reliabloata are still lacking. A recent ILO estimate places the number of child workers across the world at 73 million. With most nations not even recognising the problem - only 19 …
Forests help maintain the environmental conditions that make life possible, from regional hydrologic cycles to global climate. Frontier forests, large, ecologically intact and relatively undisturbed natural forests, are particularly important as they store tremendous amounts of carbon. Without these forests, this carbon would go straight into the atmosphere as carbon …
A prototype solar device that produces enough hot air from the sun's rays to drive the turbines of a 50 kw power station has brought the prospect of cheap, solar-generated electricity a step closer. The solar energy collector has been successfully tested by Israeli researchers at the Weizmann Institute of …
The Earth's genetic resources of plants and animals exist mainly in the developing South. The Convention on Biological Diversity, which came into force in December 1993, stipulated that if any external party wishes to access these resources it can do so only with the prior consent of the country where …
The global fish catch now appears to have reached the upper limits of sustainability. More than one billion people, mostly in developing countries, depend on fish as a primary source of animal protein. As human populations continue to grow, the demand for fish will rise further, reducing the average per …
Poverty, especially in rural areas, and illiteracy go hand in hand. The majority of the world's poor, about 1 billion of the world's 5.7 billion people, live in rural areas. Of those, 500 million are children. About 40,000 people die every day from hunger-related causes, most in rural areas. About …
Are you happy with your city? The International Finance and Trade Centre, Ahmedabad, tried to find an answer to this question from after surveying 100 upper-income households in 12 Indian cities to determine Ahmedabad's relative position with regard to quality of life and potential to attract business. The cities were …
In 1996 there has been a significant development in drugs for the treatment of AIDS. Even as Americans and Europeans are optimistic about the success of anti-AIDS drugs, a report by United Nations Programme on AIDS serves as a grim reminder that more than 90 per cent of the world's …
Public understanding of science and technology lags well behind public interest in these fields in most industrialised countries, according to two new studies disclosed at the recently held Symposium on Public Understanding of Science and Technology in Tokyo. It was agreed that the purpose of boosting public understanding is not …
There has recently been an upsurge of speculation about the future of the Indian tiger. The number of tigers in Indian reserves increased by 39 between 1989 and 1993. But this includes tigers in five reserves where either earlier data was not available, or which have been declared a reserve …
latest figures released by the health department of China show that deaths due to air pollution are increasing every year. Nearly 1,000 more people died of respiratory diseases in 1995 than in the early '90s as air pollution worsened in the country. Death figures rose from 5,238 in 1994 to …
