Nations are spending too little to prevent disasters in the face of rising global calamities from the floods in South Africa to a record-breaking heat wave in India.
Of the $133 billion in available disaster-related financing in 2010 to 2019, only 4% went to reducing risks with the rest being spent on more costly postcalamity responses, Mami Mizutori, head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, said in an interview.
“This is the new landscape of disaster risk,” Mizutori said ahead of a global forum on disaster risk reduction in Bali. “We are living in a multi-hazard world with compounding effects, and we need to invest more in prevention.”
