The Food and Agriculture Organisation in a new report revealed that natural disasters caused $96 billion loss in agric losses worldwide, writes JOHN OBA
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has stated that natural disasters in developing countries agricultural sector between 2005 and 2015 amounted to $96 billion.
The figure, which was contained in a new report launched last week at a conference in Hanoi convened by Vietnam’s government with the support of the FAO, added that out of that amount, $48 billion was recorded in Asia. The report therefore called for a disaster risk reduction management as an integral part of modern agriculture.
“Natural disasters are costing farmers in the developing world billions of dollars each year, with drought emerging as the most destructive in a crowded field of threats that also includes floods, forest fi res, storms, plant pests, animal diseases outbreaks, chemical spills and toxic algal blooms.
“Drought, which recently has battered farmers in all corners of the globe, North, South, East and West was one of the leading culprits. 83% of all drought-caused economic losses documented by FAO’s study were absorbed by agriculture, with a price tag of $29billion,” the report reveals. But the report also detailed how multiple other threats that take heavy toll on food production, food security, and people’s livelihoods.
“The agriculture sectors which includes crop and livestock production as well as forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, face many risks, such as climate and market volatility, pests and diseases, extreme weather events, and an everincreasing number of protracted crises and conflicts.
“This has become the ‘new normal,’ and the impact of climate change will further exacerbate these threats and challenges. “Disaster risk reduction and management must therefore become an integral part of modern agriculture. Building a more holistic and ambitious disaster-resilience framework for agriculture is crucial to ensuring sustainable development — which is a cornerstone for peace and the basis for adaptation to climate change “ said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.
According to the report, flood caused $19 billion loss, earthquakes/ landslides/ mass movements caused $10.5 billion loss; Other meteorological disasters, such as extreme temperatures and storms caused another $26.5 billion losses; while biological disasters, such as diseases and infestations and wildfires caused $9.5 billion and $1 billion losses respectively.
Geographical disasater Outlining the disasters by geographical locations, the report states that agriculture in Asian region was most affected by disasters as floods and storms had the largest impacts, even as it added that earthquakes, tsunamis and extreme temperatures also heavily affected the region’s agric sector.
For Africa as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, drought is the costliest type of disaster, causing crop and livestock losses of $10.7 and $13 billion respectively in the period under review. “Crop pests and animal diseases were also among the most expense-inducing disasters for African farmers, notching up $6+ billion in losses in that same period.
And across the globe, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, in particular tsunamis, earthquakes, storms and floods wiTheconomic losses in SIDS due largely to disasters jumped from $8.8 billion between 2000-2007 to over $14 billion between 2008-2015, the reported revealed.
It put the total cost of this at $48 billion in losses between 2005 and 2015 for Asia, $26 billion for Africa and $22 billion for Latin America and the Caribbean. On man-made disasters, the report expands the scale of FAO’s analysis of disaster impacts to agriculture to include not just natural disasters but also “food chain crises” sparked by animal diseases like Rift Valley Fever. The report which also addressed confl ict highlighted iits impact in Syria. For example, the report showed that overall fi nancial cost of the country’s agriculture sector between 2011-2016 was $16 billion.
To reduce risks, fi rst understand them According to the study, nearly a quarter of all financial losses caused by natural disasters between 2005 and 2015 were borne by the sector. Given the increasing scale and intensity of threats to agriculture, developing adequate disaster and crisis governance structures including enabling policies, strengthened capacities and targeted financing mechanisms – is critical, the report says.
“To be effective, strategies for risk reduction, humanitarian responses, resilience building and climate change adaptation must be grounded on data and evidence detailing the ways that disasters affect farmers and food producers. “This is why FAO developed a methodology to assess systematically and agricultural damages and losses stemming from disasters. It provides a standardized approach that yields comparable results at global, national and subnational levels, and includes for
the fi rst time fisheries and forestry sector analyses on loss and damage, thus enabling more thorough and exact assessments. “The FAO methodology has been endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly as part of the monitoring system established under the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction to help monitor the achievement of global disaster risk reduction targets as well as under the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda,” it stated.
Livelihoods in the balance The livelihoods of some 2.5 billion people on the planet depended on agriculture, adding that these smallscale farmers, herders, fishers and forestdependent communities generate more than half of the world’s agricultural production. “Typically cash- and asset-poor, they are particularly at risk from disasters that destroy or damage harvests, equipment, supplies, livestock, seeds, crops and stored food,” it stated.
But the report did not examine the impact of insurance in the sector as 80 per cent of food produced from these region are produced by smallholder farmers, there is the likelihood that most of the farms were not insured hence no compensation to farmers who loose their farms except for some countries like Nigeria that compensated it farmers as a way of cushioning the effects of the disaster on it farmers.
