Will the Apparent Increased Frequency of Natural Disasters Have Any Economic Implications - Essay Example

In the recent past year 2004-05, the total lives got affected b natural disasters were more than 308,000,000. On the economy, the impact is always high. Sometimes it can be concentrated to the regional level and sometimes it is nationwide. The impact on the national economy depends on the contribution of the region and industries of the area to the GDP of the country. More the contribution on the GDP more will be the long-lasting impact on the country. This is the reason for the Tsunami hitting the economy of Indonesia and Sumatra more than that of India.

The contribution of the tourism and fishing industry in India is widely distributed. The part of South India hit by the Tsunami contributed to a small fraction, which was manageable. In the case of Indonesia tourism is one of the major contributing sectors to its GDP. That’s why the impact on the economy was more for Indonesia. This paper analyses various factors of the economy and the work of previous researchers to study the apparent increased frequency of natural disasters and their economic implications. In the year 2005 Disasters cost a total of 159 billion USD in damage.

In these losses, 125 billion USD were for losses caused by Hurricane Katrina in the United States. The cost incurred in damages rose by 71% from 92.9 USD in 2004. The number of disasters is increasing as compared to previous years. As per one studies an 8% rise in disasters in the year 2005 as compared to 2004. There were 360 natural disasters last year compared to 305 in 2004. “This increase,” says CRED’s Director, Prof. Debarati Guha Sapir, “is mainly due to the rising numbers of floods and droughts that affect large swathes of a population.

” CRED figures indicate that the number of floods increased by 57 per cent in 2005 (107 in 2004 and 168 in 2005) and droughts by about 47 per cent (15 in 2004 and 22 in 2005). Natural disasters have major implications on various aspects of human life. The overall ecology of a particular area changes with major natural disasters.