2010 “ONE OF WORST” YEARS FOR DISASTERS: UN

2010 DISASTERS WERE DEADLIEST IN 20 YEARS
DISASTER RISK REDUCTION MUST BE CRITICAL

GENEVA (AFP) - 2010 was one of the worst years on record for natural disasters over the past two decades, leaving nearly 297,000 people dead, research for the United Nations showed last month. The devastating earthquake in Haiti a year ago accounted for about two thirds of the toll, killing more than 222,500 people, according to the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). The CRED found that the summer heatwave in Russia was the second deadliest disaster of the year, leaving 55,736 people dead according to official sources. The economic cost of the 373 major disasters recorded in 2010 reached 109 billion dollars, headed by an estimated 30 billion dollars in damage caused by the powerful earthquake that struck Chile in February and claimed most of the 521 dead. Summer floods and landslides in China caused an estimated 18 billion dollars in damage, while floods in Pakistan cost 9.5 billion dollars, according to the CRED’s annual study.

The year was “one of the worst in decades in terms of the number of people killed and in terms of economic losses,” Margareta Wahlstroem, UN special representative for disaster risk reduction, told journalists. “These figures are bad, but could be seen as benign in years to come,” she said, pointing to the impact of unplanned growth of urban areas, environmental degradation and climate change. “It’s critical for local governments, city leaders and their partners to incorporate climate change adaptation in urban planning,” Wahlstrom said, stressing that disaster risk reduction is no longer optional and also warned that these figures were likely to get worse in coming years.


Some 373 natural disasters killed over 296,800 people in 2010, affecting nearly 208 million others and costing nearly US$110 billion, according to CRED. Researchers have already known that more and more weather related disasters are due to unplanned urbanization, environmental degradation and other factors that include climate change. However, they have not realized yet that most environmental problems have arisen from the materialism, consumerism and the fast decline of spirituality in this age of Kali.



WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?
Materialism and consumerism lead to greed, selfishness and exploitative mentality, which comprise pollution of the heart. ... This pollution of the heart impels people to knowingly persist with activities that pollute the environment. For example, due to greed, industrialists avoid treating toxic effluents before releasing them into rivers. ... The following quote of Alan Durning of the “World Watch Institute” represents what many scientists consider to be the only hope for saving the environment, “In a fragile biosphere, the ultimate fate of humanity may depend on whether we can cultivate a deeper sense of self-restraint, founded on a widespread ethic of limiting consumption and finding non-material enrichment.” And all the known forms of non-material enrichment: “prayer, meditation, yoga and chanting of holy names” clearly point to a spiritual dimension to life.




Śrīpad Caitanya Caran das (BE E&TC) :
“When Science Points To Spirituality”
“Green Earth Needs Spiritual Humans”
“The Spiritual Scientist” - Vol. 3 Issue 1 & Vol. 4 Issue 3
Bhaktivedanta Academy for Culture and Education (BACE), Pune
http://thespiritualscientist.com/

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