International Disaster Relief Efforts

Background:

As well as destroying lives and property, natural disasters cause economic impact that can affect vital global industries (see: Katrina’s affects on the energy sector) and force significant changes in GDP, industrial output and development assumptions. During the past decade, natural disasters have crippled or staggered countries without regard to economic status, although suffering is frequently exacerbated in poorer countries due to lack of suitable infrastructure and response capability. A short list of such calamities would include earthquakes that rocked Turkey (1999), Iran (2003), Pakistani-administered Kashmir (2005) and central China (2008); the monsoon that devastated parts of Myanmar in 2008; landslides and floods that regularly ravage areas of Latin America and South Asia; and the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean demonstrated the potentially global affects inherent in such disasters.

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti (a country still recovering from the effects of two cyclones which hit it in 2008) killed or made homeless hundreds of thousands of people. This has lead to huge donations of monetary aid and practical assistance from international bodies such as the UN, the IMF and the World Food program, as well as from more developed nations. In recent years, rescue and relief, involving a complex web of NGOs, private charities, international organizations, government and military resources, has grown into an industry of its own. Climate scientists suggest the incidence of such events may be on the rise.