It seems not all is doom and gloom in Malta after all. While the government and opposition have been at constant loggerheads recently on the dangers and harm the new Delimara power station extension plant could pose to citizens’ health, a new study shows that the Maltese can console themselves that at least, the country is not prone to any natural disaster any time soon. That’s one less thing off the government’s plate then!
According to the Natural Disasters Risk Index (NDRI), compiled by the British risk advisory firm Maplecroft, Malta is, along with Andorra, Bahrain, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Qatar, San Marino and the United Arab Emirates, one of the countries least at risk of suffering from a natural disaster.
Analysing the number of natural disasters occurring in each and every country in the world from 1980 till 2010, the study ranks Bangladesh, Indonesia and Iran as the three countries which are the most vulnerable to a natural disaster.
The study took into account various facts, including the number and frequency of disasters in every country, the total deaths that resulted because of a disaster and the death toll as a proportion of the country’s population.
Disasters include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms, flooding, drought, landslides, heatwaves and epidemics.
“Poverty is an important factor in countries where both the frequency and impacts of natural disasters are severe. Poor infrastructure, coupled with dense overcrowding in high-risk areas like flood plains, river banks and steep slopes continually result in high casualty figures,” said Maplecroft’s environmental analyst Anna Moss, who added that the purpose of the study was to “highlight the need for even the wealthiest countries to focus on disaster risk reduction measures”.
According to the NDRI’s figures, Bangladesh has suffered more than 191,000 fatalities as a result of natural disasters in the past 30 years, and Indonesia comes just behind with a nearly equal number, the vast majority of which were inflicted by the December 2004 tsunami.
In Iran, earthquakes accounted for the loss of approximately 74,000 lives over this period.
The study also reveals that more developed countries are hardly exempt from experiencing a natural disaster in the near future, with three G8 countries considered at ‘high risk’. They are France, ranked 17 overall; Italy, which was hit by killer heatwaves in 2003 and 2006 comes next and the United States, severely affected by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, coming in at 37.