As Cyclone Mocha gathered strength in the Bay of Bengal earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) warned of a "very dangerous" storm that could have major impacts for hundreds of thousands of the world's most vulnerable people.
Authorities and aid agencies in Bangladesh and Myanmar evacuated about 400,000 coastal dwellers as fears grew that sprawling camps, home to Rohingya families displaced by conflict and military crackdowns, would suffer a direct hit.
While the arrival of yet another powerful cyclone surprised few in a fast-warming world, disaster experts highlighted the relatively low number of deaths, estimated at several hundred in worst-affected Myanmar and zero in Bangladesh.
WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said the storm had caused widespread devastation in both nations, affecting "the poorest of the poor", but that in the past, they had suffered death tolls as high as hundreds of thousands from such cyclones.
"Thanks to early warnings and disaster management, these catastrophic mortality rates are now thankfully history. Early warnings save lives," he added, as the WMO this week released new figures on the impacts of disasters since 1970.
Over the five decades, economic losses rocketed as extreme weather events were turbo-charged by global warming, with the 2010-2019 period accounting for nearly a third of total losses of US$4.3 trillion, largely due to a growth in damage from storms.
By contrast, the number of reported deaths per decade shrank from more than 556,000 in 1970-1979 to about 184,500 in the most recent decade, with a far smaller share attributed to storms.
The Global Commission on Adaptation said early warning systems, which give public information about extreme weather events before they hit and activate measures to keep people safe, can cut damage by 30 per cent with just 24 hours' notice.
The WMO says such systems save lives and provide at least a tenfold return on investment, but only half of countries have put them in place, with coverage especially low in small island developing states, least developed nations and Africa.
The United Nations chief has announced a goal of ensuring everyone on earth is protected by early warning systems by the end of 2027, through an initiative being implemented by UN agencies, development banks, governments and national weather services.
The programme is seeking new investments of about US$3 billion, a sum the WMO says would be dwarfed by the benefits.
Mami Mizutori, head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, said the rollout of early warning systems around the world had been key in lowering mortality from disasters this century, a rare success as threats spiral.
"If we don't manage to prevent (disasters), we pay a very, very huge price in lives and livelihoods," Mizutori said in an interview during a UN meeting on the global pact, called the Sendai Framework, in New York last week.
The review of the targets adopted in Sendai, Japan, revealed the number of people affected by disasters each year — through harm to their health, homes and incomes — has fallen since 2015.
But, it said, economic losses caused by disasters remained high at an average of above US$330 billion per year between 2015 and 2021, or one1 per cent of gross domestic product of the reporting countries, an amount estimated to be significantly undervalued.
The WMO's new analysis of weather, climate and water-related disasters pointed out that more than 60 per cent economic losses over the past five decades occurred in developed countries.
Yet the poorest nations and island states took a much bigger blow in terms of the share of their GDP.
In many cases, such as Cyclone Mocha, losses are uninsured and barely register in terms of dollar value, but can be devastating for people who have almost nothing to fall back on.
For example, those most affected by the recent storm in Bangladesh were Rohingya people displaced by political violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state and who now live in crowded conditions in camps in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.
Aid assessments showed the cyclone wrecked more than 8,000 flimsy bamboo huts there, about one-fifth of shanty homes.
The writers are from the Reuters news agency
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times