Below is the TLDR from my hot take blog about the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Global Platform meeting in Geneva June 2-6.
You can read the full blog by following the link.
This hot take is Part I of II, and I’ll post Part II soon (based on the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Symposium that took place near Paris, June 7-9).
The UN Global Platform made me think about several strands of research and action which really need to be integrated better in analysis and policy. These are: Disaster Risk Reduction activities, Systemic Risk research and mitigation, Global Stresses driving the ‘Polycrisis’, and ‘Metacrisis’ issues underpinning those stresses. Single issue and single hazard actions will not succeed without addressing these drivers collectively.
Global disaster costs are exploding while responses lag: Direct losses have reached US$200 billion annually, but cascading effects arguably push the true cost to $2 trillion. Despite the comprehensive Sendai Framework adopted by 187 countries, disaster impacts are actually increasing globally.
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Global Platform (Geneva, June 2–6) made some progress: Thousands gathered with genuine commitment, the World Bank has pivoted to prioritize 80% of disaster funding toward prevention, and there was acknowledgment that current frameworks need to be “more dynamic and powerful” by 2030.
We’re trapped in a systemic bind: The conference focused on early warning, coordination and engagement issues, specific hazards and financing, touching only lightly on the global stressors resulting from present day human systems that generate risks with increasing rapidity and intensity.
There was little discussion of exponential technologies that generate new vulnerabilities faster than we can assess or regulate them, while increasing global connectivity makes systems more fragile to cascading failures.
The meeting missed the deeper “metacrisis“, ignoring the competitive and evolutionary dynamics between nations and corporations that prevent needed collective action. Individually rational decisions lead to collectively destructive outcomes. Disaster risk reduction remains inadequate due to short-term competitive pressures that reward immediate advantage over long-term survival.
Small islands illustrate the impossible position: Island nations face disaster costs up to 64% of GDP from single events, yet they can’t control the global climate, sea level rise or economic systems that generate many risks they face.
Real resilience requires transformation: Rather than just better disaster response, we need to change the fundamental incentive structures and governance mechanisms that generate cascading disasters in the first place.
The world’s current trajectory points to a “hard landing”: My assessment is that without addressing underlying drivers, the mismatch between accelerating risks and response capacity likely means a “hard landing” is ahead. That is, systemic reorganisation in coming decades with reduced global living standards.
Bottom Line: The UNDRR conference showed remarkable dedication to resilience, but until we address the systemic stressors generating risks faster than we can manage them, and the game-theoretic and evolutionary drivers of those stressors, then we’ll remain stuck in an increasingly dangerous reactive cycle.
In Part II of this ‘Tale of Two Conferences’ I’ll present a dash of hope from the second meeting I attended, the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (Paris, June 7–9), which countered some of the despair I felt following the UN Global Platform… Watch this space…
Thanks for the post, Matt! Strongly upvoted.
I would not be surprised by an increasing total cost from disasters (accounting for mortality, morbidity, and econonic effects), but I think the total cost from disasters as a fraction of the gross world product (GWP) has been decreasing over the past few centuries. I expect the total cost to be roughly proportional to the cost accounting only for effects on mortality, and I estimate the annual conflict deaths as a fraction of the global population decreased 0.121 OOM/century from 1400 to 2000 (coefficient of determination of 8.45 %), and the annual epidemic/pandemic deaths as a fraction of the global population decreased 0.459 OOM/century from 1500 to 2023 (38.5 %).
The annual deaths from natural disasters as a fraction of the global population have also been decreasing since 1900.
Many thanks Vasco, and thanks for the additional data for context too. I think a big chunk of the UN GAR 2025′s ‘$2 trillion’ cost impact was attributed to things like ecosystem destruction from droughts. Which that report argued had not been properly costed in previous calculations. I take your point about the fact that death rate from equivalent disasters today vs in the past is lower now (with correspondingly lower monetized harm). Cheers!
Thanks for clarifying, Matt!
I do not know how the cost of ecosystem destruction that went into those 2 T$ was estimated. However, some estimates of costs of that type rely on methods which I believe can easily overestimate the real cost. Some rely on how much people reportedly value biodiversity, which is subject to social desirability bias. Others rely on the cost that would be needed to return the environment to its original state, whereas this cost may be much higher than the damage caused to humans.
In addition, I think ecosystem destruction is beneficial to wild animals, given my best guess that wild animals have negative lives, and I believe the effects on wild animals are way larger than those on humans. I calculate GiveWell’s top charities increase the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails 87.6 k times as much as they increase the welfare of humans due to increasing agricultural land.