Quarter of world’s population at risk from once-in-a-century floods
- Around 1.8 billion people face a “significant” risk, including hundreds of millions in the world’s two most populous countries – India and China
- Researchers found that trillions of US dollars of economic activity, accounting for 12 per cent of global GDP in 2020, is threatened by the floods
Around a quarter of the world’s population face a “significant” risk from once-in-a-century floods, a global study has found.
The world’s two largest countries by population combined account for more than one-third of global exposure to a significant risk, which the researchers defined as floods with a depth of 15cm (6 inches) or more.
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Record rainfall in southern China affects 3.75 million people, causes severe economic losses
China leads the world in terms of the economic risk from such floods, which have a 1 per cent chance of happening in any given year, with economic activity worth US$3.3 trillion at risk.
It is followed by the United States at US$1.1 trillion and Japan at US$700 million, according to the study by researchers with the World Bank and Deltares, a Dutch research institute.
In China, the risk is greater along the coast and the Yellow River valley – an area sometimes described as “China’s sorrow” because of its long history of catastrophic floods – according to the article published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.
At present parts of southern China are experiencing record levels of rainfall, with 240,000 people being evacuated in the region of Guangxi and a total of 3.75 million affected in some way.