Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Why we ought to be bothered ...



Economies of Bangladesh, Philippines, Myanmar, India, Viet Nam at highest risk (excerpt from Maplecroft Natural Hazards  Risk Atlas)


15/08/2012
Some of Asia’s most important growth economies have the highest financial risk from the threat of natural hazards, due to the high exposure of their cities and trading hubs to events such as flooding, earthquakes and tropical cyclones, according to the 2nd Natural Hazards Risk Atlas released by Maplecroft.
Bangladesh, the Philippines, Myanmar, India and Viet Nam are among the ten countries with the greatest proportion of their economic output exposed to natural hazards. In addition, they also demonstrate poor capability to recover from a significant event exposing investments in those countries to risk of supply chain and market disruptions. This could lead to sizable business interruption costs, in addition to material damage to essential infrastructure. Maplecroft’s research also showed that it could exacerbate other risks like societal unrest, food security, corruption and rule of law even leading to increased political risk.
“High exposure to natural hazards in these countries are compounded by a lack of resilience to combat the effects of a disaster should one emerge,” explains Maplecroft’s Head of Maps and Indices Helen Hodge. “Given the exposure of key financial and manufacturing centres, the occurrence of a major event would be very likely to have significant impacts on the total economic output of these countries, as well as foreign business.”


Praful Rao

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