10. Risk Management of Water-related Hazards

We sometimes have the impression that water-related hazards – such as floods, hurricanes and droughts – almost never leave the front pages. In the four years between 1997 and 2001, Hurricanes Georges and Mitch in the Caribbean and Central America were followed by the impacts of El Nino in Latin America, the Caribbean and South-East Asia. These were succeeded by the Venezuelan mudslides, the Orissa (India) cyclone, and, more recently, there have been disastrous floods in Europe, China and India, affecting millions of people and costing billions of dollars in direct damage. Water-related hazards of this kind affect the largest number of people (65 per cent) but, fortunately, they prove the less deadly, accounting for only 15 per cent of all natural disaster-related deaths. This article has been prepared by the United Nations Inter-Agency Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR).