Human Emergent

Global

The planet-scale picture

The problem

Disasters cost far more than the headline figures suggest. Direct losses averaged US$70–80 billion a year between 1970 and 2000 and rose to US$180–200 billion a year between 2001 and 2020; once cascading and ecosystem costs are counted, the total now exceeds US$2.3 trillion a year, close to ten times the direct losses in official figures (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction [UNDRR], 2025).

The human side of that bill is concentrated. The United Nations estimated that 305 million people would need humanitarian assistance in 2025 and appealed for US$47 billion to reach 190 million of them, driven chiefly by conflict and by climate-related disasters (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA], 2024). By November 2024, only 43 per cent of the previous year’s US$50 billion appeal had been funded, and the average humanitarian appeal now runs for a decade (OCHA, 2024).

Warning still does not reach everyone. By March 2024, 108 countries — 55 per cent of the world’s total — reported having multi-hazard early warning systems, more than double the 2015 figure (WMO & UNDRR, 2024). Countries with only limited-to-moderate coverage record a disaster mortality ratio nearly six times higher than countries with substantial-to-comprehensive coverage (WMO & UNDRR, 2024).

And the people with the greatest need are the least served. In a 2023 survey of 6,342 persons with disabilities across 132 countries, 84 per cent had no personal disaster preparedness plan, up from 71 per cent in 2013; 17 per cent said they would face serious difficulty evacuating even with adequate warning, and 6 per cent could not evacuate on their own at all (UNDRR, 2023). Persons with disabilities make up about 16 per cent of the world’s population (UNDRR, 2023).

The risk

Disaster costs have been underestimated, and so — the same report argues — have the benefits of investing now to reduce risk (UNDRR, 2025). It describes a reinforcing cycle of disasters, debt, loss of insurability and growing humanitarian need that traps vulnerable countries and communities (UNDRR, 2025).

The data itself is incomplete in exactly the places it matters most: in Asia, heat-related deaths are frequently not reported at all, even as heat becomes a growing health risk (World Meteorological Organization [WMO], 2024a).

Information about people in crisis needs its own protection. Humanitarian data protection guidance was written for organisations collecting personal data from some of the most vulnerable people in emergencies, in some of the most volatile settings (Kuner & Marelli, 2020).

What works

Prevention returns more than it costs. An independent study of 23 years of U.S. federal mitigation grants found that society saves about US$6 for every US$1 invested, and that building beyond code requirements returns about US$4 per US$1 (Multihazard Mitigation Council, 2019). Early warning services are estimated to return roughly ten times their cost (WMO & UNDRR, 2024).

The international framework already sets the direction. The Sendai Framework, adopted in 2015, sets seven global targets to 2030, including substantially increasing access to multi-hazard early warning and disaster risk information, and makes enhanced preparedness for effective response one of its four priorities for action (UNDRR, 2015).

Responders can be trusted before they arrive. International urban search-and-rescue teams are peer-classified as light, medium or heavy under the INSARAG External Classification, whose guidelines the UN General Assembly endorsed in 2002 (International Search and Rescue Advisory Group [INSARAG], 2020). The World Health Organization runs an equivalent classification for emergency medical teams against published minimum standards (World Health Organization [WHO], 2021).

Collect less, protect more. European data protection law requires that personal data be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for its purpose (Regulation (EU) 2016/679, 2016), and humanitarian guidance applies the same minimisation principle to people receiving assistance (Kuner & Marelli, 2020).

Continental

How it overflows into each continent

Global patterns land differently on each continent. Each block below states one problem, one risk and one mechanism that already exists there — and then what ERNA does with it.

The Americas

2023 brought record climate hazards to Latin America and the Caribbean. Hurricane Otis intensified rapidly and struck Acapulco, Mexico, as a Category 5 storm, and drought drove the Negro River at Manaus to its lowest level in more than 120 years of records and disrupted shipping through the Panama Canal (WMO, 2024b).

North America already moves resources across its borders. Canada’s wildfire agencies share equipment, personnel and aircraft under the Mutual Aid Resources Sharing agreement, a Canada–United States arrangement allows rapid cross-border movement of firefighting resources, and CIFFC also holds arrangements with Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre [CIFFC], n.d.). In 2023 the United States mobilised 2,774 resources to Canadian fires, and a 2015 U.S.–Mexico arrangement extended wildfire cooperation beyond the border strip to both countries (National Interagency Fire Center [NIFC], n.d.).

Africa

African countries lose on average 2–5 per cent of GDP to climate extremes, and many divert up to 9 per cent of their budgets to responding to them; by 2030 up to 118 million extremely poor people could be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat without adequate response measures (WMO, 2024c).

The regional recommendation is to invest in national meteorological and hydrological services and to accelerate the Early Warnings for All initiative (WMO, 2024c).

Asia

Asia was the world’s most disaster-hit region from weather, climate and water hazards in 2023: 79 hydrometeorological disasters were recorded, more than 80 per cent of them floods and storms, killing more than 2,000 people and directly affecting nine million (WMO, 2024a).

Southeast Asia has a legally binding regional instrument. The ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response was signed in 2005, entered into force on 24 December 2009, and serves as the legal basis for the AHA Centre, its operational coordination hub (AHA Centre, n.d.).

Europe

An estimated 61,672 people died from heat in Europe between 30 May and 4 September 2022, the continent’s hottest season on record — even though the 2003 heatwave, with more than 70,000 excess deaths, had already led to prevention strategies for at-risk people (Ballester et al., 2023).

Europe pools response capacity. The EU Civil Protection Mechanism’s coordination centre monitors disasters around the clock and mobilises pre-committed teams and equipment on request, and rescEU, created in 2019, holds an EU-funded strategic reserve for when national resources are insufficient (Council of the European Union, n.d.).

Oceania

The Pacific islands produce about 0.02 per cent of global emissions yet are uniquely exposed: average elevation is one to two metres above sea level, around 90 per cent of people live within five kilometres of the coast, and half of all infrastructure sits within 500 metres of the sea (WMO, 2024d).

Early warning systems are available in only about a third of small island developing states worldwide, and the region’s own report names them an integral part of adaptation and risk reduction (WMO, 2024d).

National

Where it becomes one government’s problem

Every continental pattern arrives, in the end, at a national government that has to decide what to send, from whom, and how fast.

The problem

National plans do not reach the people they are written for. Only 11 per cent of persons with disabilities surveyed in 2023 were aware of their country’s national disaster risk reduction plan (UNDRR, 2023).

The early warning gap is a gap between countries: it is countries with limited-to-moderate coverage that carry the nearly six-fold higher disaster mortality (WMO & UNDRR, 2024).

The risk

Help also has to be legal where it lands. EMAC’s legislation settles liability and responsibility for costs, and allows credentials, licences and certifications to be honoured across state lines, with the requesting state responsible for reimbursement (Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, n.d.).

Verification is organised internationally rather than improvised on the day: search-and-rescue teams are peer-classified and later reclassified under INSARAG, and medical teams are classified by WHO against published minimum standards (INSARAG, 2020; WHO, 2021).

What works

The United States shows what a national agreement can do. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact, ratified by Congress in 1996 as Public Law 104-321, covers all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands, and lets them send personnel, equipment and commodities to one another under a governor-declared emergency (National Emergency Management Association [NEMA], n.d.).

Canada shows the same across a border: its mutual aid agreements set out how resources are shared, what they cost and the conditions for their return, so that crews can move quickly when a season escalates (CIFFC, n.d.).