Natural disaster have a greater impact on LEDCs than MEDCs. how far do you agree with this statement?discuss.

Answer;

About 80% people in the world live in less economically developed areas (LEDCS) and the rest of the people live in more economically developed areas (MEDCS). And evidence shows that LEDCS suffer from the effects of more natural hazards than MEDCS. LEDCS donot have enough money and resources so they can not prepare to tackle these hazards and because of that they cannot help the economyafter natural disaster. So every year it causes a great economic, social,health and other damage in LEDCS. Now I want to discuss this issue from different perspcetives.

The LEDCS are always badly affected than MEDCS due to a number of factors. Focusing on the loss of human life in LEDCS for a number of reasons, high population density often causes larger loss of life and also poorer building construction can lead to building collapsing on more people. The poor people in LEDCS have often little choice leaving the area , for example a poor family may own a land in a flood affected area and have nothing else, the family could not move due to lack of funds or even an ignorance of potential dangers. According to the report of ( international study for disaster reduction, 2010 ), between 1991 and 2005, 630,000 people are killed by natural disasters in LEDCS compered with 72,000 in MEDCS. So,It is one of the greatest reason why many people consider natural disasters to have greater impact in LEDCS than in MEDCS.
As far as economic impact is concerned, LEDC infrastructure ( road, electricity, airports, gas supply) is often of poorer quality and can easily be damaged and destroyed in natural disasters. On the other hand in MEDCS the infrastructure also affected by natural disaster but as they are wealthy is is easy for them to recover the damage quickly. For instance, hurricane hit both Bangladesh in november and cammile (USA) in 1969. 4.7 million people were affected by hurricane in Bangladesh whereas only 1.9 million were affected in USA. Both of the countries are seriously affected by that. Whilst the damage in Bangladeh cost $64 million compared to $1422 million in camille, but it is much larger percentage of Bangladesh GNP and therefore it will take them longer to recover.

From the point of view of health, facilities in LEDCS are often less able to cope with demand after natural disaster. This can be made worse by the fact that, there are onlybasic water and sewage facilities , which can easily be damaged by natural disaster. Disease is also a common problem after a hazard event. In this period once people are evaquated they have to housed in temporary accomodation and because of lack of madical facilities and that of sanitation and clean water, they are always suffered by serious diseases. For example, after the salvador landslide in january 2001, people were severely affected by typhoid andcholera at that time.

However, natural disasters may have greater impact on MEDCS in some respects. For example, MEDCS have more developed infrastructure which is very expensive to repair after natural disaster if it is damaged.
In conclusion therefore, it is apparent that all natural hazards has serious impact on both LEDCS and MEDCS. But MEDCS are able to cope better with the impacts and they can overcome the long term impact more easily than LEDCS.

ALIZA HASAN
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