GENEVA - Myanmar's devastating cyclone and central China's earthquake drove up the annual disaster death toll, causing most of the fatalities and making 2008 one of the deadliest years for natural disasters so far this decade, the United Nations said Thursday.
At least 235,816 people lost their lives in 321 disasters around the world last year, said the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
"Almost the entire bulk of the deaths ... is explained by only two events: Cyclone Nargis and the Sichuan (earthquake)," said Debarati Guha-Sapir of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which compiled the figures for the world body.
The death toll is more than three times the annual average from 2000 to 2007 - 66,812. Since 2000, only 2004 had a higher death toll - 241,647 pushed up by the Indian Ocean tsunami.
"The share of floods and storms are increasing substantially (and) steadily," compared with the number of earthquakes, droughts and other natural catastrophes, said Guha-Sapir.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global warming would increase the number of extreme weather events and cause more natural disasters.
The world's disasters last year caused estimated damage of $181 billion, some 60 per cent of it - or $108 billion - in China.
Salvano Briceno, director of the UN's disaster reduction agency, said the high amount of economic loss was alarming.
"Sadly, these losses could have been substantially reduced if buildings in China, particularly schools and hospitals, had been built to be more earthquake-resilient," he said.
A good early warning system in Myanmar could have saved many lives, Briceno added.
Hurricane Ike, which hit the Caribbean and the southern United States in September, also substantially contributed to the cost with an estimated $30 billion, the agency said.
The United States suffered 19 natural disasters over the last year; most-hit China had 26; and the Philippines had 20.
Briceno said increasing numbers of people living in urban areas increase the risk of deaths when a natural disaster occurs.
Environmental degradation and poverty, which exposes poor communities more to natural hazards than better protected wealthier areas, also make it difficult to protect people from disasters, he added.
