“Natural disasters strike when they are forgotten.” These are the words left by physicist Torahiko Terada. Disasters sometimes occur on a scale beyond human understanding, shattering peaceful lives and family bonds and claiming many lives. The threat of nature is immeasurable.

 However, do natural disasters really “strike when they are forgotten”?UNISDR (the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) reports that in 2015, there were 346 disasters worldwide. The death toll was 22,773 (as far as is known), and the total number of people affected reached 98.6 million. That means that somewhere on Earth, about 62 people died from disasters each day, and over the course of a year the number of people affected was about 1.5 times the population of Japan’s three major metropolitan areas. Of course, Terada likely left these words as a lesson to be applied to disaster preparedness. However, on a global scale, it is no exaggeration to say that disasters are “constantly occurring.” In today’s world, where people, goods, and capital are globally interconnected, knowing “the true face of disasters” should offer major benefits for thinking about humanitarian assistance—and even in business contexts.

Around the world, who faces what kinds of disasters, and what kinds of lives are they forced to lead? And to what extent are Japan’s three major newspapers (Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun) capturing that reality?

First, what kinds of disasters actually occurred in 2015? Below is a summary of the top 10 countries with the largest affected populations, as reported by UNISDR.

UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) data and the ReliefWeb database were used to create this.

According to this report, the largest affected population was in North Korea, which suffered a severe drought said to occur “once in a century”. In August, the country also experienced disasters caused by torrential rains.

Meanwhile, India, which ranked second, was hit by a widespread heat wave in May. This heat wave is believed to have been caused by vigorous atmospheric activity over the Bay of Bengal, and that same activity, in late July, brought cyclone-induced flooding to the Bengal region. In early November, the Bay of Bengal coastal area also suffered damage from strong winds and heavy rains, and India was additionally affected by the powerful earthquake that struck Nepal in April.

Now, let’s shift perspective a bit and look more closely at which types of disasters had the greatest impact on people worldwide over the course of 2015. What affected people the most during that one year?

Based on UNISDR data .

Looking at the affected population, in 2015 the vast majority were due to “drought” and “hydro-meteorological disasters,” such as floods and storms. In fact, even when we take the 10-year average, hydro-meteorological disasters and drought affect the most people worldwide. This is likely because these disasters generally inflict more severe damage on people than cold or heat waves, tend to cause damage over wider areas than earthquakes or tsunamis, and occur relatively frequently. It should be noted that in terms of deaths, in 2015 earthquakes/tsunamis and cold/heat waves are said to have caused the most deaths in that order, but the exact number of deaths due to floods and drought may not be accurately identified. How did Japan’s three major newspapers cover such disasters internationally?

This graph compiles all international reporting (Note 1) published by Japan’s three major newspapers over the course of 2015, extracting articles in the weather/disaster and environment/pollution categories and summarizing everything related to disasters. For the metric of analysis, we used character count, which indicates “how much information is being conveyed” amid disasters when society is in turmoil and information is difficult to obtain.

According to this graph, for all three newspapers, coverage related to “earthquakes/tsunamis” overwhelmingly dominates. Japan is often called an “earthquake-prone nation,” and even in international reporting, it is clear that “familiar” disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis draw attention.

But remember: In 2015, when we look at disasters worldwide by affected population, the vast majority were due to “drought” or “hydro-meteorological disasters.” As for “drought,” which should have had the largest affected population, coverage amounted to as little as about 1,200 characters in an entire year at most. Given that this article is roughly 3,000 characters, you can see just how much disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis are “favored” in Japan. In Japan, reporting does not reflect the reality of disasters at all.

Based on UNISDR data.

Why does such a discrepancy arise?

One likely reason is that, in Japan, earthquakes and tsunamis feel more “familiar” than droughts or cold/heat waves. Drought is not merely a lack of rainfall leading to water shortages. The land dries up, the soil becomes barren like a desert, and food production becomes impossible. When regions are hit by extreme heat or cold waves, harm is not limited to heatstroke or frostbite; crops suffer severe damage. During a heat wave, rail tracks can expand and warp, asphalt on roads can melt, paralyzing transportation infrastructure, and electricity use for cooling can surge, at times exceeding power generation capacity and causing blackouts. For those unfamiliar with such situations, these are hard to picture. By contrast, earthquakes and tsunamis are easier for readers to visualize, more likely to attract interest and sympathy, and therefore more likely to be reported.

Another possible reason is that disasters such as droughts and cold/heat waves have effects that continue over long periods and are hard to capture as discrete “events.” Even for hydro-meteorological disasters, it is not always possible to say, “At a certain hour and minute, violent winds raged and floods swept through the town,” in a way that clearly marks them as events. Meanwhile, earthquakes and tsunamis cause dramatic damage and changes, making them easier to portray as individual articles.

Cracked earth caused by drought: Africa, Mauritania ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In any case, this gap between reporting and reality means that disasters other than earthquakes and tsunamis receive scant coverage, leading to disaster images that are far removed from reality. Even if we try to provide effective support to affected people from a global perspective, there may be “unreported disasters” elsewhere that are causing even more critical damage than the intended target of support. And unreported disasters fail to attract assistance, causing the number of victims and deaths to grow further—a negative spiral. Unfortunately, in Japanese reporting, the current situation is that only a tiny amount of highly skewed information is available about the world’s disasters.

[Footnotes]

Note 1 Articles treated as international reporting and the analytical method

Writer:Yosuke Tomino

Graphics:Miho Kono, Yosuke Tomino