Good year for disasters, was 2006. That's not meant to sound flippant. Natural calamities such as hurricanes, earthquakes and floods claimed fewer lives last year than they did in 2005.

New statistics out today show disasters killed 21,342 people worldwide in 2006, compared with 82,061 the year before. Economic losses caused by natural hazards also fell, to just $19 billion in 2006, compared with $210 billion the year before.

These heartening figures, released by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), are a reflection of what didn't happen in 2006. No massive temblors like the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 that killed 73,338. And certainly nothing like the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which left 230,000 dead or missing. Nor were there hurricanes to rival Katrina, Wilma or Rita that together racked up $166 billion in damages in the United States.

The deadliest disaster of last year was an earthquake in Indonesia in May, which claimed 5,778 lives. Next on the list was Typhoon Durian in the Philippines (1,399 dead), a major landslide also in the Philippines (1,112) and the summer heat wave in Europe that killed 1,000 people in the Netherlands.

That's the good news - and news that confirms a trend observed since 2000.

"The number of people killed by disasters has been decreasing, if we do not take into account the two mega events: the tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the earthquake in Pakistan," said Debarati Guha-Sapir from CRED.

The bad news is that even as disasters are claiming fewer lives, the number of people affected by them remains staggeringly high at 134.5 million in 2006. That's down a bit from 158 million in 2005 (again, a number inflated by the Kashmir quake) but far higher than in decades past.

One reason is that there are more natural hazards than ever before. There were 395 different natural disasters around the world in 2006, compared with well under 100 three decades ago. If you look at a graph of the number of disasters each year since 1975, the relentless increase is alarming.

Why are there so many more disasters? For one thing, there's better reporting of calamities worldwide. But many experts put it down to climate change.

"There is undoubtedly a real increase in floods and cyclones, and both of these are associated with environmental global warming," Guha-Sapir said.

Last year there were 226 floods worldwide compared with an average of 162 over the previous six years.

The number of "extreme temperature events" such as heat waves and cold snaps also rose to 30 in 2006 from an average of 23.

"Floods and storms are two major events that have dramatic and long-term effects on poor people," said Salvano Briceno, director if the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction in Geneva. "The small rise in extreme (temperature) events is indicating that we might have to suffer more from the negative impact of climate change in the future. We need to be better prepared globally and not only in Asia and Africa."

That said, it's still people in Africa and Asia who bear the brunt of disasters due to an intrinsic link between poverty and vulnerability to risk - a link that explains why an earthquake that hits Los Angeles, say, is likely to kill far fewer people than a quake of similar magnitude that hits Java or Bam.

That's because poor countries often lack the resources to mitigate against hazards, whether by setting up early warning systems, protecting livelihoods or building risk-reduction strategies into their development plans. Again the figures bear this out.

Last year the United States was hit by more natural disasters than any country except China (26, compared with China's 35). But if you rank countries by the number of people killed or affected per 100,000 inhabitants, the U.S. hardly even figures.

By this count, Malawi tops the list with 34,331 per 100,000 people, followed by Burundi (26,778) and Kenya (11,935).

That these three nations are among the poorest countries in the world - and thus among the least able to take the impact of climate change in their stride - is surely no coincidence.

Here's a breakdown of the world's 10 deadliest disasters in 2006, followed by a list of countries most hit by disasters and numbers killed or affected per 100,000 inhabitants:

Disaster	Country	Toll
Earthquake (May)	Indonesia	5,778
Typhoon Durian (Dec)	Philippines	1,399
Landslide (Feb)	Philippines	1,112
Heat wave (July)	Netherlands	1,000
Heat wave (July)	Belgium	940
Typhoon Bilis (July)	China	820
Tsunami (July)	Indonesia	802
Cold wave (Jan)	Ukraine	801
Flash flood (Aug)	Ethiopia	498
Typhoon Samoai (Aug)	China	373

Natural disasters per country - 2006

China	35
United States	26
Indonesia, Philippines	20
India	17
Afghanistan	13
Vietnam	10
Australia, Burundi, Pakistan	8
Ethiopia, Mexico, Romania	7
Germany	6

Victims (killed or affected) of natural disasters per 100,000 people - 2006

Malawi	34,331
Burundi	26,778
Kenya	11,935
Philippines	9,097
Afghanistan	7,194
China	6,753
Somalia	5,490
Thailand	5,040
Guyana	4,562
Vietnam	3,969

Source: CRED

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