Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 19:16:17 +0900 From: Hendrik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Multiple recipients of NETSOURCE-L <netsource-l@[192.168.0.225]> Subject: [NS] Food shortages ahead? This is a digest of 3 messages sent by Hendrik: NORTH KOREANS RESORT TO CANNIBALISM TO SURVIVE By Hyun-Sung Khang Yanji The Sunday Times (London); 1-3-99 CLUTCHING her baby to her, Kim Soon-Hee shuddered as she described the desolation she had escaped in North Korea, a country so severely afflicted by famine that some people have been reduced to eating children to survive... CWD- I have omitted the rest of this horrible article, which describes the gruesome things to which starving people are drive, and tells of concentration camps established to house starving people. I give you the second article in full: WORLD IS A FAR MORE DISASTROUS PLACE TO BE Nick Nuttall on an insurance industry audit of global strife December 30 1998, Info Times http://www.the-times.co.uk/news LARGE-SCALE natural disasters are three times as common as they were in the 1960s, experts said yesterday as they declared 1998 the most calamitous on record. Damage from catastrophic storms and floods is also costing many billions of pounds more, according to Munich Re, one of the biggest reinsurance companies, which has been monitoring natural disasters for a quarter of a century. A spokesman for the company, which advises the rest of the insurance industry, said yesterday: "Comparing the figures for the 1960s and the past ten years, we have established that the number of great natural catastrophes was three times larger. The cost to the world's economies, after adjusting for inflation, is nine times higher and for the insurance industry three times as much." Some experts claim that the rising rate of natural catastrophes is making more parts of the globe uninsurable, especially in low-lying areas in the Pacific, Asia and the Caribbean. Figures for this year, released yesterday, show that more than 700 so-called "large-loss events", which killed an estimated 50,000 people, struck across the globe. The most frequent natural catastrophes in 1998 were windstorms, of which 240 were significant, and floods, of which there were 170. They accounted for 85 per cent of the economic losses. In 1995, the previous most calamitous year, there were 100 fewer "large-loss events". Last year there were 538. The most recent natural disaster was caused by Hurricane Mitch, which hit Central America and especially Honduras and Nicaragua killing an estimated 9,200 people and costing $5 billion (£3.1 billion) in uninsured and $150 million in insured losses. Europe was also plagued with costly natural disasters, the blame being put on higher than average winter temperatures triggering extreme weather. The biggest uninsured losses in Europe in 1998 are believed to have been caused by the heatwaves and forest fires that hit Greece between June and August. These are estimated to have cost the country $675 million. The biggest insured losses, costed at $530 million, were in The Netherlands and Belgium in September. Second, at $500 million, was the damage caused by the storms that swept Europe in January. That loss was equalled by the floods in Britain in April which cost $500 million, triggering insurance claims of $250 million. The big rise in natural disasters this year is being blamed on rising global temperatures aggravating changes to La Niña, a climatic cycle in the Pacific that follows El Niño and spawns heavy rains in Asia. Gerhard Berz, the head of the geoscience research centre at Munich Re, said that economic loss and human misery would rise further if global warming continued in line with scientists' forecasts. Dr Berz, whose company has been montioring the level and cost of natural disasters since the late 1960s, said: "A further advance in man-made climate change will almost invariably bring us increasingly extreme natural events and consequently increasingly large catastrophe losses. "The progress achieved at the fourth climate summit in Buenos Aires at the beginning of November is not enough to halt global warming and stabilise the world's climate in the long term." If the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, which cost $100 billion, is removed from the statistics, then 1998 also becomes the most expensive year on record for all kinds of natural disasters. Most of this year's storms and floods hit poor, uninsured parts of the globe, so the loss to the insurance industry is forecast to be less, at about $15 billion. But that figure is up from $4.5 billion in 1997 and continues a rising trend. 1998: The worst year for the world: Affected Deaths FLOODS UK April 500m 5 China May-Sep 30,000m 3,656 Romania June 160m 31 Bangladesh,India Jul-Sep 5,000m 4,500 Netherlands,Belgium Sept 530m HURRICANE Caribbean,USA Jul-Sep 10,000m 4,000 Honduras,Nicaragua Oct-Nov 5,000m TROPICAL CYCLONE India June 1,700m 10,000 TYPHOON Japan Sept 1,500m 18 EARTHQUAKE Afghanistan Apr-Jun 9,100 HEAT WAVE, FOREST FIRES Brazil,Roraima Mar-Apr USA May-Aug 4,275m 130 Greece Jun-Aug 675m 14 WINTER STORMS UK,France,Spain | Portugal,Belgium | Netherlands,Germany |Jan 500m 15 Switzerland,Austria | Poland | MUDSLIDES Italy May 150 COLD WAVE Romania,Poland | Latvia,Lithuania |Nov 215 Russia,Moldova | France,Italy ICE STORM Canada, USA Jan 2,500m 23 VOLCANO Iceland Dec 27 CWD: The meat of the third is in the first few paragraphs: 1998'S DISASTERS COULD LEAD TO WIDESPREAD HUNGER IN 1999 Disaster News http://disasternews.net Posted on Mon, 04 Jan 1999 15:44:02 GMT Written by Doug Rekenthaler, Managing Editor, DisasterRelief.org Last year's bumper crop of disasters could lead to abysmal harvests and significant threats of famine, malnutrition and hunger in 1999, say officials with the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP). Hurricane Mitch's devastation of Honduras and its Central American neighbors - especially their agricultural sectors - could lead to major food shortages throughout the region. Additionally, 1998's epic floods in China, Bangladesh, Korea and elsewhere are expected to place added pressures on surviving yields. Famine has been a constant presence in war-torn, disaster-plagued Sudan. Economic problems in Russia, China, Latin America, and other developing regions also could lead to food shortages, primarily in poorer populations or regions already suffering from poor harvests. Central America, for example, suffered a double whammy from Hurricane Mitch, which decimated the region's agriculture and, by extension, its economies. As a result, chronic food shortages are expected through 2000 or until appreciable harvests once again can be expected. In a recent statement, WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini warned that the world enters the new year with an "increased threat of famine, malnutrition, and endemic hunger. Forecasts for 1999 show there will likely be an increase in the number of countries suffering emergencies and the number of people needing humanitarian assistance."...
