Geneva — Increasingly complex, growing and related risks, from global warming to pollution and epidemics, threaten human survival if left to escalate, the UN warns. A biennial assessment report on how the world is dealing with disasters said the past could no longer be relied on as a guide to the future, with new risks emerging “in a way that we have not anticipated”. It identified a range of major threats to human life and property, including air pollution, diseases, earthquakes, drought and climate change. There is also growing potential for one type of disaster to produce or worsen another, as when heavy rains trigger mudslides after wildfires, warned the report launched at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva on Wednesday. “If we continue living in this way, engaging with each other and the planet in the way we do, then our very survival is in doubt,” said Mami Mizutori, special representative of the UN secretary-general for disaster risk reduction. Extrem...
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