But it is the rural poor in the developing world who suffer most, those who are least able to protect themselves, those who have no cushion of savings and no alternative means of making a living. It is the poor, too, who have least choice about where they live, even when they know that their home or livelihood may be endangered. Poverty and vulnerability also increase in the face of man-made disasters that erupt as civil wars rage and governments collapse. Essential services, including law and order, break down. Infrastructure is destroyed and people flee the land, taking with them what few possessions they can carry.
Food production is no longer possible.
People face immediate hunger, and mass starvation threatens. Relief agencies rush to help, but unless action is taken quickly to create the conditions in which people can return to their homes and farming can start again, large numbers risk becoming dependent on relief in the long term. The cost of disasters in human terms is intolerably high. In 1996 some 50 million people were displaced within their own countries or scattered abroad as refugees - a dispersed nation of the dispossessed with a population equivalent to that of Spain and Portugal combined. In that year, as a result of complex emergencies, around 40 million people were depending on international assistance for protection or survival.