An earthquake that killed 23,000 people in Guatemala City in 1976 became known as the 'class quake' because of the way it hit the destitute. By the time Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm. But it became the worst disaster ever to hit the Western hemisphere, killing some 10,000 people, because it dropped its rains on deforested hillsides, causing devastating mudslides. The flooding of the Yangtse the same year, the worst in 50 years, was exacerbated because 80 per cent of the trees in the river basin had been felled. And floods have increased greatly in Bangladesh, where 2 million people had their homes inundated in 1999 as a result of deforestation in the Himalayas.
Trees trap the rain and allow it slowly to percolate into the soil.
The poor are disproportionately hit by industrial accidents because the most hazardous installations tend to be sited in deprived areas. Three years ago fierce forest fire raging in Indonesia cast a pall of smoke over six Southeast Asian countries and may have affected the health of 70 million people. At the same time, great fires burned some 3 million hectares of the Brazilian State of Roraima. About the same area of Mongolia had gone up in flames the previous year. Most fires are started by people, and many have been exacerbated by logging and land clearance.