Discuss the view that the impacts from tropical storms are more severe is less developed countries than developed countries? (20 marks)
In this answer, I will write to the extent to which the impact of tropical storms is always more severe in less developed countries. I will look at the social and economic impacts Hurricane Katrina had on New Orleans and typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
One social impact in New Orleans is 26,000 people were forced to migrate towards the Louisiana Superdome. The 20% that were unable to evacuate often because of a lack of personal transport led to many black people to migrate towards the Superdome. It’s here that the responders were unable to treat with the influx of refugees as they didn’t have adequate levels of supplies to deal with the refugees. As a result, the hundreds had died under poor conditions inside the stadium.
Similarly, in Leyete, typhoon Haiyan had led to 1.9 million people to be displaced. Therefore, this is evidenced that the impacts were more severe in less developed countries. As a result, many had evacuated to community centres which had also acted as a shelter, but these were not adequately built. Therefore, when the four-metre storm surge hit the mainland, hundreds had drowned in these community shelters as they were poorly designed.
An economic aspect where more developed countries are more severe is the costs of the tropical storms. In New Orleans, the storm had created $160 billion in damages. This is because as a more developed city, will have a lot more valuable asset. Whereas, in the Philippines, typhoon high end had a national impact which led to $10 billion in damages. This divergence shows that economically, New Orleans had a suffered in a more severe way.
However, what makes tropical storms have a more severe impacts in less developed countries is the length of time taken for recovery. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the recovery was much shorter compared to the Philippines. If represented the park model, the return to the original optimum quality of life would have guaranteed to be reached in a shorter period of time, in part to U.S. government aid of $14 billion for recovery.
On the other hand, in the Philippines the quality of life had never reached its original level in the long term. This is because the country had suffered the whole earthquake in the month prior to the typhoon, hence many people are still on aid when the typhoon made landfall. As a result, it could be argued that tropical storms were more damaging from a social perspective in less developing countries.
Overall, I think that the impacts of tropical storms are more severe in less developed countries except from an economic perspective. This is because the costs are far greater in developed countries- 15 times more expensive in the outlined places. Although, developed countries have the capital to speed up recovery as the government can give out large compensation pay-outs on their own. Whereas less developed countries often have to rely on foreign aid, $500 million for the Philippines, or have to increase their own sovereign debt by borrowing money from the World Bank.