anchez jimenez
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, October 19, 2025, p. 5
Floods have become one of the most costly and underestimated natural threats on the planet, and Mexico is among the countries with high economic vulnerability to this phenomenon, warned the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) in its Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2025 (GAR2025).
According to the document, published this week, natural disasters generate direct losses of around $202 billion annually worldwide, but that figure represents only a fraction of the real impact.
When including indirect damages, impacts on health, productivity and ecosystems, the total cost amounts to more than 2.3 trillion dollars per year.
The study, titled Resilience pays: Financing and investment for our futurepoints out that five types of disasters – floods, storms, earthquakes, droughts and extreme heat – account for more than 95 percent of global economic losses.
Of these, floods, in particular, emerge as the most recurrent and destructive danger, with average annual losses estimated at 388 billion dollars.
Mexico faces a growing risk due to its geographical location, its high urban concentration and the pressure on basins and coastal areas.
The GAR2025 warns that, both in a scenario of strict climate change mitigation and one of severe global warming, the average annual losses in Mexican infrastructure due to river flooding could be between one billion and 50 billion dollars by the year 2050.
Devastating events, increasingly recurrent
The report warns that events previously considered “once-in-a-century floods” are becoming increasingly common.
In this way, as cited in the document, a person born in 2025 will have an 86 percent probability of experiencing an event of that magnitude throughout their life, compared to 63 percentage points for those born in 1990.
Against this backdrop, UNDRR calls on governments to break the cycle of “respond, recover and repeat,” which keeps countries trapped in a spiral of debt and human loss.
Instead of reacting after the disaster, the organization suggests that investment should be made in prevention and resilience.
“This year’s Global Assessment Report analyzes disaster risks to 2050 and makes a compelling case for action. It shows the enormous current losses, which disproportionately affect the most vulnerable people. It also warns that if we continue on the current trajectory, these costs will continue to rise as the climate crisis worsens.
“But the report also demonstrates that, if we promote and sustain investments in disaster prevention and risk reduction, we can reverse this trend, save lives and livelihoods, and promote economic growth to advance towards the Sustainable Development Goals,” says UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the foreword to the GAR2025 report.
