Disasters such as floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts may have serious implications for human health and the economic development of countries. PBL has analysed these types of severe disasters in a statistical context, as part the ‘OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050’. One of its main findings is that historical disaster burdens are dominated by economic and demographic developments, rather than climate change. Furthermore, disaster burden appears to be distributed unequally over rich and poor regions; economic losses are highest in the rich countries (OECD), the number of people affected is highest in upcoming economies (BRIICS) and the number of people killed is highest in the remaining, poor countries.

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Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) increased by 3% last year, reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes in 2011. In China, average per capita CO₂ emissions increased by 9% to 7.2 tonnes CO₂. This is similar to per capita emissions in the European Union.

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PBL is proud to announce the launch of its first ever web app http://roadsfromrio.pbl.nl. Designed for tablet, smartphone and desktop, it gives interactive access to the full results of our report 'Roads from Rio+20, Pathways to achieve global sustainability goals by 2050'. Visit the web app by clicking the link above, no need to visit the appstore.

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