KARACHI: A report recently prepared by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) says Pakistan`s position on the global climate risk index has climbed up two levels making it the eighth on the list of the countries prone to natural and manmade disasters, it emerged on Sunday.

The report authored by the NDMA`s resource person, Syed Ayub Shah, said that Pakistan, primarily due to its geographic location and topographical layout, faced extreme environmental and climatic challenges. Those challenges gave rise to a multitude of hazards which included hydro-meteorological, seismic and manmade, he said.

The spectrum of disasters resultantly was wide-ranging over natural calami-ties like extreme rain events, all types of floods, torrential rains; glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), landslides, droughts, cyclones, heat-waves, mini cyclones, avalanches and others, said the report.

Similarly, Pakistan`s positioning on seismic fault zones made it vulnerable to geological hazards including earthquake and tsunami. The enormity of such challenges called for a well thought of, coherent, concerted and coordinated approach to be collectively forged by incorporating all state organs, civil society organisations, media houses, intelligentsia and public at large, it said.

It said that Pakistan was continuously under threat of experiencing natural disasters like, floods, earthquake, heatwave, droughts etc. `We cannot fight with natural disasters but can prevent, mitigate and prepare ourselves againstthe likely impacts that may occur during any disaster. In this regard information exchange with the masses through regular media reporting on natural disasters can play a pivotal role in timely life saving and effective response measures,` it said.

It said that 1,200,000 people were killed in disasters across the world from 2000 to 2012. The impact of those disasters, it added, was huge as reflected by the fact that it affected around half the population of the world (2.9 billion) and caused damages to the tune of 1.7 trillion dollars.

The report said the world was pleasantly cooler by the end of the 19th century, which got dangerously hot by an overall 1.4 degrees Celsius over the past 125 years or so.

It said in Pakistan the monsoon rainfall zone had shifted 100 kilometres fromeast to west, which was hugely significant. Some 143 disaster events had been recorded in Pakistan in the past 20 years, which caused losses of 3,931.4 million dollars which equalled 0.7pc of GDP.

Pakistan`s ratio of deaths on 100,000 population was calculated at 0.32, it said.

`Pakistan was ranked 10th earlier on global climate risk index and has now upped two levels to eighth after Honduras, Myanmar, Haiti, Philippines, Nicaragua, Bangladesh and Vietnam,` it said.

The NDMA document said Pakistan was vulnerable because of its geographic location which was prone to all sorts of natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, landslides, GLOF, droughts and displacements etc.

Besides, manmade disasters of various kinds were also there to be counted, it said.