Poor crops
Poor crops are a common and can occur for many reasons. Temperature is one of the factors involved, but precipitation is just as important. A few nights of frost just as a plant begins to grow can be enough to kill it. A heat wave during the summer will also kill certain plants, especially in a period of drought. But poor crops are also caused by, e.g., rain, snow, hail, plant pests, and insects.
In the past poor crops would cause starvation, migration, higher death rates, a stagnating population growth, or a shrinking population. Today in the high-income countries we have a well-developed infrastructure, fast transportation, reserves, crop insurance, and enough money to buy food from abroad. Low-income countries still lack all of this.
For too many decades foreign aid has not led to any improvements worth mentioning. During a period of more than 20 years, Swedish disaster aid was never sent to those countries in the world that experienced the most severe natural disasters. This can partly be explained by a lack of understanding for the natural conditions in these countries.
Natural Hazards Group can provide expert knowledge to aid agencies during the time it takes them to build competence in geosciences and useful databases on nature’s variation during centuries and millennia instead of during a few years. It is high time that we gear aid toward disaster prevention instead of relief and damage replacement.