More than 110 million people were affected by 358 reported disasters in 2025, according to the annual report by the Emergency Events Database. The year was consistent with a typical year of disaster impacts, with no mega-disasters recorded. The report looked at nine different types of disasters and only found above-average impacts from storms. The new report, published April 20 by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, calculated at least 16,607 fatalities and nearly $170 billion in economic losses as a result of disasters in 2025. The disasters included earthquakes, as well as climate-related events such as droughts, extreme temperature, floods, wildfire and storms; the latter were the only disaster category whose number exceeded the last 25-year average. The study found there were 44% more storms, 156 in total, compared to the annual average from 2005 to 2024 of 108. “Notably, 2025 was also marked by the absence of any mega-disaster,” the report’s authors wrote, noting that the most significant earthquakes of 2025, in Myanmar and Afghanistan, were less deadly than major earthquakes of other years. “Nevertheless, in 2025, the cumulative impact of multiple concurrent hazards, including earthquakes, storms, and floods, resulted in a global disaster burden consistent with that of a typical year,” they added. The earthquakes in Myanmar and Afghanistan were the two deadliest disasters of 2025, the report notes. In March 2025, a major magnitude-7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar, causing 3,820 deaths. In August 2025, a strong…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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