Beyond the flames: disaster flares belong on the G20 stage

On 22 November world leaders will gather in Johannesburg for the first G20 Leaders' Summit to be held on the African continent, under the theme Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability.

- Trevor Abrahams

No smoke without fire: WOF-Kishugu JV's integrated fire management approach focuses on prevention, community fire awareness education, suppression and rehabilitation.

(Photo: Supplied)

For South Africa, hosting the G20 Presidency is more than diplomacy. It signals Africa's growing stature in global governance and is an opportunity to bring disaster management from the margins of humanitarian response to the fore of international economic planning.

Disasters are no longer merely local interruptions. They are systemic shocks. Climate-change-driven floods, droughts and wildfires erase years of progress, deepen inequality and push developing economies further into debt. Between 2011 and 2020, disasters cost the global economy more than US $2.8 trillion according to data from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). When a wildfire destroys crops or shuts down a power corridor, the losses cascade through markets, credit systems and public finance. Disasters cause a diverse array of systems to fail.