The impact of natural disasters on the global economy

Résumé du document

In March 2010 all the Europe started to know this Icelandic volcano. This one which had known is last eruption in 1821 entered in it's the biggest one of its known existence. It erupted the 20 of March till the 27 of October. Thanks to the quick prevention of the authority there had been no victims but all the Europe suffered from this volcano.

Impact on the domestic economy (Iceland):
First of all the eruption has necessitate the evacuation of almost 1000 people. This volcano is situated 125 km at the east of Reykjavik the Icelandic capital but hopefully this one was not hurt thanks to the wind blowing to the south. But a lot of roads were closed and some farms destructed.

The major impact incurred to the airline company. Due to the enormous cloud of ashes which spread all over Europe air travel and transport throughout the world was cancelled due to the airspace restrictions. From the 15 of April to the 21 of April more than 27 countries had to stop partially or totally their aerial traffic. You can see on the following map the countries which had to stop totally their aerial traffic in red and those which had to stop partially in orange. Surprisingly and thanks to the wind, Iceland, the country of the volcano didn't have to cancel its domestic flights. Those restrictions were even bigger than those after 09/11 and resulted in the biggest air-traffic shut-down since World War II.

Extraits

[...] African economy and the flower disaster That doesn't look very bad, but most of our exotic flowers come from Africa and it is an important financial resource for them. The Kenya was losing $ 3.8 million a day as results of the cancelled flight to Europe. The main field hit was the flower economy. The Kenya Flower Council reported 3000 tones of flowers destroyed due to the impossibility to send it in Europe. Zambia' and Uganda's fish and flower export were also affected. Asian economy Some Asiatic car constructors like Nissan and Honda had to stop their production because supply of important parts has been disrupted. [...]

[...] Industrial production Lots of facilities were damaged because of the natural disaster. As we can see above, on the chart the Japan's total industrial production dropped in March 2011. However the fast reconstruction has minimized the negative long-term impact on production so it started to rise a month after the disaster. We can take the example of the two Japanese plants accounting for 25% of the world's supply of silicon wafers for computer chips were closed; Texas Japanese plant had to close a factory in Japan (until September 2011) accounting for about of its revenues; Nihon Dempa Kogyo the second-largest maker of quartz 10 components (with a roughly 20% share of the global market), is turning operations in Malaysia and elsewhere to compensate for damage at its plant in Northern Japan which assembles quartz components for automotive applications and Nippon Chemi-Con Corp., the largest producer of aluminum electrolytic capacitors used in everything from computers to industrial equipment, has four Japanese factories that are down, so it intends to boost production at 10 overseas bases, including factories in Indonesia, Malaysia and China. [...]

[...] But a lot of roads were closed and some farms destructed. Impact on the European economy Airline industry The major impact incurred to the airline company. Due to the enormous cloud of ashes which spread all over Europe air travel and transport throughout the world was cancelled due to the airspace restrictions. From the 15 of April to the 21 of April more than 27 countries had to stop partially or totally their aerial traffic. You can see on the following map the countries 5 which had to stop totally their aerial traffic in red and those which had to stop partially in orange. [...]

[...] This had for example more or less a positive impact on the Non-Japan Asia. As in Europe and in US, the reconstructions of the damaged parts of Japan will contribute to increase the exports of products as cement, steel and so on of China. Australia Japan and Australia have really strong trade relationship and the number of Australian imports decreased considerably after the natural disaster as we can see below. However, thanks to the needs of raw materials from Japan to rebuild the country, the exports of Australia increased in the same time, so we can say that it's been offset. [...]

[...] It carried 50000 extra passengers only in the two first day of flight restriction. The New Zealand salmon market Norway which is one of the biggest suppliers of salmon worldwide was one of the countries the most covered by the ashes cloud. Therefore the New Zealand fisheries bring fresh salmon to markets usually delivered by Norway 11/2011 - JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI AND NUCLEAR DISASTER Presentation of the event On march 11 at 05:46 a terrible undersea earthquake occurred 70 kilometers away from the Japanese east coast with a magnitude of 9.03 (on the Richter scale). [...]