During he 1990s, natural disasters-floods, groughts, earthquakes, storms, strong winds, torrential rais, and muudslides-hit the world 500-800 times a year and cost more than $600 billion, more than in the previous four decades combined. Losses in the 1990s were three times those in the 1908s and fifteen times those of the 1950s. 

The world suddenly faces an appalling health crisis. Once more, it originates largely in poverty and destitution-in developing world. AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhea, and measles now kill 13 million people a year, and the numbers keep going up. They threaten to reverse decades of development in many developing countries. 

Wars between states have given way almost entirely to intrastate wars and armed conflicts. In 1999-2000 there were no fewer than fifty such wars, and they had killed 7 milion civilians since their inception. More than 90 percent of them since 1945 have taken place in developing countries. These conflicts increasingly draw surrounding countries into violence.