In 1970, the world recorded 78 major natural disasters, which affected about 80 million people and inflicted roughly $10 billion in economic damage. By 2004, the number of major disasters worldwide had climbed to 384, claiming 200 million victims. The economic cost jumped five-fold, to $50 billion. The final numbers for 2005 will be even worse.

One reason for the enormous growth in disasters is that many of the catastrophes that are now well documented would have gone unrecorded in the past. But, even when one accounts for earlier underreporting, the number of floods, hurricanes, typhoons, mudslides, and other natural disasters has grown exponentially in the past three decades. Worse, the disasters now regularly claim more victims and cost more to clean up than they did a generation ago. The world is not only more populated, but more people are living in dense urban corridors or poorly built shantytowns. No wonder that, according to the Red Cross, the number of people forced to move because of environmental disasters now exceeds those forced to do so by war.

Meanwhile, the budgets of the international organizations charged with providing disaster relief and reconstruction have not kept up with demand. The World Bank, a major source of money and technical assistance for reconstruction and development projects, is lending less now than it did 10 years ago. The budget for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees has grown 62 percent since 1990. That may seem generous, but it is a pittance when you consider that, by 2010, 50 million people are expected to be displaced by environmental causes alone. For its part, the overall U.N. budget has only increased a meager 26 percent during the past 15 years. It’s no surprise, then, that a recent report concluded that the U.N. headquarters building suffers from “unacceptable deterioration, building and fire...