The Red Cross has called for urgent investment in mitigation as it struggles to respond to more frequent and intense natural disasters and the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

The aid group’s annual World Disasters Report estimates only about US40 cents (53 cents) in every $US100 ($131.58) of international aid is invested in preparedness and risk reduction.

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Secretary-General Elhadj As Sy says “business as usual” is no longer acceptable.

“Investing in resilience is the best method we have for protecting the lives, livelihoods and dignity of the world’s most vulnerable people,” he said.

Last year 574 natural disasters affected 108 million people and cost $US90 billion ($119.24 billion), while such events have displaced 26.4 million people a year on average since 2008.

Need is outstripping humanitarian capacity amid more forced migration and disasters, health crises due to globalisation and urbanisation, and climate change – which caused 32 major droughts last year, double the 10-year average.

Report co-author David Sanderson, from the University of NSW, says the world does not take disasters seriously enough.

“We ignore it and then it happens, and then we throw lots of money at the disasters and we waste that money,” he said.

“It’s like preventative healthcare. You prevent the disease from happening, and that’s where disaster management needs to sit.”

Professor Sanderson says corruption is one of the biggest barriers to creating resilient communities, and the reason the Haiti earthquake in 2010 proved so devastating.

“It’s corruption, bad mismanagement, the building codes that let the buildings fall down that causes the disaster – we can prevent so-called natural disaster through building resilience before the disaster happens,” he said.

Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) suffered 300,000-500,000 deaths in 1970 when Cyclone Bhola hit. Since disaster mitigation measures were introduced, it has recorded about 3000 deaths from Cyclone Sidr in 2007 and only 190 from Cyclone Aila in 2009, the report says.

The Red Cross has also called on partners to join its One Billion Coalition for Resilience – a broad bloc aiming to strengthen the safety, health and wellbeing of 1 billion people by 2025.