IT’S BECOME ALL TOO CLEAR in recent years: Catastrophic acts of nature – hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires – are happening more frequently and causing more destruction. The annual inflation-adjusted global cost of natural disasters has increased sharply, with the average from 2011 to 2015, reaching four times the average from 1980 to 1985. The number of people affected is rising, too, often exceeding 300 million in recent years. But traditional sources of funding for disaster recovery, from governments, non-profits, and NGOs, have not kept pace.
Corporations have stepped in to take up the slack. In 2000, fewer than one-third of the world’s 3,000 largest companies donated anything to disaster relief, but by 2015 the share had surpassed 90 per cent, with the average donation having increased tenfold. Among the 500…
