Climate ‘cost’ hits $2.25 trln

Losses greatest in US, Japan

GENEVA, Oct 10, (Agencies): The economic cost of climate-related disasters hit $2.25 trillion over the last two decades, an increase of more than 150 percent compared to the previous 20 years, the UN said Wednesday.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) noted that “climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events” such as floods and storms.

Between 1978-1997, total losses for climate-related disasters was $895 billion (780 billion euros), UNISDR said in a report based on data compiled by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.

But between 1998-2017 that figure hit $2.25 trillion, the report said, listing the United States, China, Japan and India as the countries where the financial toll has been highest.

Losses were greatest in the United States at $945 billion, followed by China at $492 billion and Japan at $376 billion.

The findings were released as Michael, a Category Four hurricane, rumbled towards the Gulf Coast of Florida, in the latest storm to threaten vast destruction across the eastern US.

Disaster

“The report’s analysis makes it clear that economic losses from extreme weather events are unsustainable and a major brake on eradicating poverty in hazard exposed parts of the world,” the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster reduction, Mami Mizutori, said in a statement.

UNISDR counted the number of climate-related disasters between 1998-2017 at more than 6,600, with storms and floods the most common events.

The report notes gaps in data collection, but says the findings clearly show investing in disaster risk reduction must become a central part of policy making in response to climate change.

“We can see that climate change is playing an increasingly important role in driving up disaster losses around the world, and that probably will be the case in the future as well,” said Ricardo Mena, an official at the Geneva-based UNISDR.

On Monday, climate scientists warned that if global average temperatures rise more than 1.5ºC (2.7ºF) above pre-industrial times, it would lead to more suffering – especially among the world’s poorest.

The planet has already heated up by about 1ºC.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather, and disasters will continue to set back sustainable development, the UNISDR report warned.

Floods

Climate-related disasters accounted for about 90 percent of the 7,255 major disasters between 1998 and 2017, most of them floods and storms, it said.

In the past two decades, 1.3 million people were killed and 4.4 billion were injured, left homeless, displaced or required emergency help.

More than half the deaths were caused by 563 earthquakes and related tsunamis, said the report drawing on data from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Belgium.

Although rich countries shoulder the highest absolute economic losses, the report noted the disproportionate impact of disasters on low and middle-income countries.

People in poorer nations are seven times more likely to be killed by a disaster than in wealthier ones, Mena told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In developing countries, economic losses are not analysed for many disasters, meaning the new data was just the “tip of the iceberg”, he noted.

Puerto Rico was the only highincome territory ranked among the top ten places for annual losses as a percentage of economic growth, alongside Haiti, Honduras, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Georgia, Mongolia, Tajikistan and North Korea.

Mami Mizutori, UN special representative for disaster risk reduction, called for greater efforts to tackle high fatalities in regions prone to earthquakes.

the concentration of poisonous particulate matter, has hit 331 in parts of Delhi on a scale where anything above 100 is considered unhealthy by the Central Pollution Control Board.

Officials said the burning of some crop stubble in the northern breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana drove up pollution levels, even though the practice was banned and federal authorities have threatened to punish offenders.

The Heart Care Foundation of India said runners were at risk of lung infections and other complications from the deteriorating air.

“This is also the time when pollution levels are likely to be extremely high, with poor air quality,” it said in a statement, warning that this could aggravate asthma or other lung disease, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. (RTRS)