Produced by: Tarun Mishra Designed by: Manoj Kumar
The global climate crisis has led to a staggering daily cost of $391 million over the past two decades. These expenses are attributed to a surge in extreme events like wildfires, heatwaves, and droughts linked to climate change.
A study published in Nature Communications outlines the financial toll of climate-driven events, averaging over $100 billion per year from 2000 to 2019. The researchers scrutinized data to unravel the climate crisis's economic repercussions.
The study underscores that $143 billion annually of these costs are directly tied to climatic change, with a substantial 63% stemming from the loss of human lives.
The years marked by the most substantial losses were 2008, 2003, and 2010, primarily due to high-mortality incidents. These events included Tropical Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (2008), a severe heatwave across Europe (2003), and a heatwave in Russia coupled with a drought in Somalia (2010).
Coping with escalating extreme weather events becomes increasingly challenging as global temperatures rise, intensifying climate-related disasters. The world recently experienced its hottest summer on record, making 2023 a likely contender for the hottest year on record.
The global struggle against extreme weather events intensifies as witnessed through record-breaking heatwaves, devastating wildfires, and severe flooding across the Northern Hemisphere. The U.S. has also grappled with historically destructive wildfires in locations like Maui, Hawaii.
The return of the El Nino weather pattern after four years could impact various regions, making parts of the world like northern Alaska and the Gulf Coast experience a wetter-than-usual winter.
The assessment of losses integrates economic data and climate change's role in exacerbating weather events. However, the research also highlights the indirect losses, such as productivity decline and mental health impacts, which are challenging to measure.
The study underscores that climate change's true costs are underestimated due to challenges in quantifying indirect losses and a lack of data from lower-income countries. Productivity loss, mental health impacts, and educational and job disruptions are examples of such indirect losses.
The research calls for an increase in adaptation policies to mitigate the costs linked to climate change. These measures include constructing flood protection and enhancing early warning systems for extreme weather events.
The World Meteorological Organization's estimates highlight nearly 12,000 reported climate disasters from 1970 to 2021, resulting in 2 million deaths and economic losses totaling $4.3 trillion. These losses have predominantly affected developing countries.
Despite international agreements like the 2015 Paris climate accord, the world is struggling to meet climate goals, with global temperatures consistently exceeding desired limits. The need to curb the climate crisis and its associated costs remains an urgent global concern.