According to a new study, this year’s top ten weather destructions resulted in damages worth $170 billion. Hurricane Ida was the costliest at $65 billion, and it hammered the eastern U.S with its storm and lashing rains that killed 95 people in August.
According to research published by the U.K. Charity Christian Aid, floods in Europe in July caused a loss to the exchequer by $43 billion and 240 deaths. In China, floods in Henan killed 300 plus people in July and cost $17 billion in excess of losses.
As Kat Kramer, who heads the climate policy of Christian Aid, said in her report that that climate change costs have been grave in 2021.
As per Bloomberg News, 2021 is the sixth time when natural disasters globally have cost more than $100 billion by a report from Insurer Aon Plc. And all these six top disasters have happened in the last decade.
Climate change has already cost billions of dollars, with each disaster in 2021 costing more than $1.5 billion. The estimated damage by the report is based on the insured losses, which means the actual costs of the disaster will be more as insurers do not pay 100 % of the losses.
Richer countries where the cost of property and insurance leads to higher calculations even though in 2021 some worst affected have been the developing countries that contributed little to the global warming.
East Africa was ravaged by droughts, while South Sudan saw millions of people homeless after floods. Christian Aids warned that unless concrete actions are taken to cut down on global emission, this injustice created by the climate crisis will ensure that disastrous events will continue to take place.
According to the report, the global warming summit in Paris, which targets to keep the temperature increase to below 1.5 degrees Celsius globally, will not achieve the goals unless more actions are taken urgently. Next year more needs to be done to provide financial aid to weaker countries, including absorbing the damages caused this year by climate change by funding deals, which was not addressed in this year’s Glasgow global climate talks.
Mohammad Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, a Kenyan-based think tank, says that the African continent bored the brunt of the impact of expensive and deadly climate changes. This year, East Africa was hit by severe drought and is expected to continue until mid-2022 pushing the communities to the brink.
Nushrat Choudhary, the advisor from Bangladesh to Christian Aid, was disappointed to see the COP26 meet in Glasgow this Year did not set up any fund to help communities suffer from lasting damages and losses from climate change.
