Erratic weather costs world Sh52trn, 2016 hottest year

Twenty six million people around the world are forced into poverty every year as a result of extreme natural disasters, costing economies a total of Sh52 trillion, a new study has found even as 2016 remains on course to become the hottest year on record.

The World Bank report — Unbreakable: Building Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters — warns that the combined human and economic impacts of extreme weather on poverty are far more devastating than previously understood. In fact, it might have been underestimated by up to 60 per cent. 

“Severe climate shocks threaten to roll back decades of progress against poverty,” said World Bank Group’s President Jim Yong Kim. “Storms, floods, and droughts have dire human and economic consequences, with poor people often paying the heaviest price. Building resilience to disasters not only makes economic sense, it is a moral imperative.”

 In all of the 117 countries studied, the effect on well-being, measured in terms of lost consumption, is found to be larger than asset losses, at Sh52 trillion a year, largely because disasters affect poor people the most.

The report was released at the climate summit, COP22, in Morocco earlier this month, and assesses the benefits of resilience-building interventions in the countries that were studied. These include early warning systems, improved access to personal banking, insurance policies, and social protection systems — such as cash programmes — that could help people better respond to and recover from shocks. 

It finds that these measures, combined, would help countries and communities save Sh10 trillion a year and reduce the overall impact of disasters on well-being by 20 per cent.

In Kenya, for instance, the research showed that the social protection system provided additional resources to vulnerable farmers well before the 2015 drought, helping them prepare for and mitigate its impacts.

UNEXPECTED SHOCKS

“Countries are enduring a growing number of unexpected shocks as a result of climate change,” said Stephane Hallegatte, a Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) lead economist who led preparation of the report.

“Poor people need social and financial protection from disasters that cannot be avoided. With risk policies in place that we know to be effective, we have the opportunity to prevent millions of people from falling into poverty.”

But even as countries build their resilience against the changing climate, 2016 is set to be the hottest year in history, even higher than the record-breaking temperatures recorded in 2015. Preliminary data by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) shows that this year’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Temperatures for January to September 2016 have been about 0.88° Celsius above the average (14°C) for the 1961-1990 reference period, which is used by WMO as a baseline.

Preliminary data for October’s temperatures indicate that they are at a sufficiently high level for 2016 to remain on track for the title of hottest year on record. This would mean that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have been in this century (1998 was the other one).

The data also shows that long-term climate change indicators are record-breaking. Concentrations of major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have continued to increase to new records. Ocean heat was boosted by the El-Niño event, contributing to coral reef bleaching and above-average sea-level rise.

Already, sea levels have risen by about 15 millimetres between November 2014 and February 2016 as a result of El-Niño. This, the WMO says, is well above the post-1993 trend of three to 3.5 mm per year.

Annual average global carbon dioxide concentrations in 2015 reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time. Initial observations indicate new records in 2016.

“WMO is working to improve monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions to help countries reduce them. Better climate predictions over timescales of weeks to decades will help key sectors like agriculture, water management, health and energy plan for and adapt to the future. More impact-based weather forecasts and early warning systems will save lives both now and in the years ahead. There is a great need to strengthen the disaster early warning and climate service capabilities of especially developing countries. This is a powerful way to adapt to climate change,” said the WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. Once-in-a-generation heat waves and flooding are becoming more regular.  Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones,” he said.

The year started with an extreme heat wave in southern Africa, exacerbated by the ongoing drought. Many weather stations reported all-time temperatures, including 42.7°C in Pretoria and 38.9°C in Johannesburg on January 7.

Record or near-record temperatures occurred in parts of the Middle East and north Africa on a number of occasions in summer. Mitribah in Kuwait recorded 54.0°C on July 21, possibly the highest temperature on record for Asia. The following day, 53.9°C was recorded in Basra (Iraq) and 53.0°C in Delhoran (Iran).

 “Another year. Another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement.  The extra heat from the powerful El-Niño event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue,” he said.

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THE CLIMATE REFUGEES

All these weather-related calamities have led to a humanitarian crisis. According to the International Organisation for Migration, population movements are expected to increase as a result of more frequent and potentially more intense weather-related disasters, competition and conflict over shrinking resources, and rising sea levels rendering coastal and low-lying zones uninhabitable. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that in 2015 there were 19.2 million new displacements associated with weather, water, climate and geophysical hazards in 113 countries, more than twice as many as for conflict and violence. 

Of these, weather-related hazards triggered 14.7 million displacements. South and East Asia dominated in terms of the highest absolute figures, but no region of the world was unaffected. Equivalent data for 2016 are not yet available.  Extreme weather and climate-related events influenced by the strong El-Niño in 2015/2016 had significant negative impacts on agriculture and food security. More than 60 million people around the world were affected by these events, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In fact, the FAO reports that the agriculture sector suffers the greatest impact, absorbing 22 per cent of all the economic costs in natural disasters.