Intense climate-related disasters increasing worldwide, says new ADB report

By Shaira Panela

During the last four decades, the world has experienced worse storms, more frequent floods, severe heat waves and droughts. A new study released in time for the United Nations climate change meetings in Paris, France said that these worsening natural disasters are not just linked to people’s vulnerability and exposure, but are also associated to changes in temperature and rainfall.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Economics Working Paper titled “Global Increase in Climate-Related Disasters” looked into the data on global disasters from 1971-2013 and analyzed what brings the rising number of intense climate-related natural disasters and found three main disaster risk factors, namely; rising population exposure, greater population vulnerability, and increasing climate-related hazards.

The study confirmed that climate change make hazards more extreme, positively associating change in rainfall to disasters such as floods and cyclones.

The first half of 2010’s is already marked by deadly and destructive disasters. Among them are “the great floods in Thailand in 2011, Hurricane Sandy in the United States in 2012, and Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in the Philippines in 2013.”

“(C)limate hazards are becoming more menacing, which presents the most tangible reason to confront climate change as part of a development strategy,” according to the study. (Link: http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/176899/ewp-466.pdf)

For Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines, for example, the study calculated that if the rate of increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continues in its current trend, the number of disasters in these three Southeast Asian countries would be one more annual disaster every 20 years. Any further increase in CO2 would hit these countries hard, according to the report.

The study also shows that climate impacts are already being felt, and are not just a concern for the future. And the report further emphasizes the need for urgency in coming up with solutions to mitigate these climate change impacts.

“The relationship between climate change and the frequency of intense natural disasters provides an immediate and tangible reason why actions by countries and the global community must be urgent and decisive,” said Vinod Thomas in a statement. Thomas is one of the authors of the study, and is the director general of the Independent Evaluation at ADB.

“The implication is that, while we must grow fast, we also need to grow differently. In essence, we need a new strategy that values all three forms of capital—physical, human, and natural. Sound growth policies have long been understood as those that expand investments in physical and human capital. But unless we also invest in natural capital, all bets are off,” according to the report.

report by Shaira Panela