These catastrophes left at least 1,075 dead.
The 10 costliest weather catastrophes of 2021 exceeded $ 170.00 billion in damages, a figure that is increasing compared to 2020 and that reflects the growing impact of global warming, according to a British NGO.
Likewise, these catastrophes left at least 1,075 dead and caused the displacement of more than 1.3 million people, according to Christian Aid’s annual report released Monday.
The previous year, the economic cost of the ten most expensive climatic events had been estimated at 150,000 million dollars by the same organization, which emphasizes that most of the report “is based exclusively on damages covered by insurers, which suggests that the real costs are much higher ”.
The costliest catastrophe was Hurricane Ida, which occurred between the end of August and the beginning of September, which caused flooding in New York with damages estimated at 65,000 million dollars.
Next, the July floods in Germany, Belgium and neighboring countries accounted for $ 43 billion in losses, followed by winter storm Uri in the United States, which affected power lines and caused $ 23 billion in damage.
Other catastrophes that caused multimillion-dollar losses were floods in Henan province in China (17.6 billion), those in British Columbia in Canada in November (7.5 billion) or Cyclone Yaas in India and Bangladesh in May (3 billion).
This economic classification over-represents natural disasters that have occurred in rich countries, where infrastructures are more developed and better insured, but the NGO recalls that “some of the most devastating extreme weather events of 2021 hit poor countries, which have contributed little to the causes of climate change ”, and where most damages are not covered by insurance.
In South Sudan, for example, there were floods that affected some 800,000 people and yet they cannot be evaluated in economic terms, recalls Christian Aid.
In mid-December, the reinsurer Swiss Re published a global estimate of costs for natural disasters in 2021 in the world valued at 250,000 million dollars, an increase of 24% compared to 2020.
Climate catastrophes have always existed, but climate change caused by human activity is increasing in frequency and impact, according to scientific studies.
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