What can be done in the face of a greater presence of natural disasters?

One of the latest natural disasters to mark the year is Typhoon (as Asia Pacific hurricanes are called) Rai, which killed more than 400 people in the Philippines.

It made landfall on December 16 with gusts of wind of up to 240 kilometers per hour, crossed from east to west through some nine islands of the archipelago that make up the country, causing significant damage to homes and infrastructure, in addition to leaving hundreds of injuries, according to the authorities.

While nearly a million people living in the four departments of Haiti most affected by the August 14 earthquake run the risk of going hungry this winter, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warned on Thursday ( FAO).

The earthquake, which killed more than 2,200 people, destroyed all infrastructure for agricultural production and food distribution -markets, roads, warehouses, dairies, irrigation systems-, and the situation got worse with Storm Grace a few days after the earthquake.

In Spain, the La Palma volcano, located in Cumbre Vieja, was erupting for months (since September 19), affecting some 7,000 people, who are still evicted in La Palma, as well as 600 residents housed in hotels, with no prospect of recovering a home.

Also at the beginning of the year in that European country the storm Filomena that caused the Government to declare a catastrophic zone to eight of the 19 autonomous communities.

While in July in Germany and Belgium there were more than 150 deaths. Experts argue that the catastrophic floods in Western Europe are part of a chronicle of an announced disaster and that the culprit is climate change.

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warmer atmosphere due to climate change increases the likelihood of extreme rains. The planet has already warmed by around 1.2 ° C since the industrial age began and temperatures will continue to rise unless governments around the world make drastic cuts in CO2 emissions.

Meanwhile, during the last months of the year tornadoes have been the protagonists of catastrophes in the United States. In December several tornadoes devastated cities and left more than a hundred dead in the states of Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas and Tennessee.

The hardest hit was Kentucky, where 70 people died in a Mayfield factory.

These tornadoes, which are classified as one of the most devastating in history, with winds of more than 250 km / h.

In an interview on the show State of the Union On CNN, the director of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Deanne Criswell, said that these types of severe weather events that “are normalizing.”

“Is will be our new normal, and the effects that we are seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation ”, he indicated.

According to the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, climate change and increasingly extreme weather events have caused an increase in natural disasters in the last 50 years.

“With global warming, the increase in temperature, we see stronger storms. In these we have more water in the rain patterns. The rise in temperature also causes changes in agricultural patterns ”, comments Frances Colón, senior director of International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, who adds that a change to renewable energy should be sought to reduce greenhouse gas production. greenhouse, which are what causes warming.

For her, it is up to governments how to face these new challenges such as the impact that global warming will have over the years, in all regions of the world.

The same is the opinion of Nelson Baldeón, a consultant in energy geopolitics, who adds that based on science and data, the authorities of the countries must make decisions. He also mentions that the issue must be increased by scientific analysts to mitigate the risk produced, for example, by excess rainfall that makes the soil weaker and produces sinkholes like those seen in Ecuador.

For him, the strategy is to prevent and it is something that national, regional and international governments must do because everything is connected, and “in order not to politicize the issue, (do things based on) scientific data … where is he going to impact more climate change, in the case of Ecuador is water “.

Colón believes that the actions to be taken by governments must be aggressive and accelerated in the next 10 years.

Consumed by flames

Fires are another problem related to climate change.

In July a large fire in northern California burned nearly 8,000 hectares and forced the evacuation of 8,000 people residing in areas immediately close to the flames.

This state is usually the most affected by forest fires in the United States, with special emphasis on the hot season, between May and September.

The forest fires that throughout 2021 have devastated vast areas around the world have left a total of 1,760 megatons of carbon; Furthermore, the highest levels of emissions were recorded in several regions, according to data from the Copernicus Atmospheric Surveillance Service (CAMS).

Fires destroyed an average of 1.35 million hectares each year in the western United States between 2001 and 2018, double the number from 1984-2000.

Australia and Brazil are two other countries that experience major fires every year.

The costs of catastrophes natural In 2021 they rose to about 250,000 million dollars, according to a first estimate published by the reinsurer Swiss Re, which represents an increase of 24% compared to 2020. AFP.

The bill for these catastrophes for insurance companies is estimated at 105,000 million dollars, an increase of 17% compared to the previous year, indicates Swiss Re in a statement. (I)