The bill from natural and weather disasters is nearly $200 billion (150 billion euros) a year, four times higher than in the 1980s, the World Bank said on Monday. "As the global climate continues to change, the costs and damages from more extreme weather related to a warming planet are growing," it reported on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Warsaw.
Disasters cost nearly $4 trillion (2.96 trillion euros) over the last 30 years, about two-thirds of which was due to extreme storms, floods and drought, and killed more than 2.5 million people, it said in a cost analysis. World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful typhoon ever to hit the Philippines, had "brought into sharp focus how climate change is intensifying the severity of extreme weather events."
He said in the report: "Such tragic events show that the world can no longer afford to put off action to slow greenhouse emissions, and help countries prepare for a world of greater climate and disaster risks." The document included estimates of the cost from lives and jobs lost as well as damage to property and infrastructure.
In the 1980s, it said, the annual cost was about $50 billion, quadrupling to $200 billion per year in the last decade. "Weather-related economic impacts are especially high in fast-growing, middle-income countries due to increasingly exposed, valuable assets," said the report. In these economies, "the average impact of disasters equalled one percent of GDP (gross domestic product) over the six years from 2001 to 2006, 10 times higher than the average for high-income countries." Those further down the ladder of development experienced a correspondingly greater loss of GDP. Hurricane Tomas wiped out the equivalent of 43 percent of the GDP of St Lucia in 2010.