Extreme weather hits economies, hurts Asia most: WMO report
- November 17, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Extreme weather hits economies, hurts Asia most: WMO report
Subject : Environment
Context-
- Economic losses incurred by Asian countries due to natural disasters have increased manifold as climate change has made these events more frequent.
Details-
- In 2021, at least 48.3 million people in Asia were affected by over 100 natural hazards, which claimed at least 3,803 lives, according to the State of the Climate in Asia 2021.
- The total economic damage due to the extreme weather events was estimated to be $35.5 billion.
- These events included drought, extreme temperature, floods, glacial lake outbursts, landslides, storms and wildfires.
Scenario in Asia-
- In Asia, floods have been the most impactful, causing the highest number of human deaths and economic damage.
- Drought affected the highest number of people in the region.
- Losses due to landslides increased 147 per cent, compared to the 20-year average from 2001–2020, according to the report.
- Losses from drought increased 63 per cent and flood 23 per cent during that period.
- The report, which was produced jointly by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), was presented at the 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
- Earlier this month, WMO announced its plan to develop a global early warning system for extreme weather events.
Floods, the costliest disaster
- Floods were estimated to be the costliest disaster from Asian countries including China and India.
- China lost $18.4 billion due to floods, followed by India ($3.2 billion) and Thailand ($0.6 billion)
- India lost $4.4 billion due to storms, followed by China $3 billion and Japan $2 billion.
- In 2021, over 80 per cent of the extreme events were floods and storms.
- Floods in India, China and Afghanistan caused the greatest number of fatalities, highlighting the high level of vulnerability of Asia, especially to floods.
- In India, during the monsoon season, the heavy rain and flash floods resulted in about 1,300 human deaths.
- Data on loss and damage is required more than ever as funding for loss & damage has made it to the COP27 agenda for the first time ever in the history of UN climate negotiations.
- A realistic estimate can still be made about the number of days the country recorded extreme weather events.
Impact of extreme weather events on SDGs-
- These events will impact food security, poverty, and inequality and will threaten the global goals on sustainable development.
- SDG 13 for climate action has suffered from a lack of global participation: Progress on achieving targets such as 13.1.1 on the number of deaths, missing persons and directly affected persons attributed to disasters and 13.1.2 on adoption and implementation of national disaster risk reduction strategies have been insufficient.
- Early warning systems can help achieve SDG 13 as well as other associated SDGs, including Goal 1 (No Poverty), Goal 2 (Zero Hunger), Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-being), Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).