The cost of climate disasters: an additional call for health emergency preparedness

The last biennium has shown that no country was fully prepared to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in terms of impact, scale, severity, and speed. The same biennium was particularly costly for several countries in the world because of the consequences of climate disasters. Specifically, the annual analysis carried out by Christian Aid showed that the 10 major climate events caused massive human and environmental damage worth around 170 billion US dollars in 2021 and in 2022 (around 350 billion US dollars during the 2 years when considering additional minor events).^{1 , 2}

There is an upward trend of the costs for such disasters: the total annual cost of the 10 major climate events amounted to a total of 96.7 billion US dollars in 2018,³ to 129.3 billion US dollars in 2019,⁴ and to 145.4 billion US dollars in 2020 (see Supplementary materials).⁵ The analysis of the 5 years reveals additional insights, such as the fact that all the regions of the world are affected each year, from the floods in Pakistan in 2022 to droughts in China and Brazil during the same year, up to the cold wave in France in 2021 and fires in the United States in 2019 (see Supplementary materials). Data show that climate events occur all year long, like the locust swarm in East Africa during the first semester in 2020 and the devastating floods in different parts of the world (February to March in Australia during 2022, July in Europe during 2021, June to October in China during 2020, March to June in the United States during 2019).

In spite of the fact that the great majority of events are similar (floods and cyclones/typhoons represented 40% and 30%, respectively, of the major climate events per year during the last 5 years), although of different scale, the cost and consequences may be greatly different according to the context: the floods that submerged parts of Pakistan in June 2022 displaced 7 million people and caused more than 30 billion US dollars in estimated damages, with only 5.6 billion US dollars covered by insurance,² which is much more problematic than in other countries like in Europe where coverage would be more extensive. To mention that Pakistan is the eighth most vulnerable country due to climate change, according to the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index,⁶ the World Bank estimated that the floods could drive up to 15 million people into poverty.⁷ Although hurricane Fiona was the most intense tropical cyclone ever to hit Canada, with winds of over 187 km per hour, no casualties were reported; on the other hand, the same hurricane killed eight people in Puerto Rico and impacted the Dominican Republic with 13,000 people displaced and nearly 1.2 million people experiencing water supply issues.² Similarly, the typhoon Mangkhut killed 127 people in the Philippines and six people in China in 2018⁸ and destroyed 10,000 homes.³

It is important to emphasize that the impacts and costs of climate events fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable in lower income countries because of aspects such as fewer assets, less insurance, and generally poorer access to comprehensive public health services.9, 10, 11, 12 The situation will be even more problematic, as there will be more intense and frequent weather events in coming years and decades, even with more ambitious environmental mitigation actions.

In light of the above, the reinforcement of broad-based, whole-of-government, and whole-of-society approaches, with the involvement of relevant stakeholders beyond the health sector, to build and maintain effective capacities and systems for the preparedness and response to public health emergencies remains critical. These approaches require concerted actions, collaboration, and mutual accountability between policy-makers, intergovernmental organizations, and global initiatives.

A new Member State–led voluntary and transparent mechanism has been proposed to increase accountability for better health emergency preparedness. The peer-review nature of the Universal Health and Preparedness Review specifically aims to establish a regular intergovernmental dialog between Member States on their respective national capacities for health emergency preparedness.¹³

Climate disasters clearly reveal the interconnection between public health, extreme weather events due to climate change, and societal-financial aftermath. Very few countries have sufficiently ambitious plans on greenhouse gas emissions, and even fewer are on track to meet their goals. At the same time, key strategic context-related actions should be reflected, and tested, in national public health emergency preparedness and response plans. Urgent implementation must be a top political priority.

Author statements

Funding

None reported.

Competing interests

The authors disclose no competing interests.

Author contributions

All authors equally contributed to conceiving, preparing, and finalizing the article.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

The following is the Supplementary data to this article.