Climate-related disasters cost Europe more than €77 billion last year, according to a new report. But costs can be lowered with improved data and funding strategies.
A series of reports published last week by the World Bank in collaboration with the European Commission paint a worrying picture of Europe’s preparedness for the impacts of climate change over the coming years.
One of the most alarming findings is that the European Union could lose 7 percent of its GDP by the 2030s due to its response to the effects of climate change.
According to the report, 2023 was the hottest year on record in Europe, with damage caused by weather events linked to climate change exceeding 77 billion euros. And while European countries have taken major steps to prepare for these impacts, the report says more needs to be done, especially in critical areas such as providing emergency response services. concludes.
For example, half of the EU member states have fire stations located in areas facing multiple natural disaster risks. Zuzana Stanton-Geddes, the project’s team leader and senior disaster response management specialist at the World Bank, says this lack of preparedness for emergency services is already having an impact.
In the 2023 wildfires in Greece, patients had to be evacuated from the Alexandroupolis General Hospital due to its location, and in the 2021 floods in Germany, the fire department had to be evacuated because it was in a flood zone. has been stopped.
“The report found that critical infrastructure such as fire and police stations, hospitals, schools, roads and power lines are located in areas vulnerable to multiple hazards such as floods, wildfires, earthquakes and landslides. “It shows that there are a lot of people,” she said.
Stanton Geddes added: “Disaster and climate change preparedness is of vital importance to European policy makers, and these reports will help improve both public disaster preparedness and climate resilience. “We will provide the tools, data and evidence that will help.”
But this is not to say that European lawmakers are doing nothing.
At the European level, there are various aspects of the EU Adaptation Strategy, the EU Floods Directive and the European Green Deal that focus on adaptation. The report also provides some examples of best practices from national governments.
“Portugal has made significant investments in comprehensive wildfire prevention and preparedness, including research and up-to-date analysis, community-level action, and reforms towards integrated wildland fire management and fuel management.” Stanton-Geddes says.
“Portugal’s efforts have inspired other countries to take similar action. The Netherlands is a well-known example of flood risk management that combines measures and investments, including nature-based solutions. Italy is a well-known example of flood risk management that combines measures and investments, including nature-based solutions. , investing in and encouraging multi-functional upgrades, seismic safety and energy efficiency integration in public and private buildings.”
“Many European cities are also developing local climate adaptation plans and initiatives, including green infrastructure, heatwave management and improved flood risk management,” she added, explaining: “Cities like Vienna and Salzburg in Austria are tackling the heat in their cities, with a range of actions from greening and using reflective building materials to investing in energy efficiency measures and sustainable transport. By combining these, we can improve the island effect.”
Leveraging data for adaptive finance
One of the reports specifically addresses the question of how to finance stronger climate adaptation preparedness. The report states that early investments are much more cost-effective than later investments, and that prioritizing is the best way to focus spending. This is because countries have more at-risk areas and assets that are more susceptible to disasters, such as aging infrastructure or critical networks, which can put people at risk or cause major disruption. This means that funds should be concentrated in
The report notes that more research and data are needed on where these vulnerabilities lie and what it would cost to remediate the situation. This suggests that countries combine current and future climate risk data to develop climate “adaptation pathways” that set the course.
Based on current information, the report estimates that the cost of climate adaptation varies between €34 and €110 per person per year, depending on where you live. The total cost of adaptation in the European Union by the 2030s could be between €15 billion and €64 billion per year, suggesting that the required scale of adaptation financing is between 0.1% and 0.4% of EU GDP. .
“Adaptation pathways combine needs and priorities across all economic and government sectors,” explains Solene Dengler, senior climate change adaptation expert at the World Bank, who worked on the report.
“This means countries need to conduct more and better research at both country and sector levels to identify adaptation gaps, costs and benefits of adaptation measures, and to track adaptation spending and implementation. ,” Dengler said.
The report brings together several specific case studies, including wildfires and heatwaves in Bulgaria, the impact of floods on transport in Romania, and wildfire prevention in the forestry sector in Sweden.
But governments need better data to accurately estimate costs to steer their finances in the right direction.
“There is a lack of information on the projected impacts of climate risks in the short to medium term, from the 2030s to the 2050s, which is particularly useful for assessing sectoral or investment portfolios,” Dengler says.
“Strengthening a country’s fiscal resilience can be achieved by better capturing extreme impacts and allowing policymakers to consider tailored macroeconomic impacts when considering a range of adaptation measures,” he said. “Improved macroeconomic modeling will also be needed.” At EU level, the recent European Climate Risk Assessment and this report are important contributions to this evolving knowledge base. ”
Ultimately, she said, neither climate change adaptation nor climate change mitigation strategies should distract from the other. “Climate change adaptation is complementary to climate change mitigation. Addressing both is economically beneficial, reduces direct losses from disasters and climate impacts, and improves broader social and It can bring environmental benefits.”
The report concludes that a significant expansion of public, private and mixed finance is needed, and that investment plans and financial strategies do not yet fully reflect the understanding of climate change adaptation costs at national and EU level. I’m wearing it.
One concern is that many disaster and climate risks are managed at EU level and through budgetary instruments by EU member states, with gaps in terms of up-front financing and the use of risk transfer mechanisms such as risk insurance. It is.
Wildfire response activities account for approximately one-third of the total response costs in the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism budget. But if the EU experiences wildfires this year similar to the extreme wildfires of 2017, it would need to increase its annual budget by 70 percent. This shows that, based on past experience, insufficient planning is being done to match financial needs with the probability of a disaster, the report concludes.
“The key point is that the EU’s significant climate risks require system-wide, transformative adaptation, including institutional reforms, legal frameworks and sectoral strategies,” Dengler said, adding that “piecemeal approaches are no longer sufficient. Adaptation measures must be mainstreamed and coordinated across sectors and ministries, including in plans, finances and sectoral strategies.”
[By Dave Keating I Edited by Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]
