[ The findings from a World Meteorological Organization report
released Monday are another example of how those who did the least to
cause the climate crisis are most vulnerable to its impacts. ]
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GLOBAL SOUTH SAW MORE THAN 90% OF ALL EXTREME WEATHER DEATHS IN LAST
51 YEARS: UN AGENCY  
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Olivia Rosane
May 22, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ The findings from a World Meteorological Organization report
released Monday are another example of how those who did the least to
cause the climate crisis are most vulnerable to its impacts. _

A girl walks past destroyed houses at Basara refugee camp in Sittwe
on May 16, 2023, after cyclone Mocha made landfall. , Sai Aung
Main/AFP via Getty Images

 

More than 90% of the people killed in extreme weather events during
the last half-century lived in the Global South, a new World
Meteorological Organization report has found.

The figure came from an update
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World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) _Atlas of Mortality and
Economic Losses from Weather, Climate, and Water-related Hazards_ to
cover the years 1970 to 2021. The U.N. agency counted a total of
11,778 extreme weather, climate, or water-related disasters during
that time period, which claimed more than two million deaths and cost
$4.3 trillion in economic losses.

"The most vulnerable communities unfortunately bear the brunt of
weather, climate and water-related hazards," WMO Secretary-General
Prof. Petteri Taalas said
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in a statement.

While more than 60% of the economic losses caused by these storms
occurred in developed nations—with 39% occurring in the U.S.
alone—developing nations were disproportionately harmed financially
relative to the size of their economies. None of the events in the
Global North cost a country more than 3.5% of its gross domestic
product (GDP), and over four-fifths of these disasters cost less than
0.1% of GDP. In Least Developed Countries, however, 7% of the
disasters took out a more than 5% chunk of their GDPs, and some cost
them as much as 30%. Small Island Developing States were hit
especially hard, with 20% of disasters having an impact worth more
than 5% of their GDPs and some costing more than 100% of local GDP.

Taalas offered
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the example of Cyclone Mocha, which bore down on the world's largest
refugee camp in the Bangladeshi city of Cox's Bazar on May 14. The
Category 5 storm killed at least 145 people in Myanmar and destroyed
thousands of shelters in the Cox's Bazar refugee camp, _BBC
News_reported [[link removed]].

"It caused widespread devastation in Myanmar and Bangladesh, impacting
the poorest of the poor," Taalas said.

In general, Asia accounted for 47% of all reported deaths from extreme
weather events, and tropical cyclones were the leading cause. Of
Asia's 984,263 deaths, Bangladesh accounted for more than half of them
at 520,758—the highest death toll for any nation in the region and a
higher number than the total death toll for the regions of Europe;
North America, Central America, and the Caribbean; South America; and
the South-West Pacific.

"Both vulnerability to current climate extremes and historical
contribution to climate change are highly heterogeneous with many of
those who have least contributed to climate change to date being most
vulnerable to its impacts."

The findings are a clear example of climate injustice—as those who
did the least to contribute to the crisis disproportionately suffer
its impacts. All of the disasters considered in the study—droughts,
extreme temperatures, flooding, glacial lake outbursts, landslides,
storms, and wildfires—are becoming more extreme, more frequent, or
both because of climate change due primarily to the burning of fossil
fuels, and their impacts are not evenly distributed.

"Both vulnerability to current climate extremes and historical
contribution to climate change are highly heterogeneous with many of
those who have least contributed to climate change to date being most
vulnerable to its impacts," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change wrote
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in its most recent _Synthesis Report._

In 2009, developed nations pledged $100 billion a year through 2020 to
help developing nations both adapt to the climate crisis and reduce
their emissions, as Eurodad explained in a 2022 analysis. The 2020
deadline was later extended to 2025. However, as of 2020, nearly 50%
of the promised amount had not been paid.

The most recent U.N. Adaptation Gap Report moreover found
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that the money the Global North is sending to the Global South to help
it adapt is five to 10 times below what it actually needs.

At 2022's COP27, wealthier nations agreed
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to a second Loss and Damage fund to help poorer nations pay for the
inevitable harms already caused by the climate crisis. However, in a
peer-reviewed paper published
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_One Earth_ on Friday, Marco Grasso and Richard Heede argued that the
lengthy process involved in organizing and financing such an
agreement—as well as the delay in other climate finance—meant that
major fossil fuel companies should step in to help foot the bill.

"The recent progress in climate attribution science makes it evident
that these companies have played a major role in the accumulation and
escalation of such costs by providing gigatonnes of carbon fuels to
the global economy while willfully ignoring foreseeable climate harm,"
Grasso and Heede wrote. "All the while they successfully shaped the
public narrative on climate change through disinformation, misleading
'advertorials,' lobbying, and political donations to delay action
directly or through trade associations and other surrogates. Fossil
fuel companies have a moral responsibility to affected parties for
climate harm and have a duty to rectify such harm."

The two authors calculated that the top 21 fossil fuel companies owed
a total of $5.4 trillion in reparations from 2025 to 2050, with Saudi
Aramco, Russia's Gazprom, ExxonMobil
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"The analysis offers a starting point for much needed action to hold
fossil fuel companies accountable for their financial
responsibilities," Greenpeace International general counsel Kristin
Casper said
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in response to the findings. "Now, communities on the frontline of
environmental breakdown can decide how to wield the study's powerful
findings in their own struggles for justice."

There was some good news in the WMO report. While the yearly cost of
extreme weather disasters has increased over the last 51 years, the
death toll has decreased due to early warning systems. For example,
Cyclone Nargis in 2008 killed 138,366 people in Myanmar and
Bangladesh, a toll much higher than Mocha's.

"Thanks to early warnings and disaster management these catastrophic
mortality rates are now thankfully history," Taalas said. "Early
warnings save lives."

The WMO published its findings to coincide with the World
Meteorological Congress, which launched Monday with a talk on
extending early warning systems to every country on Earth by 2027, a
goal spearheaded by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
Currently, these systems only cover around half of all countries, and
Small Island Developing States, Least Developed Countries, and Africa
nations are especially left out.

"Delivering #EarlyWarningsForAll
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can be the game changer to address the massive injustice of loss that
communities face from the climate crisis," Jagan Chapagain, secretary
general and CEO of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies, said
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conference.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.

Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

* Climate Crisis; Environmental Justice; World Meteorological
Organization;
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