Climate change is costing trillions and… the poorest are paying – What a new study shows

THE climate change has cost the world economy so far trillions of dollarsbut low-income countries in the tropics have borne the brunt of these losses, finds a study that analyzed the economic consequences of heatwaves worldwide over a 20-year period.

The research, published Oct. 28 in Science Advances1, estimates that the global economy lost between $5 trillion and $29 trillion from 1992 to 2013 as a result of human-caused global warming. However, the effect was worse in low-income tropical countries, leading their national income to decline by an average of 6.7%, while high-income countries saw an average decline of only 1.5%.

The study also highlights the need to introduce climate policies that address environmental injustice. Its findings “will support discussions of loss and damage that will be a key issue in [Σύνοδο Κορυφής των Ηνωμένων Εθνών] COP27,” says Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at Columbia University in New York.

Climate inequality

The uneven effects of global warming are “something that’s been talked about quite qualitatively in the past,” says Vikki Thompson, a climatologist at the University of Bristol in the UK, but this analysis “managed to really quantify it.” It also includes parts of the world that are often excluded from heat studies because of a lack of data, he says.

To estimate the extreme heat caused by greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers combined data on the countries’ average annual temperatures and the five hottest days of each year from 1992 to 2013 with computer climate models. “Days that are very, very hot are one of the most tangible ways we feel climate change,” says co-author Christopher Callahan, a climate modeling researcher at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “We know they destroy crops, reduce labor productivity, cause more workplace injuries.” Callahan and his colleagues looked at the links between heat waves and economic trends, on a global and national scale.

Their models found that low-income areas that tend to get hot weather suffer more from increased temperatures, despite the fact that their emissions are often much lower than those of wealthier areas. Countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Mali were among the worst hit, with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita falling by about 5% annually compared to what it would be without human-induced heatwaves. By contrast, the decline in GDP in countries such as Canada and Finland is only around 1%.

Targeted investments

The findings could inform how strategies are implemented to help countries adapt to extreme heat or heavy rainfall. “The fact that we were able to pinpoint this effect of the five hottest days of the year over the entire year as an economic impact suggests that these few days have really big effects,” Callahan says. “Thus, investments aimed at mitigating the effects of extreme heat during the hottest periods of the year could yield significant economic returns.”

The study also highlights the need for rich countries to pay their share, says Erich Fischer, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “Given the unequal burden and share of historical emissions … the global north must support the global south in addressing these adverse impacts.”

Nature

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