SPACE WIRE
Natural disasters cost 60 billion dollars in 2003: study
MILAN (AFP) Dec 10, 2003
Natural disasters, most of them caused by extreme weather, cost the world more than 60 billion dollars in 2003, up from 55 billion dollars in 2002, according to details from an insurance industry study released at a UN climate conference here.

"The high economic losses ... are part of a worrying trend that is being linked with climate change," the United Nations Environment Programmesaid, releasing excerpts from a study conducted by Munich Re, one of the world's biggest reinsurance companies.

The biggest single event was Europe's extreme summer heatwave, which cost more than 10 billion dollars in agricultural losses alone and killed some 20,000 people.

The second costliest event was the flooding along the Huai and Yangtze rivers in China between July and September.

Some 650,000 apartments were damaged, with overall losses at nearly eight billion dollars.

In terms of insured losses, however, the biggest hit was in the United States, where tornado damage in the Midwest in April and May cost insurers more than three billion dollars.

The figures are preliminary "snapshot" findings from Munich Re, which will be published in full at the end of the year. It has been tracking the economic and insured losses from natural and weather-related catastrophes since the 1950s.

UNEP released the data on the sidelines of a meeting of signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Scientists say that the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other carbon gases emitted each year by the burning of fossil fuels are trapping the sun's heat rather than letting it radiate safely into space.

In the past year or two, some voices in the scientific community have started to suggest that climate change has already started, inflicting prolonged droughts, sudden floods and freak storms.

Others remain unsure, and point out that ever-higher financial and human losses can also derive from building homes in places that are exposed to natural disasters.

Thomas Loster, head of weather/climate risks research at Munich Re, said that the final years of the 1990s and the early years of the early 21st century had been marked by increasingly "extreme" weather and climate-related events.

"We will have to get used to the fact that extreme summers, like the one we had in Europe this year, are to be expected more frequently in the future and that they will become more or less the norm of the middle of the century.

"The summer of 2003, with its extensive losses, is therefore a glimpse into the future, a 'future summer' so to speak."

UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said: "Climate change is not a prognosis, it is a reality that is, and will increasingly, bring human suffering and economic hardship."

The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised signatories to cut their emissions of "greenhouse" gases by 2008-12 compared with their 1990 levels.

It still requires Russia's ratification to become law after the United States walked out.

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