By ANTHONY IAN CRUZ
Malaya
Dec. 14, 2007
The Philippines has topped the list of countries “hardest hit” by climate change in 2006, according to environmental group GermanWatch in its Global Climate Risk Index (GCRI) 2008 released in Bali, Indonesia this week.
Sven Harmeling, author of the report, said that “storms and flooding in the Philippines and Indonesia claimed the lives of nearly 1,300 people and caused damage into the billions of dollars.”
Rounding up the 10 “worst-impacted” are North Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, India, China, Afghanistan, the United States and Romania. The study also claims that climate change events are impairing the capacities of countries to end poverty in the long run.
GermanWatch said that GCRI rated and ranked countries based on four indicators, namely, total number of deaths, deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, absolute losses in purchasing power parities, and losses per unit of the gross domestic product in percent.
The study found that in 2006, 953 disasters killing 12,422 persons and resulting in losses of $47.670-billion, with the deaths and losses mostly sustained by developing countries.
Of the figure, 25 disasters hit the Philippines, resulting in 513 deaths and in economic losses worth $4.45-billion, up from the average $584-million in the 1987-2006 period. Philippine economic losses due to climate change were almost 10 percent of the world total. A total of 8.5 million Filipinos were adversely affected by the events, the study said. Highly-destructive typhoons Milenyo and Reming hit the country in 2006.
While other countries sustained more deaths, the study found they were few compared to their national populations, and that their economies were not as severely compromised.
GermanWatch explained that “extreme weather events are generally expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to global climate change” and warned that “they have the potential to significantly undermine progress towards the achievement of Millennium Development Goals”.
“Extreme events can cause economic losses that are sometimes twice as high as the annual GDP of a country, as in Somalia and Seychelles in 2004, limiting the available means to invest into measures that contribute to the achievement of MDGs,” said the group.
The study also noted that floodings also cause to the spread of diseases, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, affecting anti-poverty and anti-hunger initiatives.
GermanWatch suggests that countries causing climate change, mostly developed countries like the US, contribute to setting up of new financing institutions that enables developed countries that suffer the brunt of events to effectively meet the needs of the most vulnerable people.
In countries like the Philippines, which suffer from typhoons and floods, GreenWatch suggested the following: improved drainage, development and promotion of alternative crops, adjustment of planting and harvesting schedules, and improved extension services. It also recommended, among others, enhanced implementation of protection measures including flood forecasting and warning, zoning, legislated rural and urban planning, promotion of insurance, relocation of vulnerable assets, early warning systems, disaster-preparedness planning and effective emergency relief measures.
The group said that it also used analyses by the Munich Reinsurance, the world’s second-largest reinsurance firm, and released it in time for a United Nations climate change conference in Bali attended by government delegates, scientists and environmentalists from nearly 190 countries.
The Bali meeting, which ends Friday, seeks to lay the groundwork for a new global efforts to combat climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 According to Peter Hoeppe of Munich Reinsurance’s Geo-Risks Research Department, the number of weather-related disasters has doubled since 1980 and the frequency of flooding and other weather extremes, such as heat waves and droughts, have risen fourfold.
“This clearly shows an increasing danger,” Hoeppe said, adding that industrialized countries, as the primary producers of the greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, bear responsibility for helping the affected nations.