Natural disasters force 26million people into poverty

The impact of extreme natural disasters is equivalent to a global $520 billion loss in annual consumption, and forces some 26 million people into poverty each year, a new report from the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) reveals.

"Severe climate shocks threaten to roll back decades of progress against poverty," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. "Storms, floods, and droughts have dire human and economic consequences, with poor people often paying the heaviest price. Building resilience to disasters not only makes economic sense, it is a moral imperative."

The report, ‘Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters’, warns that the combined human and economic impacts of extreme weather on poverty are far more devastating than previously understood.

In all of the 117 countries studied, the effect on well-being, measured in terms of lost consumption, is found to be larger than asset losses. Because disaster losses disproportionately affect poor people, who have a limited ability to cope with them, the report estimates that impact on well-being in these countries is equivalent to consumption losses of about $520 billion a year. This outstrips all other estimates by as much as 60 per cent.

With the climate summit, COP22, underway, the report’s findings underscore the urgency for climate-smart policies that better protect the most vulnerable. Poor people are typically more exposed to natural hazards, losing more as a share of their wealth and are often unable to draw on support from family, friends, financial systems, or governments.

Meanwhile, leaders in the global drive to protect, restore and sustainably manage forests have announced a series of measures that show concrete progress is being made towards delivering on the Paris climate pledges and global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

More than a dozen initiatives from Africa to Indonesia to South America are demonstrating how climate mitigation and adaptation actions related to forests and agriculture are firmly anchored in the Nationally Determined Contributions of over 120 Parties to the Climate Convention.

The announcement also comes only two years after the New York Declaration on Forests, an ambitious multi-stakeholder commitment to cut deforestation in half by 2020 and striving to end natural forest loss by 2030.

Forest Action Day at the Marrakech Climate Change Conference (COP 22) is part of the Global Climate Action Agenda, an initiative by France and Morocco to boost cooperative action between governments, cities, business, investors and citizens to cut emissions and help vulnerable nations adapt to climate impacts and build their own clean energy, sustainable futures.

“Forests are one of the largest and most cost-effective responses we have to climate change,” said Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), event co-organizer. “Countries, civil society, the private sector and indigenous peoples are working powerfully together to protect forests to limit global warming to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

Healthier forests will not only help combat climate change but also contribute to many other global development goals by providing food, income, fuel and shelter, said René Castro Salazar, Assistant Director-General, Forestry, of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which also co-organized the event.

“The Zero Hunger goal of the SDGs cannot be achieved by 2030 without addressing climate change, and climate change cannot be addressed without managing the world’s forests in a sustainable manner,” he said.

Deforestation and forest degradation currently contribute up to 12 percent of carbon emissions – more than the entire transport sector combined. Yet, by halting deforestation and reducing and reversing forest degradation, forests could contribute significantly to the climate solution in the coming decades.