Climate disasters will cost us $580 billion a year

The COP27 Climate Summit will be organized in Egypt from this weekend. During the summit, world leaders from nearly 200 countries will discuss how to tackle the climate crisis for two weeks. The United Nations ruled last week that a tough approach was needed.

According to the United Nations, the current combined climate plans of all governments are still insufficient to achieve the 2015 Paris Agreement climate targets. The Netherlands is also present at the summit, and it has sent a large delegation.

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Climate and Energy Minister Rob Getten and Prime Minister Mark Rutte will travel next week. “But Frans Timmermans, who will be going there on behalf of the European Commission, is also on the list,” energy and climate correspondent Mark Bikos sums up the names. In addition to MEP Bas Eckhout, who leads the European delegation, MPs and climatologists from KNMI, also Sigrid Kaag, Sharon Dijksma, you name it. In short, a lot of Dutch people are involved in this in their own way.

Geopolitical complex times

There will be plenty of talks and meetings during the summit, although the ones that likely won’t be the most interesting, according to Beges. “These are geopolitically complex times,” he says. For example, there are no planned consultations between the United States and Russia, or between the European Union and Russia. But even since Pelosi boarded the plane for Taiwan, the relationship between China and the United States has been more turbulent than it already was. At the time, China also said it did not want to discuss climate change with the United States.

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But, Bekos says, that may very well change. “It is thought that there may be talks in Egypt about a possible joint approach to climate.”

Expectations

What exactly should be produced from the top remains to be seen, according to Beckhuis. “We always have to wait and see what comes, but I don’t think expectations are at all high,” he continues. What may disappoint this year is that participating nations said at last year’s climate summit in Glasgow that joint plans would not be enough to properly slow the rise in temperatures. After that, countries were going to give up new targets, but almost none of them gave up, and for some reason the countries seem to think they can do so in the next year.

loss and damage

According to Bekhois, the important topic at the top will be the so-called loss and damage: damage from climate change. A year ago, it was very difficult to point out what that was all about, but now we have experienced floods in Pakistan. These were largely related to climate change, so now it’s clear what they’re all about. This also shows how big the impact of climate change is.

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Therefore, estimates for 2030 indicate that disasters such as the Pakistani floods will cost about $290 billion annually. This will rise to $580 billion per year. With those amounts, you know there are going to be countries that can’t afford it if it happens to them, and there will be a lot of talk about it during the summit.