Global GDP growth at risk due to climate change: Report
Around 30% of the average annual loss is associated with hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis whereas 70% is associated with climate-related hazards like cyclones, floods, and storms
The global average annual loss in infrastructure sectors and buildings is now in a range of $732– $845 billion taking into account climate change and that around 14% of 2021- 2022 global GDP growth is at risk, a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) report has said.
CDRI’s Biennial Report on Global Infrastructure Resilience: Capturing the Resilience Dividend provides a Global Infrastructure Risk Model and Resilience Index (GIRI), the first publicly available and fully probabilistic risk model to estimate risk for infrastructure assets with respect to most major geological and climate-related hazards.
The report was released as a suspected glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) on Wednesday on Lhonak Lake caused severe flooding downstream, washed away part of the Teesta 3 dam, and damaged parts of the Teesta 5 dam, bridges, and roads in Sikkim. Flash floods this monsoon also led loss of infrastructure in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The report highlighted that the annual investment required to address the infrastructure deficit, achieve the sustainable development goals, achieve net zero, and strengthen resilience by 2050 amounts to $9.2 trillion of which $2.84-$2.90 trillion must be invested in low-and middle-income countries.
Around 30% of the average annual loss is associated with hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis whereas 70% is associated with climate-related hazards like cyclones, floods, and storms. The risk is not spread equally across sectors with around 80% of the risk concentrated in the power, transport, and telecommunications sectors, the report said.
Around 67% of the global value of infrastructure assets is concentrated in high-income countries Low and Middle-Income Countries carry the highest relative risk to their infrastructure.
“The report is accompanied by a tool which countries can use to do deep dive analysis to inform their decision making, inform their infrastructure investment decisions, invest in resilience, and build infrastructure systems that last long and serve generations to come,” said Kamal Kishore of the National Disaster Management Authority and CDRI’s co-chair executive committee in a statement
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