SIGN OF THINGS TO COME?

Extreme weather events in Pakistan, Russia, China and other areas of the world are a stark reminder of the human and economic costs that climate change may hold in store. As climate change negotiations continue, these events should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers around the world.

The UN has rated the floods in Pakistan as the greatest humanitarian crisis in recent history, with 13.8 million people affected and 1,600 dead. Flooding in China has killed more than 1,100 people this year and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions. In Russia wildfires have swept through the countryside as the country experiences the worst heat wave in 130 years.

Scientists warn that global weather patterns are complex, so it would be misleading to say that global warming was the direct cause of all these events; at the same time, it is clear that changing global weather patterns are playing some role.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the ‘dramatic’ weather patterns are consistent with changes in the climate caused by mankind. “These are events which reproduce and intensify in a climate disturbed by greenhouse gas pollution," he said. "Extreme events are one of the ways in which climatic changes become dramatically visible."

Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, has said that there is “clear evidence” of an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events because of climate change. "The odds of such extreme events are rapidly shortening and could become considered the norm by the middle of this century," he warned.

Politicians are also pointing to a link between recent extreme weather events and global climate change. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that Pakistan’s flooding “reconfirms our extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a recent interview with Pakistan’s Dawn TV, observed that, “when you have the changes in climate that affect weather that we’re now seeing, I think the predictions of more natural disasters are unfortunately being played out”.

A further hard lesson of the current extreme weather events is the economic costs of natural disasters. Economists estimate that Russia’s economy will lose $15 billion this year from the country’s recent disasters—a full percentage point of its expected GDP growth. Rising food prices are already limiting spending power. Now the government has banned wheat exports through the end of the year as grain output is down by at least a third. The International Monetary Fund says the flooding in Pakistan will cause “major harm to the economy,” including tens of billions of dollars in agricultural losses. Flooding in China earlier this summer has already caused billions of dollars of damage.

As policy makers prepare for the COP16 UNFCCC climate negotiations in Mexico this December, the mounting economic and social costs of natural disasters during the course of 2010 will serve as a harsh warning of what the world may experience without a concerted global effort to address climate change.