Economic Effects of Global Warming: Specific Cases, Natural Disasters
Natural Disasters have always been a cause for economic losses because every time a hurricane, earthquake, tsunami destroys houses, streets, vehicles, etc. money is lost. Governments around the world have to pay for the destruction caused by natural disasters, and as global warming gets worse and worse, more and more money has to be designated to repair the damages caused by natural disasters. The problem gets worse because natural disasters are becoming more frequent with the passing of the years because of humanity and its inefficiency to fight Global Warming.
Between 1990 and 2000, natural disasters caused damages that constituted between 2 and 15 percent of an affected country’s annual Gross Domestic Product. (World Bank Figures)
Natural disasters hit harder on poor people. Lower income people in many poor countries live in dangerous areas such as flood plains, river banks, steep slopes, and highly populated settlements of small and fragile houses. In the 2003 earthquake of Bam, Iran, more than 30,000 people died mainly because their housing was not designed to handle a major tremor.
Another reason why poor people are more vulnerable to natural disasters is because in many countries around the world, many of the victims of disasters are poor people who depended on natural resources for their livelihoods. These people need the land for producing their food and even the rivers and the sea to sell services of transportation and recreation. Tourism temporarily disappears in many countries affected by disasters and the people the most affected by this are lower income people who generally find jobs in this economical sector.
Europe is not immune to the effects of natural disasters in the economy. According to the European Environment Agency’s 2003 assessment, the cost of environmental disasters in Europe is currently $11.4 billion a year and rising.
According to the...