The amount of money needed for UN humanitarian Appeals involving extreme weather events like floods or drought is now eight times higher than 20 years ago but donors are failing to keep up, according to a new Oxfam brief.
The new Oxfam brief revealed that for every $2 needed for UN weather-related Appeals, donor countries are only providing $1. Oxfam indicated that average annual extreme weather-related humanitarian funding appeals between 2000 and 2002 were at least $1.6 billion and rose to an average of $15.5 billion in 2019-2021, an 819 percent increase.
Rich countries responsible for most of today’s climate change impacts have met only an estimated 54 percent of these Appeals since 2017, leaving a shortfall of up to $33 billion, Oxfam highlighted in the new brief.
The countries with the most recurring Appeals against extreme weather crises — over 10 each — include Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.
The report, ‘Footing the Bill’, stated that the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events due to climate change is putting more pressure on an already over-stretched and underfunded humanitarian system.
The costs of the destruction from these storms, droughts and floods are also increasing inequality; people in poorer communities and low-income countries are the worst hit yet they lack the systems and funding that wealthier countries have to cope with the effects.
The richest one percent of people on Earth are emitting twice as much carbon pollution as the poorest half of humanity, the report indicated.
“Human activity has created a world 1.1˚C warmer than pre-industrial levels and we are now suffering the consequences. More alarming still, we will overshoot the 1.5˚C safety threshold on current projections.
“The cost of climate destruction will keep rising and our failure now to cut emissions will have catastrophic consequences for humanity. We can’t ignore the huge economic and non-economic losses and damages that underlie this picture — the loss of life, homes, schools, jobs, culture, land, Indigenous and local knowledge, and biodiversity”.
Oxfam Executive Director Gabriela Bucher
Focus of UN Appeals
The UN Appeals focus on the most urgent humanitarian needs, but that barely scratches the surface of the real costs in loss and damage that climate change is now wreaking on countries’ economies.
The economic cost of extreme weather events in 2021 alone was estimated to be $329 billion globally, the third highest year on record. This is nearly double the total aid given by rich nations to the developing world that year, according to Oxfam.
The costs of loss and damage to low- and middle-income countries — for instance, the money needed to rebuild homes and hospitals or provide shelter, food and emergency cash transfers after a cyclone — could reach between $290 billion and $580 billion a year by 2030.
This does not account for non-economic losses such as the loss of life, cultures and ways of living, and biodiversity.
UN Appeals represent just a small part of the costs of climate disasters for people who are especially vulnerable and they only reach a fraction of the people who are suffering.
Oxfam’s research showed that UN Appeals covered only about 474 million of the estimated 3.9 billion people in low- and middle-income countries affected by extreme weather-related disasters since 2000, equivalent to one in eight people.
READ ALSO: Aspirant Cautions NPP Members To Conduct Themselves In Upcoming National Delegates Conference
