Extreme weather, but varied impact

The increased frequency of extreme weather events, predicted in an IPCC report this week, has disproportionate effect according to the status of the country that is affected.

After many meetings and exercises in consensus forming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has finally released its latest report. Its findings, however, might be more accurately characterised as a damp squib: extreme weather conditions are on the rise. Well, hardly a shock to any diligent consumer of news. The report makes the usual exhortations to reduce carbon emissions: global warming, you know.

What the 2,610-page report should have spent more time explaining is how the effects of the more extreme manifestations of weather demonstrate a tale of two worlds. Whether it is heatwaves, wildfires, droughts or floods, richer nations are better able to handle natural disasters than poorer ones. And despite where one might stand on the debate over whether warming is real and man-made, one can hardly disagree that the misery divide must be closed and that this cannot wait.

Take Britain. The amount of rain that fell in England in January was the most since reliable records began being kept more than 100 years earlier, and more than twice the average for the past 30 years. There was widespread flooding, with 17 deaths attributed to the storms.

Now, take Pakistan. The 2010 monsoon caused the deaths of more than 1,800 people, with another 20 million affected. At the floodwater’s peak, one-fifth of the country was underwater and the cost, in terms of lost crops and damaged infrastructure, was estimated at $43 billion (Dh158bn).

We suspect that the average Punjab farmer had far less insurance cover than his counterpart in Somerset. And that is precisely what our immediate concern should be. First, how to ensure that those in the poorest parts of the world are better insured against the effects of devastating weather conditions. And next, how to fund and build infrastructure that tames the ferocity of nature so it doesn’t cause so much damage in the first place.

So instead of subsidising windfarms on the prairies, a bigger payback might be found in taking counterintuitive measures. For example, good roads in flood zones that would allow more people easier means of evacuating ahead of storms. And a strong, well-funded insurance industry in the developing world to better help rebuild lives in the aftermath of disaster. We don’t think any of this is tilting at windmills.