Hollywood movies present that the United Nations wants extra assets to stop local weather catastrophes.
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction is so dark that it doesn’t even have an ambassador of its own. However, according to one study, disasters could soon cost $ 1 trillion a year if the UNDRR stops receiving money.
Revenge of the Nerds: Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change
March 18, 2021
“It’s time to put some urgency on the DRR agenda.”
John H. Patterson
Humanitarian specialist stationed in more than 25 countries advising international organizations on issues such as disaster risk reduction
Topher L. McDougal
Development Economist and Associate Professor of Economic Development at the University of San Diego’s Kroc School of Peace Studies
Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) has long been a pariah in the international development and humanitarian aid worlds.
In the ambiguity between disaster relief and economic development, the DRR lacks both the immediacy of a humanitarian crisis and the appeal of development projects with a large budget. Disaster prevention and risk reduction are a good idea and a wonderful topic to talk about, but DRR has consistently failed to attract sustained attention and funding. Despite all the passion for the “connection between humanitarian and developmental development” or the “threefold connection” between peacebuilding, humanitarian aid and development, the DRR is still more of an afterthought than a central pillar of the aid strategy.
Part of the problem is that DRR just isn’t very marketable. The United Nations Humanitarian Aid Coordination Unit, OCHA, can list Beyoncé and Forest Whitaker as collaborators. The UN refugee agency UNHCR has Angelina Jolie. and the UN Development Program recently added Yemi Alade to a list of goodwill ambassadors that included Padma Lakshmi and Antonio Banderas. The UN Bureau for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has none.
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But If American cinema has taught us anything, there is a price to ignoring the nerds – a high price. In a recent article published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, we estimate that a 1 degree rise in global temperatures would require nearly tripling expenditure on disaster relief in order to keep up with currently inadequate levels of humanitarian aid. This means that – within 15 years – inadequate preparation for the impending effects of climate change can result in over $ 1 trillion in an annual global civil protection bill (including often unreported or undercounted domestic spending).
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Read more: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2021/3/18/revenge-of-the-nerds-disaster-risk-reduction-and-climate-change
The abstract of the study;
The Global Financial Burden of Humanitarian Disasters: Exploiting the Variations in GDP in the Age of Climate Change
Author links Topher L.McDougal, John H.Patterson
- Total humanitarian spending is 13 times the official figure: $ 367 billion. •
- The 1 ° C rise in global temperature implies catastrophe spending of $ 1 trillion, 0.75% of GDP. •
- GDP per capita is the most reliable significant predictor of international flows. •
- Temperature anomalies predict a significant increase in disaster vulnerability.
We quantify the global burden of spending on humanitarian disaster relief. While international flows of responses are well documented, global domestic spending on disasters is largely largely unknown. We use fixed-effects log-log models to estimate international humanitarian disaster relief spending by UNOCHA’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS) by recipient country and year as a function of GDP per capita. Under the conservative assumption that all humanitarian disaster relief spending in the poorest countries comes from outside, we calculate a population share for the share of total expenditure on per capita GDP and reverse the annual estimates of total humanitarian disaster relief expenditure. We find that global humanitarian spending is roughly 13 times the official FTS figure, or around $ 367 billion a year. Finally, we use simultaneous equation models to examine how total humanitarian disaster relief spending is affected by climate change (based on NASA’s GISS surface temperature data). We find that every 1 ° C increase in 5-year temperature anomalies would require a 3.1% (95% CI: 0.18% -6.01%) increase in humanitarian spending. Overall, we estimate that a further 1 ° C rise in global temperatures would require total annual humanitarian spending of approximately US $ 1 trillion, or approximately 0.75% of global GDP in 2019, to maintain current humanitarian needs. We find that climate change affects humanitarian spending only through GDP per capita and disaster exposure, although temperature anomalies predict a significant increase in disaster vulnerability.
Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221242092100039X?dgcid=author
You have to admit that this is a breathtakingly bold climate; We are calling for UN money to prevent disasters, and we are citing disaster films as evidence that we should listen to their demands and then, presumably at some point in the future, acknowledge climate disasters that did not occur.
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