Counting the cost 2023: A year of climate breakdown

The effects of climate change are increasingly obvious. Floods, storms, heatwaves, and droughts are all becoming more intense and climate attribution science is becoming clearer that climate change is causing these more intense disasters. One way of understanding the cost of climate change is to estimate the economic impacts of climate-related disasters. This report uses a new methodology to provide data and analysis on the climate-related disasters which have had the biggest economic impact per head of population in the countries where they occurred.

The top 20 list features a range of disasters across 14 countries, showing that certain countries – through some combination of size, geography, income level, and other factors – are more prone to experience economically costly disasters. The list also shows that the relative economic impact of disasters is highly unequal. In poorer countries, it also means recovery is slower, and more unequal, with many people pushed further into poverty as assets are destroyed or damaged.