Counting the cost 2022: A year of climate breakdown

A new report by Christian Aid, Counting the cost 2022: a year of climate breakdown identifies 20 of the most destructive climate disasters of the year. The ten most financially costly events all had an impact of $3 billion or more. Most of these estimates are based only on insured losses, meaning the true financial costs are likely to be even higher, while the human costs are often uncounted. Among them is Hurricane Ian which struck the US and Cuba in September costing $100 billion and displacing 40,000 people. The drought in Europe heatwave in Europe cost $20 billion while floods in Pakistan killed more than 1,700 people, displaced a further 7 million, and according to World Bank estimates caused $30 billion in economic damage. Due to the difficulty of obtaining insurance, only $5.6 billion of these losses were covered.

In the report a second list of 10 climate disasters highlights some of these other climate events of 2022 which don’t make the list of insured losses but were just as damaging to communities or posed worrying future threats such as the Arctic and Antarctic heatwaves.