November 26, 2024

For too long disasters have been considered unexpected and unforeseeable. A force majeure on a country’s development and fiscal planning. This has led to governments largely taking a reactive approach to financing the response, recovery, and reconstruction from disasters. However, the data and science tell a different story–one of recurrent and increasingly expected events.

Between 2004 and 2023, disasters triggered by extreme weather and geophysical hazards resulted in a reported $4.2 trillion in economic losses (in constant 2015 prices), compared to $2 trillion over the previous 20 years. In 2023 alone, global economic losses surpassed $300 billion for the eighth time in a row and were 22 percent higher than the long-term average. According to Swiss Re, only 38 percent of those losses in 2023 were insured, largely concentrated in the industrialised world.

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