In the last three years, some of the severe impacts of climate change in Spain have been among the most costly extreme events in the world, especially droughts and DANAS.
This week, the annual review of the Christian Aid organization calculated that the floods in Valencia and Albacete last October were one of the ten most costly climate disasters of 2024 with a bill of around €4 billion. The previous year, the drought that Spain went through was also included in that ranking. And in 2023, the lack of rain in the entire Mediterranean region (in which Spain is incorporated) appeared in that same group.
Climate-related economic losses in Spain, although with annual rises and falls, have been on the rise since at least 2017. In 2023 they totaled 7 billion euros, according to the INE. In 2022 the peak was marked with 11,000 million –an extremely dry year, of forest fires and violent storms–. There is still no calculation for 2024. The European Environment Agency (EMA) estimates that, since 1980, the country has accumulated 95 billion losses due to the climate crisis. It is the fourth state with the most total losses in the EU behind Germany, France and Italy.
According to the INE, in 2023, the economic loss per capita was 147 euros while the European Union average remained at 97 euros per inhabitant. The acceleration of the economic impact, at least at the European level, is reflected – explains the AEM – because the last three years with data have entered the top 5 for economic damage. “Because extreme climate events are going to intensify, it seems unlikely that the economic losses they cause will be reduced before 2030,” the organization analyzes.
Evidence
The previous governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, admitted in writing in a recent work on Economic and financial implications of climate change that, despite the uncertainty, “there is consensus that the Iberian Peninsula will be especially affected.” In this sense, he added, the studies indicate that “the economic activity of Spain would suffer substantial falls” and pointed out that the risks in the coming decades are those “associated with chronic phenomena – such as increased temperatures, desertification or rise in sea level.” —, and extreme or severe weather events, such as floods, storms or fires.” That projection described by the former governor is materializing.
In the words of De Cos: “The year of a severe drought or heat wave, there would be a notable slowdown in economic growth; an increase in inflation and a fall in house prices.” Regarding floods: “1.3% of the homes that act as mortgage collateral in Spain are located in flood-prone areas over a ten-year horizon.”
If in the past 2024 the clearest and most severe climate impact has come in the form of violent precipitation that has caused super-destructive floods of water, the Economic and Social Council recalled in its 2024 analysis on the socioeconomic impacts of the climate crisis that Spain is he EU member state “most affected by water scarcity, indicating that around half of the population is exposed to this risk and estimating the losses generated by the drought at around 1.5 billion euros per year.”
In this sense, the Government has estimated the aid implemented only for the primary sector at around 4,000 million euros with the idea of softening the effects of the drought in 2023.
The bill of destruction
Currently there is a way to clearly see how much it is costing to alleviate the increasingly palpable effects of climate change in Spain. Who pays for the damages? If you look at the insurers that pay out in response to climate phenomena, you see that, in 2023, these companies they paid 847 million euros “to address the damage caused by more than 993,000 meteorological accidents,” according to the report by the Spanish Union of Insurance and Reinsurance Entities (UNESPA).
This employer association estimates that, in the period 2017-2021, insurers paid 3,796 million euros for climate claims. Most of the destruction also affected homes, analyzes UNESPA. And that amount, the insurers emphasize, does not include extraordinary phenomena such as floods, sea attacks or cyclonic winds that are paid by the Insurance Compensation Consortium.
So to complete the sum, the Consortium’s latest annual report reports that, between 2019 and 2023, it has paid 1,503 million euros due to floods and attacks from the sea and another 190 due to storms.
All these calculations and reports on losses have come to corroborate the projections that were made public more than a decade ago. For example, the report on The cost of inaction and the cost of adaptation carried out in 2006 by the European Environment Agency and published by the Ministry of Rural and Marine Environment in 2008 concluded that although there were “limitations to quantification and valuation, the economic effects are potentially very significant”. And he added: “More adverse repercussions are expected in the Mediterranean region and southeastern Europe.”
“Studies already carried out or in progress [indican] that the economic and social repercussions of climate changes are going to be very serious,” concluded Teresa Ribera, who was then Secretary of State for Climate Change.
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