Environment     

Climate change leads to extreme weather events

Xinhua, November 30, 2011

• Climate change is believed to be a major cause of 14,000 extreme weather events that claimed the lives of more than 710,000 people worldwide from 1991 to 2010, according to an European report published here on Tuesday.

  Such extreme weather events also incurred economic losses of more than 2.3 trillion dollars, said the "climate risk index" report by Germanwatch, a European non-governmental organization.

  The report was published on the sidelines of the UN climate conference that opened in Durban on Monday.

  It also listed 20 top countries that are most affected by extreme weather events in the past 20 years. These include Pakistan, Guatemala,Colombia, Russia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Honduras.

  Pakistan was hit last year by the worst floods in its history, with 84 out of 121 districts affected, while Guatemala was rocked by hurricanes and Colombia was struck by flooding.

  Russia ranked fourth on the list, after a heatwave in July that caused massive forest and peat fires and led indirectly to 55, 000 deaths.

  During the 20-year period, not a single developed country features in the top 10 for climate risk.

  "These results underscore the particular vulnerability of poor countries to climatic risks, despite the fact that the absolute monetary damages are much higher in rich countries," Germanwatch said.

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