Countries Most At Risk From Climate Change

By: By Terrell Johnson

Published: November 1,2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maplecroft

• Source: Maplecroft

By the end of the next decade, nearly a third of the world's economic output will come from countries facing the most immediate impacts from climate change, according to a new report on climate vulnerability and environmental risk released this week in the U.K.
The report from Maplecroft, a U.K.-based risk analysis consulting firm, found that 31 percent of global economic output will come from countries that will face "high" to "extreme" risks from the impacts of climate change by 2025, more than double what the company found when it began researching climate impacts back in 2008.
More frequent and extreme weather events – like drought, floods and severe storms – are expected to pose increasingly serious threats to 67 nations the report identifies in its Climate Change Vulnerability Index, many of which lie along or near the equator in Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America.
The 10 countries named by the report as most at risk from the economic impacts of climate change are, in order and starting with the worst: Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Haiti, South Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Ethiopia.
Many large nations with rapidly growing populations and economies also are at "extreme" risk, the report adds, including India, Pakistan, and Vietnam; others labeled "high" risk include Indonesia, Thailand, Kenya, and China.
What the report makes clear is that many countries in developing countries that are becoming more important to the world economy are doing so at a time when they're also becoming more exposed to the risks of climate change, with disastrous results in some cases.
The report highlights the impact of extreme weather events like Cyclone Phailin, which left behind devastating damage to homes, farms, and cities when it slammed into parts of coastal India in early October, causing more than $4 billion in damage to the agricultural and power sectors alone.