Socio-economic developments and climate-change effects to drive rising losses from severe weather events, sigma says

A thorough benefit-cost analysis of these four products would be time consuming and would have to await closer completion of some of the products. So an approximate but well accepted economic procedure called benefit transfer was used for this report. In benefit transfer, one estimates nonmarket economic values (here, the CRBCPI products) based on their similarity to something known from prior study, which here means the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves study by the Multihazard Mitigation Council (MMC) of the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) in the United States. Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves represents the most exhaustive benefitcost analysis of natural-hazard mitigation ever performed.

The ICLR/SPA study finds that CRBCPI will ultimately save Canada an estimated $4.7 billion per year of new construction that complies with its various guidelines, at an estimated added construction cost of $400 million per year, for a savings of almost $12 per $1 invested, as summarized in the table below. (Note that the 12:1 ratio is slightly high because it ignores the unknown cost of the overheating tool.) Figure ES-1 summarizes how different categories of benefits contribute to the total.

The study can be downloaded for free at www.iclr.org

The latest sigma “Natural catastrophes in times of economic accumulation and climate change” says that Swiss Re Institute expects that global warming will lead to growing intensity and frequency of severe weather events, but also to more uncertainty in their assessment. Economic and insured losses resulting from such events will rise in the coming decades, and this presents a major threat to global resilience. Worldwide, economic losses from natural and man-made disasters in 2019 were USD 146 billion, lower than USD 176 billion in 2018 and the previous 10-year annual average of USD 212 billion. The global insurance industry covered USD 60 billion of the losses, compared with USD 93 billion in 2018 and USD 75 billion on average in the previous 10 years. While severe weather events were still the main driver of overall losses in 2019, amplified by socio-economic developments in affected areas and climate-change effects, the decrease in losses primarily stem from the absence of large and costly hurricanes in the U.S.

“Economic development and everincreasing population concentration in urban centres, alongside changes in climate, will continue to increase losses due to weather events in the future,” said Edouard Schmid, Chairman of the Swiss Re Institute and Group Chief Underwriting Officer at Swiss Re. “Our industry can play a key role by partnering with clients and governments to develop scalable solutions that support the transition to a lowcarbon world by managing risks associated with renewable energy projects and making these more attractive to investors with re/insurance risk-transfer backing.”

Of the economic losses in 2019, USD 137 billion were due to natural disasters, with man-made events causing the remaining USD 9 billion. Of the USD 60 billion in insured losses, natural catastrophes accounted for USD 52 billion. The biggest industry loss events of 2019 happened in densely populated and developed parts of Japan: Typhoon Faxai in September (insured losses of USD 7 billion); followed by Typhoon Hagibis in October (additional insured losses of USD 8 billion).

Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction

Mission

To reduce the loss of life and property caused by severe weather and earthquakes through the identification and support of sustained actions that improve society’s capacity to adapt to, anticipate, mitigate, withstand and recover from natural disasters. 20 Richmond Street East Suite 210 Toronto, Ontario M5C 2R9 T 416-364-8677 F 416-364-5889 www.iclr.org www.PIEVC.ca Western University Amit Chakma Building, Suite 4405 1151 Richmond Street London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B9 T 519-661-3234 F 519-661-4273 www.iclr.org