2023-08-09 16:28:36
The damage caused by natural disasters in the first half of 2023 is estimated at 120 billion dollars (109 billion francs) worldwide, a sharp increase compared to a ten-year average, the reinsurer Swiss Re said in a study on Wednesday.
Of this amount, only 50 billion dollars are under-covered by insurance, indicates the Zurich group in a document of the Swiss Re Institute. This is the second highest amount since 2011.
This surge in costs was explained by the bad weather in the United States which caused 34 billion in insured damage, the highest amount ever recorded over a period of only six months. Ten of these storms caused respective damages of at least 1 billion. Texas was the most affected by this phenomenon.
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The earthquake that devastated southeastern Turkey on February 6, especially the province of Hatay and northern Syria, killing more than 55,000 people, caused guaranteed damage of 5.3 billion and economic costs of 34 billion, according to provisional estimates by the World Bank.
>> Read again: Two months after the powerful earthquake in Turkey, the importance of psychological support
“The amount of damage confirms the trend that insured damage increases each year on average by 5-7%, due to global warming, but also mainly because of the strong accumulation of economic assets in urban areas”, details Martin Bertogg of Swiss Re.
Effects of climate change “already visible”
For the chief economist of the reinsurer Jérôme Jean Haegeli, “the effects of climate change are already visible, with natural disasters such as heat waves, droughts, floods and heavy rains”.
Other natural disasters punctuated the first six months of 2023: bad weather at the start of the year in New Zealand caused insured losses of up to 2.3 billion and heavy rains in May in the north of the Italy caused damage of 10 billion – of which only 600 million are covered by insurance policies.
>> Read also: Italy releases “more than two billion euros” for flooded regions
The situation has not calmed down since with strong heat waves in several regions of the world, resulting in forest fires, particularly in Spain, France and Greece.
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