The World Meteorological Organisation in its latest report said that China lost a whopping $238 billion while India suffered $87 billion last year
File photo of municipal workers clear a blocked road after a tree uprooted, in the aftermath of super cyclone Amphan, in Kolkata. PTI
If there were some who believed that climate change isn’t real, then this latest report by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) will prove how telling the effects of climate change are.
In their report titled ‘The State of the Climate in Asia 2020‘, the World Meteorological Organization has highlighted how climate change impacts across Asia in 2020 caused the loss of life of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while wreaking a heavy toll on infrastructure and ecosystems.
The WMO report using estimates predicted by United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) stated that natural disasters hitting India in 2020 caused an annual loss of $87 billion.
This figure was only surpassed by China — at $238 billion. Japan came third on the list with an annual loss of $83 billion.
The report highlighted how Cyclone Amphan, one of the strongest cyclones ever recorded, had displaced 2.4 million people in India and another 2.5 million people in Bangladesh.
The report also added that intense cyclones, monsoon rains and floods hit densely populated areas in South Asia and East Asia, and led to the displacement of millions of people in India, China, Bangladesh, Japan, Pakistan, Nepal and Vietnam last year.
With inputs from agencies