Climate change is the defining issue of our time….every day we fail to act is a day that we step a little closer towards a fate that none of us wants- a fate that will resonate through generations in the damage done to humankind and life on earth
António Guterres
UN Secretary General
Climate change is the biggest economic, social, and environmental threat facing the planet and humanity. Climate-related disasters have nearly doubled compared to the previous tow decades exacerbating inequalities within and between countries - with those contributing least to global emissions often experiencing the worst impacts.
We are at a crossroads. Climate change is undermining progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
It is reshaping the global resource map for assets such as water, arable land and energy while driving migration, displacement, and instability. Transitioning to a sustainable net-zero carbon world requires rapid systems-level changes across key sectors and systems such as energy, food, and health.
Collective, integrated action; a strong political leadership, and adequate financing are needed to keep the global average temperature within the 1.5 °C limit outlined in the Paris Agreement. However, prudent risk management also requires preparing for a range of negative outcomes associated with different degrees of warming and for effectively managing unexpected concurrent threats, such as new health crises or other shocks.
Risks are increasing with every increment of warming. With every increment of warming, climate change impacts and risks will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage. How climate change will drive risk of:
- Cyclones: Under 2.5°C of global warming, the most devastating storms are projected to occur up to twice as often as today. (Bacmeister et al., 2018) ). Under 1.5°C of global warming, higher proportions and peak wind speeds of intense tropical cyclones are projected (IPCC, 2023).
- Drought: The number of people suffering extreme droughts across the world could double in less than 80 years (Pokhrel, 2021).
- Floods: For each 1°C of global warming, extreme daily precipitation events may intensify by about 7% (IPCC, 2021).
- Heatwave : Heat stress from extreme heat and humidity could annually affect 1.2 billion people by 2100 (Li, Yuan & Kopp, 2020). Similarly, increasing frequency of marine heatwaves will increase risks of biodiversity loss in the oceans, including from mass mortality events (high confidence) (IPCC, 2023).
- Infectious diseases: By 2050, mosquitoes that carry vector-borne diseases like Malaria could reach an estimated 500 million more people (Ryan et al., 2019).
- Sea level rise: Over the next 2000 years, global mean sea level will rise by about 2 to 3 m if warming is limited to 1.5°C and 2 to 6 m if limited to 2°C (low confidence). (IPCC, 2023). Coastal flooding events could threaten assets worth up to 20% of the global GDP by 2100 (Kirezci et al., 2020).
- Wildfire: By 2030, fire season could be three months longer in areas already exposed to wildfires (Ross, Gannon & Steinberg, 2020).
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Challenges
1. Current mitigation trajectories are leading to unmanageable disaster risk
Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of hazards, the exposure and vulnerability of communities and individuals, and the stress on water and food security. On current trends, the world is potentially on track for a temperature increase of 3 degrees or higher. Current mitigation efforts are insufficient. A continued increase in carbon emissions will result in irreversible changes including the probability of breaching thresholds for “tipping point’ impacts, such as ecosystem collapse.
2. Investment in risk-informed adaptation is lagging
Risk-blind planning can and in some cases already has created new risks and resulted in maladaptation. A radical scale-up in adaptation measures and a comprehensive approach to risk analysis and management covering a full range of hazards is required. Current risk analytics are inadequate to enable effective preventive and anticipatory action to reduce the humanitarian impacts of climate related disasters.
3. Action to manage long-term impacts and residual risks is inadequate
Climate crisis impacts such as sea-level rise or ocean acidification are growing global challenges that have not been adequately addressed in current development planning. This failure to account for risk has hindered planning and consequently under-estimated the cost benefits of rapid climate action. The continuing increase in the number of extreme weather events and the likely impact on population displacement, loss of livelihoods, access to health and other basic services will be overwhelming.
4. Investment and financial systems are not fit for purpose
Financial systems need to better quantify the extent to which their assets will retain their value in this era of climate change. Undervaluing climate risk is a particular concern for longer-term investors and sectors including insurance, pension funds, infrastructure, and agriculture.
5. Climate change and disasters are reinforcing inequalities
Climate change, vulnerability, and inequality interact in a vicious cycle: disadvantaged groups suffer disproportionately from the adverse effects of climate change, which diminishes their ability to reduce their exposure, avert potential effects, cope and recover from climate and disaster impacts, resulting in even greater inequalities.
Policy recommendations
1. Galvanize political leadership and momentum
- Ensuring the world is safe in the climate future is the greatest public good governments can deliver. Stepped up action by the G20 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet the 1.5-degree target must be a global priority. Preventing and reducing disaster risk needs to be central to these efforts.
- Government policies, plans, and programmes must be designed to operate under a range of risk scenarios. Governments need to upgrade climate and disaster risk analytics to better account for systemic risks, knock-on impacts, and the medium to long term effects of various climate scenarios. Cost-benefit analyses must integrate the real projected costs of future disaster impacts. Most investments in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction make good business sense once the costs of externalities are accounted for.
- The disaster risk reduction community has decades of experience in managing extreme events and reducing risk related to potential climate-related disasters. Their experience needs to be harnessed for planning and the scaling-up of adaptation actions.
2. Scale up comprehensive disaster and climate risk management
- Comprehensive disaster and climate risk management is central to development planning, including in energy, industrial, land, ecological and urban systems. Risk-centred approaches should be integrated into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and adaptation and climate information into national and local disaster risk reduction strategies.
- NAPs, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), national and local development plans, spatial and sectoral planning processes need to apply comprehensive risk management principles and consider how trade-offs and co-benefits will influence potential systemic risks such as pandemics and displacement.
- Improved metrics on adaptation and risk management are urgently needed to measure the degree to which the climate emergency is corroding resilience and achievement of the SDGs and Sendai Framework targets. Better prevention and risk management minimizes adverse effects and creates opportunities to transform systems and societies. Disaster risk management, conservation, and adaptation plans should be based on analysis of both historical disaster trends and future climate and disaster risk projections.
3. Empower communities, mobilize society to ensure no one is left behind
- Gendered roles, responsibilities, access to resources and decision-making power mean that women and men contribute differently to the causes of climate change. They are affected differently and respond differently to its impacts. Gender has a powerful influence on shaping people’s experience of climate change and disasters, and gender equality and women’s empowerment are powerful levers for change. Integrating a gender analysis in the development and implementation of climate change and disaster risk management policies, strategies and programmes is essential to prevent the expansion of inequalities driven by climate change.
- A new “eco-social contract on climate change is needed, outlining responsibilities and expectations from governments, cities, the private sector, the academia and other actors.
4. Invest in sustainable, resilient infrastructure systems
- Infrastructure assets should be prioritised, planned, designed, built, and operated to account for climate changes and potential disasters. Services provided by infrastructure systems (energy, water, health, etc.) should also account for climate - and disaster-related disruptions.
- Massive investments are needed to build low-carbon infrastructure and retrofit. Comprehensive risk assessments should inform these investments to ensure resilience and avoid creating or exacerbating future risks.
- Scaling up nature-based solutions, achieving land degradation neutrality, restoring the oceans, halting biodiversity loss, and prioritizing sustainable ecosystem management will be critical for success.
5. Promote innovative investments and financing mechanisms
- The transformations needed to meet the 1.5-degree target will have wide economic and social impacts. Governments and non-State stakeholders should fulfil pledges for an equitable share of climate finance to support mitigation and risk-informed climate action.
- Risk tagging and tracking of budgetary and expenditure flows enables a clearer understanding of how much countries ought to spend, which areas are prioritised, and how risk reduction and adaptation efforts are measured.
- Investing in better understanding and quantifying risk helps price it, informing financing and investment decisions. This should be complemented by improved public and private financial regulation and risk disclosure to better account for climate and disaster risk.
- Stimulus packages should catalyse greener economic growth, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, avoid environmental deregulation, and address key disaster risk drivers.
- Social protection can effectivly implement adaptation and disaster risk reduction programmes. Initiatives should be shock-responsive and universal to reduce vulnerabilities, provide income protection, and serve as a mechanism for ex-ante relief assistance.
- Financing instruments and layered financing mechanisms should be scaled-up to strengthen preventive and anticipatory actions.
- Partnership with the private sector should be leveraged to co-develop innovative financial instruments, including to manage residual through bonds, insurance products and other contingent financing mechanisms. Incentives and regulatory mechanisms should catalyse action and accelerate toward to low-carbon, resilient economies.
6. Ensure behavioural change through education, science, evidence and effective communication
- Scientific knowledge and evidence should be strengthened to better educate populations and inform plans and policies while communication with and within communities should be enhanced to act as an effective bridge between knowledge and behaviour. Communities should have easy access to information on climate risks, associated impacts, and the cost of inaction, to better appreciate the impact of their actions.
- All risk information, including multi-hazard early warning systems, should be impact-based to improve understanding, and triggering appropriate action.
The Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)
Established under the Paris Agreement, aims to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change in support of sustainable development. For disaster risk reduction, the GGA is especially relevant because it focuses on managing climate-related risks before they become disasters—through risk assessments, early warning systems, resilient infrastructure and protection of vulnerable communities. The inclusion of disaster risk reduction–related indicators within the GGA reflects the growing recognition that climate adaptation and DRR are deeply interconnected. By aligning adaptation tracking with existing reporting under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, countries can use shared risk and impact data to monitor progress more efficiently, reduce duplication and ensure that climate action delivers measurable reductions in loss, damage and vulnerability.
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