APA-Maputo (Mozambique) Southern Africa bore a disproportionate share of the devastation caused by a record number of climate disasters recorded in 2023, leading international charity Save the Children said on Thursday.
In an analysis of international disaster database EM-DAT, the charity said three Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries – Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique – accounted for 1,400 of the 12,000 deaths, or 12 percent of total, caused by climate disasters in 2023.
“Cyclone Freddy brought destruction to Madagascar, Malawi, and Mozambique in February, before striking Mozambique for a second time in March,” the charity said.
It added: “The cyclone, one of the longest-lived tropical cyclones on record, killed upwards of 1,400 people across the region, displaced thousands and destroyed over 1,600 schools in Mozambique and Malawi, disrupting the learning of hundreds of thousands of children.”
Save the Children global head of climate change Kelley Toole said 30 percent more people lost their lives globally in 2023 due to floods, wildfires, cyclones, storms and landslides compared to 2022.
She said out of the 240 climate-related events recorded globally this year, there was a 60 percent rise in the number of deaths from landslides, a 278 percent increase in deaths from wildfires and a 340-percent spike in fatalities from storms between 2022 and 2023.
“The thousands of deaths from extreme weather events this year are a particularly stark example of the huge impact that climate change has on children, families, and communities,” Toole said.
She noted that the climate disasters leave children homeless, out of school, hungry and fearful that floods, storms, and wildfires would take the lives of their loved ones.
According to Toole, Save the Children’s analysis of EM-DAT data also underlined how the world’s low-income countries have borne the brunt of the climate crisis in 2023, with over half of the people killed in 2023 being from low income or lower-middle income countries, and almost half (45 percent) of those killed (or 5,326) from countries responsible for less than 0.1 percent of the world’s emissions.
The statement from Save the Children serves as a sobering reminder of the human cost of climate change.
The EM-DAT database, which is run by the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, contains data on the occurrence and impacts of over 26,000 mass disasters worldwide from 1900 to the present day.
The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, reinsurance companies, research institutes and the media.
JN/APA