Humanitarian costs of climate change unpredictable

IRIN reports on a valuable new study: New projections of the impact of climate change make headlines every day, but a report by a leading research institution has underlined the need for "meaningful data" to help aid agencies prepare for the future. The report by a group of researchers at the Feinstein International Centre of the US-based Tufts University uses various models to project the likely rise in humanitarian spending over the next 20 years as the frequency and intensity of natural disasters increases.

But Peter Walker, director of the centre and one of the researchers, said the point of the report was not to say, "This is what the future will be ... rather it is to say, 'Stop making wild and sensationalist predictions and admit the real problem is that we have been negligent in the data we collect, and so have placed ourselves in a situation where we are hard-pressed to say anything meaningful about what the future will look like.'"

…Natural disasters affect an average of more than 250 million people per year; since 1992, nearly US$2.7 trillion has been spent on international responses to cyclones, floods and droughts in at least four regions of the world - South-East Asia, India and the neighbouring states, East Africa and Central America - the Feinstein report notes. The future is "inherently unpredictable", and aid agencies have "to let go of their old comfortable linear models of change" and become "adaptive, flexible, and open to acting upon feedback", said Walker….