The following article is a summary of an article published by Paige Bennett of Ecowatch on November 11, 2024.

According to a new report by the International Chamber of Commerce and consultancy firm Oxera, extreme weather events over the past 10 years have cost a total of $2 trillion globally. The countries that have faced the biggest losses include the U.S., China and India.

The report tracked nearly 4,000 extreme weather events from 2014 through 2023. In total, the results found that these events affected more than 1.6 billion people and cost around $2 trillion in economic losses.

Over just the past two years, losses linked to extreme weather cost the world $451 billion. According to the report, that is about 19% more than the losses from the previous 8 years analyzed in the study.

“The data from the past decade shows definitively that climate change is not a future problem: major productivity losses from extreme weather events are being felt in the here and now by the real economy,” John W.H. Denton AO, secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

Extreme weather-related losses can affect a wide range of sectors and may include direct impacts, such as property and infrastructure destruction, agricultural losses, premature deaths and injuries and more. From there, these problems can lead to indirect impacts, such as more strain on healthcare systems, supply chain disruptions and productivity loss. As such, the economic losses over the past decade can be hard to measure accurately and may be much greater than the $2 trillion accounted for in this report.

Data shows that the lowest income countries in the world have the smallest contributions of emissions and are hardest hit by the impacts of climate change.

The U.S. lost $934.7 billion over the 10-year period, followed by China with $267.9 billion in losses and India with $112.2 billion in losses. 

“Simply put, the time for action is now,” Denton added.