Cyclone Pam, the extreme storm which devastated Vanuatu this weekend, has put the spotlight firmly on climate risk and global disaster management, leading to calls by high-ranking UN officials and political leaders to draw the necessary conclusions and step up climate action and efforts to build greater resilience to disasters.
Pam hit all Vanuatu's islands, killing an as yet unknown number of people, wrecking homes and infrastructure and destroying livlihoods. Vanuatu President Baldwin Losndale, who was attending this year's UN disaster risk conference, said the storm meant his small country would have to start all over again, reflecting the harsh reality that extreme climate impacts can destroy years of hard-won development gains at a stroke.
Speaking at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the storm highlighted the need to assist the poor and vulnerable:
Climate change is intensifying the risks for hundreds of millions of people, particularly in small island developing States and coastal areas. Tropical storms in one region cause economic turbulence in another. Disaster risk reduction is a frontline defence against the impact of climate change. It is a smart investment for business and a wise investment in saving lives.
Cyclone Pam, March 13, 2015. Satellite image via NASA
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who will also be the meeting President at this year's UN climate change conference in Paris, told the Sendai conference that 70% of natural disasters are now linked to climate change, twice as many as twenty years ago.
A Connected Response: Climate, Sustainability and Disaster Risk
This year, governments are scheduled to deliver a new, universal climate change agreement in Paris, in December, that must set the world on track towards a future where such disaster do not become even worse. 2015 is also the year that goverments under the UN will decide a set of new Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, the Sendai conference is alooking at managing and reducing disaster risks. Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said:
Firstly, our hearts and our compassion go out to the people and the government of Vanuatu at this deeply distressing time. Second, there cannot be a louder call for urgent action on climate change than this category 5 storm. Global efforts this year are all borne by a common need and an intertwined imperative: to put the world on a sustainable path and dramatically reduce the risks of the kind of devastation we have just witnessed in the Pacific.
Ms. Figueres has noted that while the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris will not solve climate change at a pen stroke, it does need to underwrite the pathways, policies and support to ensure that all countries can contribute now and in future, based on national circumstances, to prevent global warming rising above 2C degrees while assisting societies to adapt to the climate change already underway.
"Climate science shows clearly that the world needs to achieve a three-part goal to successfully address climate change: peaking global emissions in the next decade, triggering a deep de-carbonization of the global economy and achieving climate neutrality in the second half of the century," Ms. Figueres added.
Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice president and special envoy for climate change, pointed out that the average annual number of disasters had almost doubled since the 1980s. Costs have climbed from US$50 billion a year in the 1980s to just under $200 billion a year in the last decade. Almost 75 percent of the losses can be put down to extreme weather events.
Ms Kyte said in a media interview on the margins of the Sendai meeting that there was still a disconnect between policy and the increasingly frequent weather-related disasters the world is suffering. "I worry that a sense of urgency and a sense of shared ambition is not at the right level. It's hugely ironic that this storm should hit Vanuatu while we are all here. If we truly care for those people, we have to respond," she said.