Count your climate losses
How recent reports on climate change weigh the economic versus the human cost of the ecological crisis.
Climate-change-related disasters have swept across Southasia in 2021, with forest fires and floods in the Himalaya, heavy rains followed by deadly floods in Sri Lanka, and severe cyclones in parts of India and Bangladesh. This does not include the confluence of the pandemic with extreme weather, with some recent research suggesting that poor air quality can significantly increase the risk of dying from COVID-19.
Despite its relatively low per capita carbon emissions, Southasia continues to feature prominently in various lists of countries most vulnerable to global climate crisis. As the Asian Development Bank’s 2020 report points out, “South Asia is a region… where one can clearly make a case for how countries that have contributed relatively so little to the causes driving climate change stand to lose so much from its adverse effects.”