The stratospheric cost of not acting in the face of the ecological crisis: the figures of the European Union

This past week the Generalitat has announced that it will take charge of 75 million euros of the costs caused by the recent torrential rains. The figure is a small sample of the constant drip of public spending caused by the effects of the ecological crisis. But the climate problem does not only affect the public treasury, it also entails an economic drain for families and insurance companies. To know the monetary impact of these phenomena, the European Environment Agency has compiled the annual losses that extreme weather phenomena have meant in the European Union (EU). Although the economic figures only take into account direct expenses – for example, those registered by governments and insurers – and not indirect ones, the data are implacable.

In the last four years for which data is available (2020-2024), the ecological crisis has cost Europeans 208 billion euros. This figure is higher than the annual budget available to the EU. The study, presented this September, provides a retrospective of losses since the 1980s and differentiates the events causing these damages into three types: climatological, hydrological, and meteorological.

In the same way that in recent decades there has been an increase in temperatures and a global loss of biodiversity,the costs of the ecological crisis follow an upward trend. The charts also record the impact caused by some of the deadliest –and most expensive– storms in European history, such as the years 1990, 1999, and 2002. All three years record losses approaching 40 billion euros, but above all, they were years that marked a change in the way extreme phenomena are perceived and communicated. The hundred fatalities caused by the Lothar and Martin storms, in central Europe, forced the authorities to admit that they had underestimated the forecast. Since then, new measures have been taken to transmit extreme forecasts and manage national crisis episodes.

The year 2021 broke the record for the year with the most registered losses, with a cost of 65 billion euros. This was the year in which Catalonia suffered the storm Filomena, while Germany received the impacts of the floods in the Rhineland region, which ended the lives of 180 people. The following years continue to record multi-billion figures hovering around 50 billion euros annually, very far from the average recorded in the eighties and nineties, where an average of 12 billion euros in losses was recorded.

Inaction, the most expensive price

As expected, each territory experiences the consequences of the ecological crisis in different forms and degrees of intensity. But in all cases there are two conditioning factors for the impacts: the inherent nature of the territory, determined by the geographical location, the relief and the climate; and the mitigation and adaptation measures, conditioned by the governance and the population's predisposition to the application of these policies. In fact, different studies point out that this last factor is key, since the highest cost of the ecological crisis is that of not acting. 

According to data from the Global Commission on Adaptation and the United Nations (UN), investment in mitigation and adaptation not only avoids human, material, and economic losses like those recorded, but also acts as an economic and public health driver. Specifically, the World Resources Institute asserts that every euro invested in adaptation will yield benefits of 11.04 euros within ten years.

Barcelona, at the forefront of resilience

Although the nature of a territory predisposes it to receive the impacts of extreme phenomena with more or less virulence, it is political and social initiatives that end up determining its resilience. In this sense, Catalonia is one of the most vulnerable areas to the ecological crisis, due to being a Mediterranean country, affected by coastal erosion and with a high dependence on rainfall. But at the same time, it is taking steps forward to increase its resilience in the face of the climatic and environmental paradigm shift.

This is confirmed by the study conducted by the geospatial company AlphaGeo, which this September published a study that places Barcelona among the cities best prepared for climate disasters. Specifically, the Catalan capital occupies the fourth position out of the 72 cities analyzed, only surpassed by Chicago, Addis Ababa, and Melbourne.

Policies for resilience

Barcelona, as well as different cities in Catalonia, has been applying policies in this direction for some time. One of the main challenges that the Barcelona Metropolitan Area has faced for years is mobility. Firstly, the reduction in the use of private vehicles, given that the Catalan capital is the city in Europe with the highest density of vehicles per square kilometer; and, secondly, the reduction in the use of fossil fuels in transport,responsible for 50% of the pollution in this city. 

Multisectoral policies such as the implementation of low-emission zones (LEZ), the replacement of combustion public transport vehicles with electric ones, and the increase in green axes have been key to achieving, for the first time in 2023, the legal limit set by the EU at 40 micrograms of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) per cubic meter. A similar direction has been followed by other cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in Catalonia, such as Lleida, Tarragona, Girona, Reus, Manresa, or Vilanova i la Geltrú.

These policies reduce vulnerability to extreme phenomena, and are directly linked to the health of citizens. In fact, a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health indicates that the full implementation of green axes in Barcelona can prevent 178 premature deaths annually caused by exposure to pollution and the heat island effect.

However, not all emissions take place on the street; the way housing is managed is also essential for reducing global emissions and lowering individual economic costs. In this sense, the Generalitat and various consortia in Catalonia have long been subsidizing some measures such as thermal insulation for windows and balconies to reduce the use of air conditioning appliances, tax incentives for the installation of solar photovoltaics for self-consumption, and the promotion of door-to-door waste collection in some neighborhoods and municipalities.