The global economy could register a reduction of 19% by 2049 due to the damage associated with climate change, according to an updated projection carried out by an international team led by Leonie Wenz, researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Impact Research. Climate (Potsdam, Germany). The results of this work have been published (April 17) in the journal Nature.
The models developed and projected in various future scenarios in this research provide new data on the impact of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions and highlight, as previous studies have done, that the economic (and also ecological and social) damages will be especially serious in developing countries and social groups with fewer resources.
The new study published in Nature does not explicitly detail figures of economic losses by state, but uses publicly accessible data with which the economic impact of climate change can be calculated by country and region. Thus, it is estimated that for Spain, per capita income in 2049 will be 17.8% lower with the climatic conditions predicted in the average greenhouse gas emissions model.
“Projections of the economic damage of climate change are crucial for the adaptation and planning procedures of both public and private entities,” Nature highlights in the presentation of the results of this new study. “However, models are often limited by the discouraging and variable nature of long-term climate outcomes.”
Leonie Wenz and her colleagues model the potential effects of climate scenarios on economic productivity using local temperature and precipitation data from more than 1,600 regions around the world in combination with climate and income data from the previous 40 years and climate projections.
Projections indicate that due to past emissions, the global economy (calculated by Gross Domestic Product) will experience a 19% reduction in income by 2049 compared to a baseline without climate change impacts. These estimated damages would already exceed the costs associated with limiting warming under the Paris Climate Agreement by six times, highlighting the monetary benefits of mitigation in the second half of the century.
These damages are mainly attributed to temperature variation; however, the authors postulate that consideration of additional climate variables increases the estimates by an additional 50%. Furthermore, countries with the lowest incomes and lowest historical emissions are projected to suffer a 61% greater income loss than the highest income countries and 40% greater than those with the highest emissions, suggesting that further warming will exacerbate the effects of climate injustice. .
These figures suggest that the global economy is on track to suffer significant damage from climate change caused by human activities, with lower-income countries being the most vulnerable to loss of per capita income, indicates the information summary in the journal Nature. .