Europe Needs More Action To Address Significant Climate Risk, Report Says

The European Environment Agency (EEA) stated in its first risk assessment that Europe is unprepared for the rapidly increasing climate hazards.

From wildfires destroying houses to extreme weather straining state finances, the report concludes that greater action is required to address half of the 36 key climate hazards identified for Europe.

The research identifies five more dangers that require immediate action.

Climate Challenges

The EEA published a 32-page assessment asserting that the EU is unprepared to respond to the increasingly serious risks posed by climate change.

The research examines the severity of climate challenges and how effectively Europe is equipped to deal with them.

According to the report, the most pressing threats, which are worsening as fossil fuel pollution warms the earth, are heat stress, flash floods and river floods, the health of coastal and marine ecosystems, and the need for disaster recovery money.

When the researchers examined six of the threats for southern Europe, which they referred to as a "hotspot" zone, they discovered that immediate action was also required to protect crops, people, buildings, and wildlife from wildfires.

There is more evidence of adaptation, but "it's certainly not enough," said Robbert Biesbroek, a study author from Wageningen University who also co-led the chapter on Europe in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on adaptation.

The research also warns of "cascading and compounding" hazards, which it believes current financial stress tests are likely to underestimate.

Hot weather, for example, will dry out southern Europe, killing crops and reducing water supplies. It will also harden soils, increasing the likelihood of flash floods, and dry out vegetation, allowing wildfires to spread more quickly.

Governments attempting to respond to several disasters, as well as communities that fail to prepare, will face greater resource constraints.

"The risks are simply outpacing the developments of policies," said Blaž Kurnik, the head of the EEA impacts and adaptation group.

Since the Industrial Revolution, Europe has had the greatest increase in temperature. It has heated about twice as fast as the global average as carbon dioxide has clogged the atmosphere, trapping sunshine.

The EEA assessment warned that numerous climate threats have already reached a critical level. According to the report, unless decisive action is taken now, most climate threats will reach critical or catastrophic levels by the end of the century.

People And Economic Loss

The report also said that climate-related events have killed between 85,000 and 145,000 people in Europe during the last 40 years.

Separately, researchers discovered that extreme heatwaves in 2022 killed over 60,000 people across the continent.

In recent years, Europe has seen a surge in extreme weather events.

In 2021, massive floods ravaged Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, costing 44 billion euros ($48 billion).

The same year, major wildfires destroyed about 150,000 acres (60,700 hectares) of woodland in Italy, the highest number in at least a decade. In 2023, flash floods in Slovenia caused damage worth more than 10% of the country's GDP.

Between 1980 and 2022, economic damages from weather and climate-related extremes in EU countries topped 650 billion euros ($711 billion).