Brussels warns that not acting now against climate change could cost the EU at least 7% of its GDP

Investing to be prepared to combat climate change is expensive, yes, because changing our way of life is never cheap.

But it will be more expensive not to act now: as the European Commission warned this Tuesday when presenting a non-binding action plan to better address climate risks, the damage caused by floods, droughts, fires, heat waves or diseases related to Global warming will cause, according to the most conservative estimates, a 7% drop in the EU's GDP until the end of the century.

“Climate resilience is a matter of survival, and not figuratively.

It is a question, at the very least, of economic survival,” stressed the vice-president of the Commission Maros Sefcovic, responsible for the European Green Deal, at a press conference in Strasbourg.

“Every euro we spend on repairing damage is a euro not dedicated to more productive investments,” he recalled.

On Monday, a report from the European Environmental Agency warned that European countries are lagging far behind in their preparations to face accelerating climate change, and that they have also multiplied in recent years the number of premature deaths (among 60,000 and 70,000 in 2022 have been linked to record heat waves across Europe).

A day later, the European Executive responded by presenting a roadmap of action for Member States that seeks to enable them to “better anticipate, understand and respond to the growing climate crises.”

Of course, the instrument used by the Commission is a communication, that is, a non-binding proposal for measures, which leaves the political will to act or not in the hands of the States.

Nor does the irony escape – rejected by the Commission – that Brussels decides to warn of the climate threat and urges to combat it on all fronts when it has just reversed several policies that seek to preserve biodiversity related to agriculture to appease the protests. of the field.

And all this, less than three months before a European election in which the extreme right—and the not so extreme right—seek to capitalize on the anger of farmers, making the European Green Deal one of their favorite scapegoats.

“We have to look at farmers as allies in the fight against climate change and that is what we are doing,” Sefcovic defended himself when asked about it.

For the environmental organization WWF, the Commission's proposal “lacks ambition.”

The communication underlines in any case that “climate resilience is a matter of economic survival for rural and coastal areas, farmers, foresters and fishermen.”

Over 24 pages, the document sets out a series of tools available to governments and society in general to better prepare for climate change that is already causing economic havoc: as recalled by the Commissioner for Climate Action, Woepke Hoekstra, Floods in 2021 in Germany and Belgium caused losses of around €44 billion, while damage from heavy rains in August last year in Slovenia caused the country to lose 16% of its GDP.

“Concerted action is required at all levels and the development of a clear path towards improved preparedness and resilience,” insists the document, which proposes, among others, strengthening governance and coordination – at European, national, regional level. and local—and better analyze the interconnections between different climate risks, investments and long-term strategies.

“We need predictability to make investment decisions,” Sefcovic stressed in this regard.

The communication also proposes adapting infrastructure planning so that it “reflects” climate risks and improving financing, both public and private.

This is where a concrete commitment from the Commission comes in, which ensures that it will seek to “strengthen European solidarity mechanisms to further encourage risk anticipation.”

Likewise, the European Executive promises that it will ensure that “climate resilience is an integral part of all EU spending” and calls on Member States to “consider” this factor when including the environmental sustainability in the criteria for public project competitions.

Although everything will foreseeably be in the hands of the new team of commissioners that emerges from the June elections, the European Executive led by Ursula von der Leyen, who aspires to repeat her mandate, anticipates that she will create, with no date yet set, a “temporary reflection group ” to analyze how to mobilize climate resilience financing, for which it will bring together “key industrial actors” and representatives of financial and public institutions.

You can follow

Climate and Environment

on

Facebook

and

X

, or sign up here to receive

our weekly newsletter

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_