Insurers warned on global warming

The earthquake and deadly sea surges that swept across southern Asia were the latest of several ferocious natural disasters in the past year.

It was a year ago, on Boxing Day last year, that the ancient city of Bam in Iran was destroyed by a powerful earthquake that killed more than 43,000 people, injured 20,000 and left 60,000 destitute.

And 2004 has been the year of the hundred-billion-dollar damage bill - when the weather broke all records.

Across the planet, it caused unprecedented economic damage, new figures reveal - adding to fears that the disastrous consequences of climate change are beginning to take effect.

Losses caused by natural disasters, most of them climate-related and headed by hurricanes in America and typhoons in Japan, leapt for the first time to more than US$100 billion ($139 billion), according to preliminary estimates from the Zurich-based reinsurance giant Swiss Re.

The remarkable sum will intensify the global-warming debate, as more extreme weather events, including tropical storms of greater intensity, are among the predicted consequences of climate change.

The astonishing storms of the past year are consistent with this, although scientists say it is not yet possible to link them to global warming directly.

However, leading environmentalists said they should be very much taken as a warning.

"Here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions based on the most up-to-date scientific models," said Tony Juniper, the director of Friends of the Earth.

"Only last year, the members of the United Nations Environment Programme's finance initiative were estimating that insured losses due to natural disasters would soon approach US$150 billion per decade.

"These figures say we are well on the way to reaching that in just one year.

"The insurance industry must now add its voice to those calling for urgent action to limit the danger posed by rapid climate change."

Swiss Re is a specialist in reinsurance: it insures smaller insurers against large-scale disasters.

Its records of disasters since 1970 indicate that the rate of natural catastrophes accelerated in the 1990s, which is also the decade when rising global temperatures have become clearly apparent.

But Swiss Re executive Henner Alms said the company was "cautious" about attributing this directly to man-made climate change.

The company estimates that total economic losses for 2004 from natural and man-made catastrophes totalled US$105 billion - the vast majority of them caused by weather, and the first time that the US$100 billion figure has been exceeded in a year.

About 95 per cent of claims this year were attributable to natural catastrophes, Swiss Re says.

Four fierce hurricanes hit the Florida coast, and the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico were affected by similar natural disasters. A series of typhoons cost Japan billions.

- INDEPENDENT