Sérgio Abranches

Economic damage costs related to extreme climate events to date in the US exceed $35 Billion, says the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration – NOAA. These costs are likely to affect both the domestic and the global economies already facing a serious crisis.

Nine billion dollar disasters have occurred so far in 2011 in the U.S. Among them are the upper Midwest and the Mississippi flooding; drought, heat waves, and fires in the Southern Plains and Southwest; tornadoes in several regions; and a large winter storm impacting many central, eastern and northeastern states.

Climate extremes have led to harvest losses affecting particularly corn, soybean, and cotton crops. Food prices moved upward as supply plummeted.

The hurricane season has been very active, with nine named storms so far. Tropical storm Irene is the first to gain hurricane strenght of the 2011 Atlantic season. It has passed over Puerto Rico on Sunday. There were no reports of deaths or major injuries in Puerto Rico, but 800,000 people — half of the island’s electricity customers — were left without power by the storm, which felled trees, swelled rivers over their banks and flooded some roads, says Reuters.

Irene, with 80 mph sustained winds, is now on a path towards the Bahamas and Florida coastline. A ridge of high pressure to the north of the storm, around Bermuda, should stay in place over the next few days, forcing the storm along a west-northwest path. Irene is expected to strengthen over the next 48 hours, potentially into a Category 2 hurricane, according to NOAA

Irene is set to be the first hurricane to hit the United States since Ike savaged the Texas coast in 2008. Hurricane-force winds extended outward from the core to 50 miles and tropical storm-force winds extended out up to 205 miles.

Authorities along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, from Miami to New York, were closely watching Irene’s possible path, with at least some computer forecast models showing it might even sweep up near New York City early next week.

President Barack Obama was briefed about Irene while on vacation at the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, White House officials said (Reuters).

Reports from Reuters say that the storm could be the catalyst the insurance industry has been seeking in its quest for across-the-board premium increases, in what already promises to be the costliest year in history for natural disasters around the globe.

There are likely to be other economic consequences of these climate-related disasters. Some of them are already in place. Reduced crops, food inflation, higher ethanol prices, disruption of economic activity, and destruction of property and infrastructure all have a recessionary component, affecting employment, income, and both private and public expending. They hit an already slow-moving economy in the midst of a new turn of the financial crisis as shockwaves after an earthquake.

Like the extreme natural events that hit Japan earlier, disasters in the U.S. will very probably add to domestic and global economic woes. An aggravation of the U.S. economic trouble will certainly add to the troubles of the fragile global economy. The U.S. recent stop-and-go, and the financial breakdown in  the Eurozone are central elements of the present global crisis.

To make things worse, the Chinese government is highly concerned with food price inflation, mainly due to adverse climate events around the globe, and is set to reduce the pace of the domestic economy. A downturn of the Chinese economy at this moment would wipe out any hope that the global economy could recover from its present woes any soon.

Although the current crisis is a new turn of the financial crisis triggered by the subprime collapse, it has noticeable climate-related undercurrents. The crisis has not been fed only by bubbles, risk of default, and investors’ recurrent panic surges, but also by the economic consequences of extreme climate. After all, 2011 is the seventh year on a row with some major extreme climate events causing significant death tolls and economic damage.

Sergio Abranches

Extreme natural events may be a source of huge human and economic losses, although they are not, in themselves ‘disasters’. A disaster happens when an extreme natural event reaches a populated area.

Often the extent of human losses depends on the vulnerability of the population affected as well as on the degree of preparedness, and the quality of resources for disaster prevention. A poor country will suffer more. The poor wherever they are also will suffer more. Economic losses are greater where there is more property to be damaged, especially valuable economic assets such as industrial plants, commercial buildings, crops or large residential areas.

Munich Re’s NatCatService collects data on fatalities and economic losses caused by ‘natural disasters’ – a misnomer. It shows that, from 2004 to 2009, 543 thousand people have died from natural geophysical, and climatic/hydrological events. Economic losses amounted to US$ 753 billion, and insured losses to US$ 256 billion. Geophysical events are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Climatic and hydrological events are storms, floods, landslides, extreme temperatures, droughts, and wildfires.

Losses were caused by a total of 4,725 extreme events. Geophysical events represented, on average, 11% of the total over the last six years. But, they were, on average, the cause of  47% of human losses. There were three major deviations from this average. In 2004, that category of extreme events provoked 95% of total fatalities, because of the earthquake and tsunami in South Asia and East Africa, killing 220 thousand people. In 2004, it represented 90% of fatalities. An earthquake in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan killed 88 thousand people. In 2007, however, geophysical events accounted for only 5% of the fatalities. The deadliest events were cyclone Sidr, killing over 3,775 people in Bangladesh, and floods in China, killing almost 6,800 people.

Climatic and environmental events accounted for 89% of total extreme events registered. Storms were 41% of the total; floods and landslides averaged 31%; waves of extreme temperatures and wildfires, 17%. They were also the main source of economic losses, accounting, on average, in the period, for 81% of such losses. Storms were, by far, the costliest events, explaining around 58% of economic losses. (Click for larger image)

Both human and economic losses vary greatly year by year, depending on the incidence of extreme events in more populated areas. As the chart shows, the greatest fatalities have occurred in 2004, due to the earthquake, particularly the tsunami in South Asia and East Africa. The second deadliest year was 2008 because of the fatalities caused by the earthquake in China, killing more than 70 thousand people, and cyclone Nargis, in Myanmar, killing almost 85 thousand people. (Click for larger image)

Sérgio Abranches

If history will repeat itself again in Haiti, the country runs the risk of plunging into deep social regression. It is on the verge of a dreadful state of nature. A state where people are led by instinct, fed by pain, anger, despair, and distrust.

History is not fate, or destiny. It is the result of social forces interacting with natural factors. Ramsey Clark alerts that “the history of Haiti will break your heart.” Brazilians use to sing Caetano Veloso’s 1980‘s song Haiti, where he asks: “think about Haiti, pray for Haiti.”

Haiti’s history has been an intercourse between human predators and brutal natural forces. Exploitation, isolation, occupation, the imposition of heavy reparations, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis have devastated the country’s right to a civilized future since the beginning of colonial rule.

Its native population was decimated in less than three decades after Columbus set foot on Hispaniola Island. The natives were replaced by African slaves. Haiti paid a double and unbearable price for its Independence War. As Clark wrote:

Haiti lay in ruins, nearly half its population lost. The African slaves of Haiti had defeated the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. The 12-year war for liberation had destroyed most of the irrigation systems and machinery that, with slave labor, had created France’s richest colony and were the foundation of the island’s economy.

After Independence, in 1804, came isolation. The economies of the Americas were built on slavery. European nations were colonial powers. No nation wanted to legitimate an order born of slave revolt for freedom, or colonial rebellion. The United States would only recognize the independent republic after Civil War rid the country of its slave system, in 1862. Slavery was only abolished in Brazil in 1888, 66 years after its independence from Portugal.

The wealthier landowners who had not left Haiti after heavy losses from the destruction of coffee, cocoa, cotton and tobacco plantations, or were not killed during the Independence War, fled the island before the French surrender, or with the French troops.

Fear of the virus of black insurrection turned the “Pearl of the Caribbean” into the pariah of the Americas. Isolation was a greater price to pay for rebellion than lives lost and a devastated economy. It gave the poor island no means for recovery. Its connections with world markets were severed. The US would only allow limited trade before official recognition. Haiti desperately needed economic integration with the rest of the world. Its only source of revenue were tradable commodities (sugar, cotton, coffee, cocoa, tobacco). It lacked capital, and would not attract investors. Access to the French market would only be opened to Haiti after the country agreed to pay a heavy – and mostly illegitimate – indemnity for seized land.

After isolation, came occupation. The US occupied Haiti for 19 years, from 1915 to 1934. It left the country poorer than when the marines took over the Island.

Unemployed Haitians,looking for jobs, had moved to the Dominican Republic during occupation. The Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo presided over a genocidal racist campaign against black Haitians. As many as 40,000 were killed.

After foreign abuse, came brutal domestic oppression. The two Duvaliers, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, and their Tonton Macoutes established a murderous reign of terror, exploitation and corruption. It lasted for 30 years, most of the time with the formal or informal support of Western Nations, the US in particular.

As late as 2003 the US, the European Union and multilateral banks were withholding $500 million in aid and loans because, they said, Aristide’s government failed to reach a compromise with opposition parties which boycotted the elections. Again the threat of sanctions and isolation was used against the poor Haitians on political grounds.

What about natural forces? Haiti is geographically a disaster prone location. When natural risk is evaluated against the social frailties of the Island, it becomes a tragedy prone country.

Hurricanes were unknown to Europeans venturing in the Caribbean seas for the first time. Christopher Columbus met his first near Hispaniola in 1495 and was startled by its violence. During colonial times tropical storms and hurricanes devastated plantations throughout the Caribbean. The heavier losses were incurred by the more valued and demanding plantations of coffee, cotton, cocoa and tobacco. Sugar cane plantations were also destroyed, but their shorter cultivation cycle allowed landowners to resume production sooner, at lower investment cost. This explains to a considerable extent the trend towards monoculture. It also led many wealthier plantation owners to migrate with the cash results of their production. Hence the progressive reduction on the size of landed properties and the impoverishment of the landed elite. An impoverished elite, eager to extract the most from its land on the shorter span of time possible, meant more exploitation of slave labor, greater violence and absence of any concern for the welfare of slaves and the non-elite. Growing poverty and dispossession resulted from the climatic hardships of the plantation economy.

Extensive plantation and the search for safer locations led to deforestation. Hispaniola had an immense wealth of biodiversity when it was discovered. All this wealth was lost with almost total deforestation. Deforestation increased the island vulnerability do extreme climate.

In short, since colonial times Haitians were victims of a merciless cycle of misery caused by the interplay of human violence, environmental degradation and severe natural phenomena.

Deforestation, lack of adequate emergency service and poor infrastructure also help to explain the recent history of extreme natural events making human tragedy to be reenacted time and again in Haiti.

In 1935, a storm killed more than 2000 people. In 1946, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake was registered in Hispaniola. Although centered in the Dominican Republic it also affected Haiti extensively. In 1954, hurricane Hazel killed people, destroyed 40 per cent of the coffee trees and 50 per cent of the cacao crop. In 1963 hurricane Flora killed 8000 people. In 1994, hurricane Gordon wiped out 80% of the crops of the country. In 2004 tropical storm Jeanne provoked extensive flooding and landslides, killing 2,500 people and displacing thousands more. In 2008 Haiti was hit by four different hurricanes – Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike – in the space of 30 days: 800 people died, 60 per cent of the country’s agriculture were devastated, and entire cities became desolate and uninhabitable.

“Today, we are all Haitians”, New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof (@nickkristof ) twitted from New York City, CNN anchor Kristie Lu Stout (@klustout) retwitted from Hong Kong, and O Globo columnist Míriam Leitão (@MiriamLeitaoCom), re-retwitted from Rio de Janeiro. It remains to be seen for how long we’ll keep Haiti on our hearts and minds.

I fear we will forget the Haitian tragedy in a few months. The country will fail to get aid on the amount required to rebuilt its cities appropriately. People will not get safer and better homes. Infrastructure will not be recovered and improved. Emergency service will not be provided. Risk areas will continue to be occupied and unattended.

The best case scenario, alas an unlikely one, would be an unprecedented success story of world solidarity to Haitians. Haiti wouldn’t be forgotten. The world would give back to its people through unconditional and unprejudiced aid part of the wealth it transferred to richer nations. The Haitian children, half of its population, would get good, unprejudiced education. Quality education would enable young Haitians to take the best of its cultural tradition, acquire the knowledge to become good active citizens and get qualified to lead the country to a civilized life sometime in the 21^st century.

Let me finish with Ramsey Clark’s whole phrase on Haiti’s history.

The history of Haiti will break your heart. Knowing it, the weak will despair, but the caring will strive to break the chains of tragedy.