Morocco loses $174.000 million annually because of climate risks, says a Germanwatch study

Morocco is ranked 124th by the 2019 edition of the Global Climate Index, a report that analyses to what extent countries and regions have been affected by impacts of weather-related loss events, including storms, floods and heat waves.

The survey conducted by the Germanwatch, an NGO that seeks influence public policy on trade, the environment, and relations between countries in the industrialized north and underdeveloped south, studied the climate risks in 180 countries in this year’s edition.

Morocco was granted 116 points by the report while it was ranked 108th for the number of the fatalities that took place in 2017.

Published on the 27th of November, the report also studied the status of every country from 1998 to 2017. During this period Morocco scored 100.50 points in the Global Climate Index. The Kingdom had an average of 15.700 fatalities from 1998 to 2017, ranking 94th. For fatalities per 100 000 inhabitants, the country had an average of 0.050, ranking 129th.

Climate risks in Morocco

According to the same report, Morocco lost an annual average of USD174.019 million because of climate risks, in the period between 1998 and 2017. The country also lost an average of 0.093 per unit GDP during the same period.

The Global Climate Index puts Morocco in the same position as many other countries, including Namibia, Mauritius, Malta, Mali, Maldives, Luxembourg, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait and Qatar.

In North Africa, Algeria is ranked 123rd behind Morocco and ahead of Tunisia 95th, and Mauritania 78th. Egypt and Libya are both ranked 124th.

The report was topped by Puerto Rico 1st, Sri Lanka 2nd, Dominica 3rd, Nepal 4th, Peru 5th, Vietnam 6th, Madagascar 7th, Sierra Leone 8th, Bangladesh 9th and Thailand 10th. These countries are the ones the more affected by climate risks in 2017.

For the record, the scores of every country studied by the report is based on four categories, namely the number of deaths, number of deaths per 100 000 inhabitants, sum of losses in US$ in purchasing power parity (PPP) as well as losses per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

According to the report, «the Climate Summit in Katowice should adopt the 'rulebook' needed for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, including the global adaptation goal and adaptation communication guidelines».

The study believes that «COP24 must increase efforts to properly address loss and damage, which appears as a cross-cutting issue referenced throughout various negotiation streams, with significant risk of being omitted from final negotiation text. The risks of future climate-related losses and damages are far too severe to simply function as a negotiation chip».