By Joseph Castrilli
The world is meeting this week in the desert at the United Nations COP28 to try to head off the march of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasingly destructive extreme weather events resulting from those emissions.
Another blog will review how that is working out for the COP28 conveners, world governments, their leaders, and the rest of us.
This blog narrows its focus to events in Ontario – more specifically a November 28th media release by the provincial government on its activation of the disaster recovery assistance program to support residents in parts of southwestern Ontario.
The government announcement indicates that on August 23, 2023, a series of thunderstorms passed through southwestern Ontario, causing significant damage in the Township of Warwick, the Municipality of Southwest Middlesex, the Town of Essex, the Municipality of Lakeshore, the Town of Kingsville, and the Town of Amherstburg. The storms led to localized flooding, power outages, washed-out roads, and flooded basements.
The announcement goes on to say that the safety of those affected by this “natural disaster” is the government’s top priority. The program is designed to provide assistance for emergency expenses and the costs to repair or replace essential property following a “natural disaster not covered by insurance”. Indeed, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing is quoted as saying that: “Our government is standing with residents who suffered losses due to the ‘extraordinary flooding’ that happened in parts of southwestern Ontario last summer.”
It is good, necessary, and appropriate that the province is moving forward with provision of this assistance.
But can we really call such events “natural” or “extraordinary” any more? The government’s media release itself states that: “According to Environment Canada, up to 180 millimeters of rain fell between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie from August 23 to 25, with a maximum of 214 millimeters measured in Harrow in the Town of Essex. Essex County received the most rainfall, which was a one-in-100-year event.”
These days one-in-100-year storm events seem to happen every year, if not more frequently, due to climate-change inducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is becoming the new normal.
In July 2023, the United States Environmental Protection Agency stated that: “Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change”.
In October 2020, a report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction indicated that there has been a “staggering rise” in the number of extreme weather events over the past 20 years, driven largely by rising global temperatures and other climatic changes. Between 2000 and 2019, there were 7,348 major natural disasters around the world, killing 1.23 million people and resulting in $2.97 trillion in global economic losses. By comparison, the previous 20-year period, 1980-1999, had 4,212 natural disasters, claiming 1.19 million lives and causing $1.63 trillion in economic losses.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report released in 2021, the human-caused rise in greenhouse gases has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
The frequent victims of these frequent events are often the most vulnerable in our society; the poor, the elderly, children, pregnant women, those with chronic diseases, Indigenous populations, and people with disabilities.
While they may well need disaster assistance, what they also need is a proactive government strategy for: (1) preventing increases in greenhouse gas emissions; and (2) adapting to climate change impacts. In Ontario, they appear to be getting neither.
A 2023 audit by the Ontario Auditor General found there has been a considerable increase in the annual number of weather-related disasters in the province from 1911 to 2019, as reported in the Canadian Disaster Database. The annual number of weather-related disasters has grown from at most one per year in the early 1900s to an average of about three per year since 2000. Ontario experienced four weather-related disasters in 2019 (the most recent year of reported data) and seven weather-related disasters in 2016, the greatest annual number over the entire 1911–2019 period.
A November 2022 audit of the Ontario Auditor General also found that the province did not have effective systems and processes to reduce the risk of urban flooding in Ontario, or to support and encourage municipalities and property owners to reduce the risk of urban flooding.
The audit found that the Province has never clarified provincial roles for co-ordinating and managing urban flooding, resulting in gaps in responsibility. For example: (1) the Environment Ministry approves municipal stormwater infrastructure for the purposes of protecting water quality and preventing stream erosion, but does not consider flood control as part of this approval process, as it is outside its mandate; (2) the Infrastructure Ministry is not providing sufficient guidance to support effective implementation of its municipal asset management regulation; (3) the Municipal Affairs Ministry has not taken steps to increase the installation of backwater valves that help prevent basement flooding; and (4) the Natural Resources Ministry has made little progress evaluating and protecting wetlands, which can provide important flood-reduction functions.
Finally, the audit found that the Province is not ensuring that information about the risks of urban flooding, including under future projected climate scenarios, is being shared with municipalities, government agencies, property owners and others to inform decision-making.
In short, in the Anthropocene Epoch, where disasters are no longer natural, disaster assistance, while important, is not a substitute for prevention (also known as disaster avoidance), or adaptation (also know as disaster planning). The continued failure to recognize that relying primarily on disaster reaction as a strategy is not enough and, in the not so long run, threatens both the invulnerable as well as the vulnerable.
Blog: In a Climate-Changing World Are Disasters “Natural” Any More?
By Joseph Castrilli
The world is meeting this week in the desert at the United Nations COP28 to try to head off the march of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasingly destructive extreme weather events resulting from those emissions.
Another blog will review how that is working out for the COP28 conveners, world governments, their leaders, and the rest of us.
This blog narrows its focus to events in Ontario – more specifically a November 28th media release by the provincial government on its activation of the disaster recovery assistance program to support residents in parts of southwestern Ontario.
The government announcement indicates that on August 23, 2023, a series of thunderstorms passed through southwestern Ontario, causing significant damage in the Township of Warwick, the Municipality of Southwest Middlesex, the Town of Essex, the Municipality of Lakeshore, the Town of Kingsville, and the Town of Amherstburg. The storms led to localized flooding, power outages, washed-out roads, and flooded basements.
The announcement goes on to say that the safety of those affected by this “natural disaster” is the government’s top priority. The program is designed to provide assistance for emergency expenses and the costs to repair or replace essential property following a “natural disaster not covered by insurance”. Indeed, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing is quoted as saying that: “Our government is standing with residents who suffered losses due to the ‘extraordinary flooding’ that happened in parts of southwestern Ontario last summer.”
It is good, necessary, and appropriate that the province is moving forward with provision of this assistance.
But can we really call such events “natural” or “extraordinary” any more? The government’s media release itself states that: “According to Environment Canada, up to 180 millimeters of rain fell between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie from August 23 to 25, with a maximum of 214 millimeters measured in Harrow in the Town of Essex. Essex County received the most rainfall, which was a one-in-100-year event.”
These days one-in-100-year storm events seem to happen every year, if not more frequently, due to climate-change inducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is becoming the new normal.
In July 2023, the United States Environmental Protection Agency stated that: “Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change”.
In October 2020, a report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction indicated that there has been a “staggering rise” in the number of extreme weather events over the past 20 years, driven largely by rising global temperatures and other climatic changes. Between 2000 and 2019, there were 7,348 major natural disasters around the world, killing 1.23 million people and resulting in $2.97 trillion in global economic losses. By comparison, the previous 20-year period, 1980-1999, had 4,212 natural disasters, claiming 1.19 million lives and causing $1.63 trillion in economic losses.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report released in 2021, the human-caused rise in greenhouse gases has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
The frequent victims of these frequent events are often the most vulnerable in our society; the poor, the elderly, children, pregnant women, those with chronic diseases, Indigenous populations, and people with disabilities.
While they may well need disaster assistance, what they also need is a proactive government strategy for: (1) preventing increases in greenhouse gas emissions; and (2) adapting to climate change impacts. In Ontario, they appear to be getting neither.
A 2023 audit by the Ontario Auditor General found there has been a considerable increase in the annual number of weather-related disasters in the province from 1911 to 2019, as reported in the Canadian Disaster Database. The annual number of weather-related disasters has grown from at most one per year in the early 1900s to an average of about three per year since 2000. Ontario experienced four weather-related disasters in 2019 (the most recent year of reported data) and seven weather-related disasters in 2016, the greatest annual number over the entire 1911–2019 period.
A November 2022 audit of the Ontario Auditor General also found that the province did not have effective systems and processes to reduce the risk of urban flooding in Ontario, or to support and encourage municipalities and property owners to reduce the risk of urban flooding.
The audit found that the Province has never clarified provincial roles for co-ordinating and managing urban flooding, resulting in gaps in responsibility. For example: (1) the Environment Ministry approves municipal stormwater infrastructure for the purposes of protecting water quality and preventing stream erosion, but does not consider flood control as part of this approval process, as it is outside its mandate; (2) the Infrastructure Ministry is not providing sufficient guidance to support effective implementation of its municipal asset management regulation; (3) the Municipal Affairs Ministry has not taken steps to increase the installation of backwater valves that help prevent basement flooding; and (4) the Natural Resources Ministry has made little progress evaluating and protecting wetlands, which can provide important flood-reduction functions.
Finally, the audit found that the Province is not ensuring that information about the risks of urban flooding, including under future projected climate scenarios, is being shared with municipalities, government agencies, property owners and others to inform decision-making.
In short, in the Anthropocene Epoch, where disasters are no longer natural, disaster assistance, while important, is not a substitute for prevention (also known as disaster avoidance), or adaptation (also know as disaster planning). The continued failure to recognize that relying primarily on disaster reaction as a strategy is not enough and, in the not so long run, threatens both the invulnerable as well as the vulnerable.
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