Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
approximately AUD$2.4 billion (Insurance Council of Australia, cited in AON/
WSP, 2013: 2). Similar damages were expected for the 2013 floods. Ironically,
further losses were incurred as widespread rainfall in Queensland also flooded
coal mines and reduced coal production and export by some 40 million tonnes,
valued at $6 billion (QRC, 2011). Cyclone Yasi, one of the most powerful
cyclones to have made landfall in historical times, was estimated to have cost
some AUD$517 million in insurance damages (Insurance Council of Australia,
cited in AON/WSP, 2013: 2). In all, the losses for insurers from recent storms,
floods and fires - over AUD$4 billion from six catastrophes in Queensland alone
since 2010 - has raised insurance costs and premiums and most likely reduced
private insurance coverage.
Governments also contribute to disaster relief work and funding. In January
2011, Treasury estimated that the Commonwealth's contribution towards
rebuilding bridges, roads, railway lines and other infrastructure destroyed in
Queensland and Victoria during that year would costs in excess of AUD$5
billion. In 2011, the Gillard government established a once-off AUD$1.8 billion
flood and cyclone levy, applied to those with incomes over AUD$50,000, to
offset these costs.
Sharing the burdens of mitigation and adaptation fairly has been a central
concern in international negotiations, based on recognition that the impacts
of global warming fall first and hardest on the most vulnerable nations whose
populations have contributed least to the problem (in terms of emissions),
and also received the least benefit (via associated industrialization and wealth
generation). Equitable burden sharing of the costs of mitigation and adaptation
has generally been less prominent in discussions about domestic climate policy.
Yet inequality will be exacerbated geographically - between households, commu-
nities and States - by climate impacts. For instance, it has been estimated that,
around Australia, up to 250,000 coastal properties could be potentially exposed
to inundation with a sea-level rise above one metre, with a replacement cost
of up to AUD$63 billion (DCC, 2009: 7). Rural communities in increasingly
drought-prone regions will also be hard-hit. In the absence of appropriate assis-
tance measures (such as those in place since 2012 to compensate low-income
households for energy price increases resulting from carbon pricing), the poorest
and most vulnerable households will suffer most in their struggle to pay for the
transitional costs of rebuilding their homes or Australia's energy sector, and for
more expensive food, transport, heating, adaptation, or repair of climate-related
damage. The Australian Council of Social Services has pointed to an increasing
and disproportionate risk to Australia's most vulnerable people because of the
failure of community and government organizations to plan for extreme weather
events (ACOSS, 2012).
These issues are magnified in a Four Degree World, in which damages and costs
will rise abruptly and in a non-linear manner. As extreme events intensify and
become more frequent, the pressures for and costs of adaptation of critical infra-
structure, housing and essential services, and for emergency relief, will multiply
and grow quickly. The World Bank rightly notes that 'projections of damage costs
