Italian insurers paid out a record six
billion euros in claims linked to damage caused by 'natural'
disasters last year as the impact of the climate crisis here
continued to become more dramatic, ANIA President Maria Bianca
Farina told the insurance association's assembly on Tuesday.
Farina said this tally included some 800 million euros paid out
in relation to last year's deadly floods in Emilia-Romagna and
Tuscany.
"In 2023, the worldwide insurance industry paid out almost 100
billion euros for claims related to natural disasters," Farina
said.
"In Italy there was the all-time maximum of insured damages:
more than six billion, including 5.5 billion caused by
atmospheric events.
"Climate change is a crucial challenge.
"We are witnessing increasingly extreme, frequent and
destructive natural disasters, which put more and more people
and property at risk".
Scientists say the climate crisis is caused by human greenhouse
gas emissions. Although there are many sources of the greenhouse
gases that are causing global heating, the main driver is the
burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, sales of
which generate huge profits for the world's energy giants.
The WWF said Monday that Italy is in a "permanent state of
climate calamity" after the latest in a long series of waves of
extreme weather caused massive damage in northern Italy at the
weekend.
The Italian branch of the NGO said a group of young people
taking part in a summer camp it organized in Cogne were among
the people who had to be evacuated via helicopter after
mudslides caused by flooding and torrential rain blocked the
regional highway to the Aosta Valley town on the slopes of the
Gran Paradiso mountain and knocked out water supplies.
"It's increasingly clear that we are experiencing a new
'permanent state of climate calamity', where the climate crisis
is the greatest risk to citizen's safety, with record
temperatures and extreme heat alternating with violent rainfall
and devastating floods," the WWF said.
"What happened in Cogne is caused by climate change, which is
causing extreme events that were once very rare to multiply,
making them almost daily, but it also highlights all of our
country's delays in tackling, predicting and mitigating it".
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