This is especially alarming given how many countries, including the United States, have been adversely affected economically by climate change-related disasters this year, including floods, extreme heat, drought and insect outbreaks.
In the United States, only in 2024, according to NOAA, there were more than 24 billion climate change-related events that caused losses exceeding $1 billion. And in the United States, flood damage averages $46 billion a year. In West Africa, floods disrupted the lives of millions of people and resulted in massive losses. In the Horn of Africa, millions are facing food insecurity and severe hunger due to repeated droughts.
Floods, which reach the top three disasters, according to NOAA, have hit hard in 2024. It is not just the destruction of human lives but of livestock, poultry, and agricultural crops. However, until now, flood stories have only focused on the impact of floods on people and not on plants. However, recent floods in Spain, for example, have had a negative impact on agriculture.
What’s worse is that many of these climate change-related events tend to occur simultaneously, producing catastrophic and cumulative effects on health and the economy.
Discussions around COP29 will focus on climate finance and the need to increase funds committed to tackling climate change. While finance can help mitigate the impacts of these climate disasters on livelihoods and economies, such finance needs to be combined with investments dedicated to climate research alone.
Investing in emerging climate disasters like floods today will be critical and strengthen climate resilience. Otherwise, in the future, food shortages will become more common and food prices will fluctuate more, which may exacerbate conflicts over scarce resources.
Funded flood research will not only provide basic answers about the impact of floods, but also solutions. These hybrid solutions range from identifying and breeding flood-tolerant plants, as well as finding sustainable products that can be used to help plants and soils recover and improve their ability to protect themselves from pests, pathogens and plant pathogens following floods.
Similarly, flood research can also identify combinations of crops that can be planted together to reduce the impacts of floods while discovering regenerative farming methods that help reduce the impact of floods on crops.
Investment in flood research is needed. This can come through government science funding agencies.
For example, in the United States, the National Science Foundation, NOAA, and the United States Department of Agriculture are major funders of research. To ensure that these pressing conditions associated with climate change, especially floods and their impact on agricultural crops are addressed through research, special proposals can be advertised and funds set aside to specifically support flood-related research.
There are indications that we are moving in the right direction. Most recently, the BIDEN-Harris administration, through NOAA, funded more than $22.78 M to advance research on water-related climate impacts.
However, although encouraging most of the funded projects are on modeling and improving flood forecasting.
For example, $7.6 M was awarded to fund work to develop street-level maps of potential flooding, develop models of how water circulates in the nation’s rivers, all of which will help communities and businesses better understand the effects of heavy rain.
There are no projects focused on understanding and predicting the impacts of floods on agricultural crops or finding solutions to overcome the negative impacts of floods on plants, soils and beneficial animals that support plant health and production. These are areas that need to be funded, too.
Funding for flood research and research on building climate resilience can help ensure that lives are saved, and related damage to infrastructure is stopped. Importantly, flood research funding will help reduce the negative impact of floods on agricultural crops and post-flood financial burdens including government payments and insurance to those affected.
The 2024 Climate Resilience Report revealed that for every $1 invested in climate change-related disaster preparedness, communities save $13 in damages and economic impacts.
Similarly, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, every $1 invested in prevention and preparedness can save up to US$15 in damage and economic costs.
Research has continued to provide sustainable solutions to the disasters associated with climate change. Investing in flood research today will prepare us for the future and a future where floods are expected to increase.
Esther Ngumbi, PhD is an Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, Department of African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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