Central America News – Honduras and Nicaragua are two the countries that were most affected by climate change between 1990 and 2010, according to a study released in Managua by a local environmental organization.
The NGO Centro Humboldt introduced the Global Climate Risk Index 2013, prepared by the German environmental organization Germanwatch, which studied extreme weather events of the last decade of the twentieth century and the first of this in 179 countries.
Honduras is the country most impacted by climate change with an average of 329 people killed per year, while Nicaragua is third with 160 deaths each year in the last two decades, the study of the German organization released Tuesday in Managua .
Haiti, in fifth place, and the Dominican Republic, in the tenth, are the other Latin American countries most affected by climate change, according to the study.
Humboldt Center, based on the study of Germanwatch, said that “eight of the ten countries most affected are low-income or middle income” countries, including Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
For two decades, a total of 15,000 extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods and storms, killed 530,000 people worldwide, according to the report.
Germanwatch material losses estimated at $ 2.5 trillion and warned that the impacts will remain “potentially dangerous” if no action is taken to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The study includes a list of the ten countries most affected by climate change in 2011, appearing in El Salvador, Brazil and Guatemala, as well as Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan, Philippines, United States, Laos and Sri Lanka.
Germanwatch explained that both lists show that there are two ways in which climate change affects countries.
The first is continuous, as in the case of Honduras, who each year suffer negative impacts. The second is for exceptional cases, such as Burma, that in one year (2008) had 87% of its historical affectations.
EFE
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
