More than 15,000 Libyans ended up dead or missing as a result of a single night of flooding, a stark demonstration of what happens when warming temperatures collide with aging infrastructure and chronic political instability.
Antonio Guterres speaks during the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept 19. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg , Bloomberg
More than 5,000 Libyans died in the flood and more than 10,000 remain missing, according to the United Nations. So many people ended up dragged by the torrent of mud — the populations of entire buildings, in some cases — that dead bodies continued washing ashore days later. Warming temperatures are going to hit the world’s less stable societies with extreme force. Flooding has become more intense, with disasters unfolding more suddenly, in part because the atmosphere holds 7% more water vapor for every degree Celsius of warming. Libya, with its decrepit infrastructure, has already warmed by more than a degree since 1900. If greenhouse gas emissions remain unchanged, the country’s average temperatures will rise 2.2C by 2050 and by 4C at the end of the century.
The world’s large number of aging dams, built to withstand a climate that no longer exists, will become an increasingly widespread problem, particularly in developing countries with few resources for upkeep. A detailed analysis of more than 35,000 dams published earlier this year in the journal Nature found the median year of construction globally was 1974. North America is home to the oldest dams, with the median year of completion of 1963, and Europe is next at 1966.
Behind it all is the lack of critical infrastructure and the poor maintenance of old, often crumbling dams, bridges and roads. Adapting that infrastructure to extreme weather events made worse by climate change is a challenge for both developed and developing nations. But it’s far tougher for poor countries that are often struggling with instability and have far greater difficulty accessing money.
Libya is one of the few signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement that has never submitted a climate plan to the UN. These documents, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, outline countries’ vulnerabilities to climate change as well as their plans to reduce the greenhouse gasses that cause it. Completing an NDC is a necessary step toward showing international donors where climate funds will be spent.
“We found that climate change did make the rainfall more intense,” said Friedrike Otto, an author of the report and co-founder of WWA, a group that rapidly analyzes weather data after natural disasters. “But also exposure to vulnerability and compounding disasters played a very key role.”
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