Countries Where Climate Change Is Most Evident

Puerto Rico is particularly subject to flooding and regularly suffers from persistent Caribbean and Atlantic storms, and these are becoming more frequent and disastrous. According to Germanwatch, Puerto Rico was the country most affected by climate change in the two decades between 1999 and 2018. By far, most of the damage wrought in that period – 98% – was caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Thousands of lives were lost and the Island incurred at least $90 billion in damages.

In the 20 years between 1999 and 2018, Myanmar was pummeled with 57 extreme weather events – cyclones, storm surges, extreme temperatures – costing $3 billion in direct damages and the loss of 141,129 lives. This does not include the high costs of the droughts resulting from extreme heat, the displacement caused by flooding, or other longer term, indirect impacts of extreme weather.

In the past decades, Haiti’s temperature has risen and the rains have become less predictable and more damaging, even as storms have become more frequent and intense. Floods, droughts, and salt intrusion from storm surges are already affecting Haiti’s economy. Haiti is Latin America’s most vulnerable nation from a climate perspective, with its fragility made more so by historic deforestation and poverty.

The Philippines is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change due in large part to its long coastline, large floodplains, and Pacific location. In recent years, it has experienced erratic weather patterns and more damaging storms, causing deadly droughts, floods, and landslides. In December of 2021, a Category 5 typhoon, Rai, killed 400 people and destroyed or damaged 925,000 homes. Cleanup efforts are expected to take up to six months.

Mozambique is particularly vulnerable to cyclones and flooding, dangers that are increasing with climate change. Following two deadly cyclones in 2019, Idai and Kenneth, and with much of its damaged infrastructure still in need of repair, Mozambique was slammed again in early January of 2021 by yet another cyclone. Eloise destroyed 56,000 homes and undid much of the recovery work from the earlier storms.

The greatest weather event threat to the Bahamas is and has been hurricanes, but climate change has upped the ante. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian was the most dangerous hurricane to hit the region, wallopping the Bahamas with 185 mph winds and dumping 36 inches of rain in a matter of hours. Seventy-four people were killed, and damages amounted to $3.4 billion. Almost half the houses on two of the islands were damaged or destroyed.

Climate change will cause the largest mass migration in human history, and it has already begun in Bangladesh. Almost one-quarter of the country is less than 6 feet above sea level, and most people live in the coastal plains where farmers benefit from the rich delta soils. Every year, a large portion of the country is inundated by flooding, 60% after a major storm. Entire villages have been forced to move inland due to sea level rise and flooding.

Pakistan is suffering from several impacts of climate change. Melting glaciers are causing floods and depriving the country of fresh water reserves; sea level rise is threatening the coastlines; and temperatures are becoming “too hot for human tolerance,” according to nonprofit Climate Refugees. In the summer of 2021, the temperature reached 126 degrees Fahrenheit in Jacobabad.

Thailand has been experiencing the effects of climate change for decades, with rising temperatures, changing weather patterns, and diminishing precipitation, leading to alternating floods and droughts. The greatest damage lies in the future, with sea level rising faster than the global average. There is talk of moving the capital from its current location because Bangkok, which is also sinking from its own weight, is only 5 feet above current sea level.

In July of 2021, while its delegates were preparing their presentations for the climate summit in Glasgow, intense monsoon rains killed 50 people and washed away valuable infrastructure across Nepal. The event, and the greater picture of melting glaciers, erratic precipitation patterns, floods, and droughts that are ruining farms and displacing people, was a reminder for summit participants of the devastation that climate change is wreaking in the world’s poorest countries.

Vietnam was listed in the Germanwatch 2020 climate report as one of the 10 countries most affected by climate change in the decades between 1999 and 2018. The Climate Risk Index report for 2019 described the climate-charged weather events that afflicted the country in a single year, 2017. April storms destroyed infrastructure and thousands of houses; in the summer, two tropical storms killed 15 people; in November, a typhoon and the floods that followed killed another 100 people; and before the year ended, Typhoon Damrey destroyed water supplies and damaged 80,000 homes.

As storms become more frequent, many countries that have had a respite of many years between storms are being devastated by the increasing frequency and greater strength of storm events. In 2015 and 2017, the tiny Caribbean Country of Dominica was confronted with back-to-back storms that crushed its economy and wiped out most of its homes. Hurricane Erica caused $400 million in damages, the equivalent of 90% of the island’s GNP, and Hurricane Marie destroyed 90% of its housing stock.

Like many of the world’s poorest countries, Honduras is subject to some of the worst consequences of global warming. Heavily dependent on farming, the country saw 90% of its crops destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Over 10,000 people died in the catastrophe, and the country’s progress suffered a severe setback, facing over $3 billion in damages.

According to Germanwatch, Nicaragua was one of the three countries most affected by climate change in the 20 year period between 1992 and 2011, along with Honduras and Myanmar. Since then, the country has continued to be battered by hurricanes and punished with extreme heat, flooding, and droughts. Except for one other year in its history, temperatures in the last two decades have been the highest ever experienced, putting Nicaragua on track for heat that will make the country unlivable by 2070.

With increasingly regular assaults from storms, flooding, and drought, the Dominican Republic averages 52 deaths a year from climate-related weather events. Flooding has been the most serious threat. Though the Caribbean islands are famously pummeled by hurricanes, the tourist industry is able to tout that the Dominican Republic is usually spared from major hurricane damage.

In 2019, Zimbabwe was one of three African countries hit hardest by Idai, a cyclone that brought 120 mph winds and torrential rain, causing extreme flooding and landslides. At least 340 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced. Hundreds of miles of road infrastructure were destroyed, impeding humanitarian response efforts.

Climate change is bringing extreme temperatures and more frequent and dangerous storms to Japan. In 2018, the country suffered from deadly heat waves and torrential rains, killing hundreds and hospitalizing thousands. 2019 was worse. In May and August, Japan experienced two more killing heatwaves and two disastrous storms. In September, Typhoon Faxai made landfall near Tokyo, with winds of up to 130 mph, knocking out power to 900,000 households. In October, typhoon Hagibis arrived with the force of a Category 5 hurricane, killing 100 people and damaging 13,000 homes. The economic damage from the two storms totalled $25 billion.

Climate change is credited with rising temperatures and interfering with precipitation patterns throughout Europe. In 2018, Germany experienced its hottest temperatures on record and only 60% of its usual summer rainfall after heavy rainfalls in January. An April to July heatwave killed 1,234 people, and farmers were left desperate as a result of drought, requiring $1.8 billion in aid.

The island nation of Sri Lanka is extremely vulnerable to climate change, particularly its critical agriculture sector. While only 30%-40% of farmers in Sri Lanka are aware of climate change, most farmers know that something is wrong. In recent decades, they have experienced increasingly worrying crop loss due to drought, flash flooding, and landslides brought on by shifting weather patterns and sea level rise.

Though its contribution to the climate change crisis is negligible, Fiji faces some of its most devastating consequences. The sea is rising faster than the global average, at a rate of 0.2 inches annually, eroding the shoreline, bringing saltwater inland, and ruining precious farmland. Increasing storms are also an immense problem. After three damaging cyclones struck the country in 2018, Fiji made the Germanwatch list of the 10 countries most affected by climate change for that year.