Italian insurers paid out a record six billion euros in claims related to damage from ‘natural’ disasters last year, ANIA President tells conference.
As the climate crisis’s impact in Italy grew more dramatic, insurance claims related to ‘natural’ disasters exploded, ANIA President Maria Bianca Farina told the insurance association’s assembly on Tuesday.
Farina noted that this amount included approximately €800million for last year’s deadly floods in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany.
“In 2023, the worldwide insurance industry paid out almost €100billion for claims related to natural disasters,” Farina stated. “In Italy, we saw an all-time high of insured damages, exceeding €6billion, with €5.5billion caused by atmospheric events.
“Climate change is a crucial challenge. We are witnessing increasingly extreme, frequent, and destructive natural disasters, putting more and more people and property at risk.”
Italy in state of ‘climate calamity’
Scientists attribute the climate crisis to human greenhouse gas emissions. The primary source of these gases, causing global heating, is the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal, sales of which generate huge profits for the world’s energy giants.
On Monday, the WWF declared Italy is in a “permanent state of climate calamity” following the latest wave of extreme weather that caused significant damage in northern Italy over the weekend.
“It’s increasingly clear that we are experiencing a new ‘permanent state of climate calamity’, where the climate crisis is the greatest risk to citizens’ safety, with record temperatures and extreme heat alternating with violent rainfall and devastating floods,” the WWF said.
“What happened in Cogne is a result of climate change, which is causing formerly rare extreme events to become almost daily occurrences. It also highlights our country’s delays in tackling, predicting, and mitigating these issues.”
