CBC News - Floods, droughts, storms will cost Canadian economy $139B in next 30 years, report says
A new report from GHD (titled Aquanomics) begins to quantify and forecast the economic impacts that the world’s economies will face as a result of climate change effects on hydrologic systems. “Much of the Canadian industry is dependent on water. If [the] availability of water is reduced as a result of increasing [extended] periods of droughts, then that is expected to have a significant impact” commented Roy Brouwer (executive director of the Water Institute and a professor of economics at University of Waterloo).
According to the study, the largest economic impacts will be associated with extreme storm events (approx. $64b CAD), followed by flooding (approx. $53b CAD) and drought (approx. $22b CAD).
Canada needs to take these threats seriously, and the first step in adapting to these threats is to improve our understanding of the changes to come. The Canada1Water project will arm Canadian communities, industries and decision makers with reliable hydrologic forecasts to the end of the current century for all watersheds across the country, setting the stage for more effective adaptation/mitigation measures.
Click here to read the article on CBC News.
Click here to review the GHD impact analysis for Canada, based on the Aquanomics report.
“Much of the Canadian industry is dependent on water. It’s not just primary agricultural production like in the Western part of the country. It’s a whole host of economic activities from the chemical industry to the food processing industry, the textile industry that depends on the availability of water,”
”If that availability of water is reduced as a result of increasing [extended] periods of droughts, then that is expected to have significant impacts.” It’s very important to understand that there are both direct and indirect economic impacts,” he added. “It’s often these indirect impacts that we lose track of. We don’t always account from them.”
“What this report does is actually takes into account the loss of economic productivity, the shocks to the system when it comes to supply chain prices, and all of that,” Holland said in an interview.
He pointed to the 2021 B.C. floods, which for a time cut off rail and highway links between the country’s biggest port in Vancouver and the rest of Canada. The disruption stressed supply chains already hampered by COVID-19, raising prices, slowing production in factories that couldn’t get parts, and leaving some shelves empty in grocery stores and other retailers. “It had huge knock-on effects,”