Over the past thirty years, Italy has confirmed the European country most affected by extreme weather events, with economic losses of approximately 60 billion dollars and over 38,000 victims. It is the sad record that emerges from the climate Risk Index 2025, developed by the German NGO Germanwatch. The report places Italy in fifth place in the world ranking of the most affected countries between 1993 and 2022 and even in third place for only 2022, the first European nation to pay the price of climate change which, in almost thirty years there He cost more than 58 billion euros in economic damages.
Waves of heat and natural disasters: a devastating budget
One of the main causes of the high number of victims is represented by the so -called extreme heat waves, which in the last twenty years have caused thousands of deaths and huge economic damage. Particularly critical were the years between 2003 and 2022, when the exceptional heat has put public health, agriculture and infrastructures throughout the country to the test. Torrid temperatures aggravated the drought, favored forest fires and reduced agricultural productivity, triggering a chain of heavy economic and social consequences.
But the other side of climate change is represented by extreme weather phenomena. In particular, Germanwatch underlines, Italy has undergone numerous devastating floods, especially along the Po river. The flood of the Tanaro river, for example, in 1994 caused 69 deaths and over 200 displaced people. That of 2000, which hit the Po, instead caused 23 victims. A picture that testifies to the extreme hydrogeological fragility of our country, periodically brought to its knees by events of this reach, with dramatic consequences in terms of human lives and economic damage.
An ever higher economic and human cost
According to the report, the global economic losses due to extreme meteorological events have reached 4,200 billion dollars in the last thirty years, while the victims, in less than three decades, have been 800,000, in the face of about 765,000 extreme events. Country, China, Burma, Honduras and India were paid to pay the highest price such as Dominican Republic.
In Italy the heat today kills but there are those who are already winning the challenge of the climate
Italy, with its 60 billion losses, is among the most affected countries globally, followed in Europe by Spain and Greece. The growing frequency and intensity of these phenomena suggests that the human and economic cost will continue to increase if effective mitigation and adaptation measures will not be taken.
Germanwatch experts highlight how insufficient ambition in mitigation and climatic adaptation policies is aggravating the impact of extreme events, even in high -income countries. “The less we invest today in mitigation and adaptation, the higher the human and economic costs will be in the future”, warns David Eckstein, senior councilor for climatic finance and Germanwatch’s investments. A challenge that, never as today, seems to be in crisis.