Increasing costs of disasters in Europe is unsustainable as funds fail to keep up with need as the climate crisis mounts. The EU civil protection mechanism is operating at its maximum with emergency aid reserves being exhausted in both 2021 and 2022, With requests for emergency assistance up by 400% in the last two years the disaster response budget has been insufficient, leading to an urgent call from the EU Commission for further funding to ensure emergency and disaster response needs can be met as the risk of climate-related natural hazards, continues to increase in frequency and impact.
Meanwhile, scientists continue to advocate for mobilising development finance for climate adaptation and resilience to reduce the impact of climate change and natural hazards to prepare and reduce the risk in the long term.
Such actions emphasise that a balance must be struck between urgent short-term disaster and emergency response and recovery funding and long-term adaptation and resilience funding.