Worldwatch Institute
“The influence of La Niña from January to May and August to December was a major cause of many of the extreme weather events in 2011,” said report author Petra Löw, a geographer and Munich Re consultant who focuses on natural catastrophe losses. “In 2011, 91 percent of natural disasters were weather-related.”
The report found that only 9 percent of natural disasters were geophysical events, but these events, which include the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, accounted for 62 percent of overall fatalities. Japan suffered 15,840 fatalities from the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
“The steady increase in losses from natural catastrophes around the world demonstrates the need for preventative measures to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities protect themselves,” said Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. “These communities often have little beyond their own wits and meager resources to help them recover from a crop failure, the destruction of a home, or the tragic loss of a family’s breadwinner.”
The report analyzes natural catastrophes by their geographic location, type (geophysical, meteorological, hydrological, or climatological), deadliness and costliness. Most natural disasters in 2011 occurred in the Americas (290) and Asia (240), while fewer occurred in Europe (150), Africa (80) and Australia (60). Of the weather-related natural catastrophes, 37 percent were caused by storms (meteorological), 37 percent by floods (hydrological) and 17 percent by climatological events such as heat waves, cold waves, wildfire and droughts.
In 2011, 27,000 people died in sudden-onset natural catastrophes—63 percent below the annual average of 73,000 fatalities between 1980 and 2010. (These figures exclude slow-onset famine victims, discussed below.) In contrast, in 2010, the deadliest year recorded in the 30-year period, 296,000 people died from natural catastrophes. The report found that 38 percent of all victims of such catastrophes died from weather-related events, the rest being caused by geophysical events.
The deadliest weather disasters are droughts followed by famines, particularly in Africa. From October 2010 to September 2011, a severe drought in the Horn of Africa caused widespread famine and large-scale migratory movements, particularly in Somalia and Kenya. Around 80 percent of the livestock of Somalia’s nomadic population died, some 13 million people required humanitarian aid, and an estimated 50,000 people lost their lives. But because human agency played a large role in this catastrophe, it was not included in the analysis of 2011 natural disasters.
The monetary losses from 2011’s natural catastrophes reached a record $380 billion, surpassing the previous record of $220 billion set in 2005. The year’s three costliest natural catastrophes were the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan (costing $210 billion), the August-November floods in Thailand ($40 billion), and the February earthquake in New Zealand ($16 billion).
The report notes that Asia experienced 70 percent, or $265 billion, of the total monetary losses from natural disasters around the world—up from an average share of 38 percent between 1980 and 2010. This can be attributed to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, as well as the devastating floods in Thailand—Thailand’s summer monsoons, probably influenced by a very intensive La Niña situation, created the costliest flooding to date, with $40 billion in losses.
Further highlights from the report:
- The last decade was dominated by a series of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, with an enormous human impact. These included geophysical events in Haiti in 2010 (222,570 deaths); in Southeast Asia in 2004 (220,000 deaths); in Pakistan in 2005 (88,000 deaths); and in China in 2008 (84,000 deaths).
- The costliest weather-related disasters are tropical cyclones, floods, winter storms and thunderstorms. Hurricane Katrina, which occurred in 2005 and caused $125 billion in overall losses, was the most expensive weather catastrophe ever.
- Ninety-five percent of Europe’s 150 disasters in 2011 were weather-related. The continent’s overall economic loss of $2.5 billion is one of the lowest annual figures since 1980.
- With 551 fatalities, the 2011 U.S. tornado season was the deadliest in more than 85 years. The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season was the third-strongest since record-keeping began, with 19 named storms. And in May and June 2011, the worst floods in decades occurred along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, causing more than $5 billion in overall losses.
For more information, click here.
Consumers may be happy, but climate change is making coffee farmers bitter. Diseases and pests are becoming more common and severe as temperatures rise. The fungal infection known as coffee leaf rust has devastated plantations in Central and South America. And while robusta crops tend to be more resistant, they need plenty of rain – a tall order as droughts proliferate.
The future for coffee farming looks difficult, if not bleak. But one of the more promising solutions involves developing new, more resilient coffee crops. Not only will these new coffees have to tolerate higher temperatures and less predictable rainfall, they'll also have to continue satisfying consumer expectations for taste and smell.
Finding this perfect combination of traits in a new species seemed remote. But in newly published research, my colleagues and I have revealed a little-known wild coffee species that could be the best candidate yet.
Coffee Farming in a Warming World
Coffea stenophylla was first described as a new species from Sierra Leone in 1834. It was farmed across the wetter parts of upper west Africa until the early 20th century, when it was replaced by the newly discovered and more productive robusta, and largely forgotten by the coffee industry. It continued to grow wild in the humid forests of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, where it became threatened by deforestation.
At the end of 2018, we found stenophylla in Sierra Leone after searching for several years, but failed to find any trees in fruit until mid-2020, when a 10g sample was recovered for tasting.
Field botanists of the 19th century had long proclaimed the superior taste of stenophylla coffee, and also recorded its resistance to coffee leaf rust and drought. Those early tasters were often inexperienced though, and our expectations were low before the first tasting in the summer of 2020. That all changed once I'd sampled the first cup on a panel with five other coffee experts. Those first sips were revelatory: it was like expecting vinegar and getting champagne.
This initial tasting in London was followed by a thorough evaluation of the coffee's flavour in southern France, led by my research colleague Delpine Mieulet. Mieulet assembled 18 coffee connoisseurs for a blind taste test and they reported a complex profile for stenophylla coffee, with natural sweetness, medium-high acidity, fruitiness, and good body, as one would expect from high-quality arabica.
C. stenophylla growing in the wild, Ivory Coast. E. Couturon / IRD, Author provided
In fact, the coffee seemed very similar to arabica. At the London tasting, the Sierra Leone sample was compared to arabica from Rwanda. In the blind French tasting, most of the judges (81%) said stenophylla tasted like arabica, compared to 98% and 44% for the two arabica control samples, and 7% for a robusta sample.
The coffee tasting experts picked up on notes of peach, blackcurrant, mandarin, honey, light black tea, jasmine, chocolate, caramel and elderflower syrup. In essence, stenophylla coffee is delicious. And despite scoring highly for its similarity to arabica, the stenophylla coffee sample was identified as something entirely unique by 47% of the judges. That means there may be a new market niche for this rediscovered coffee to fill.
The taste testers approved of stenophylla's sweet and fruity flavour. CIRAD, Author provided
Breaking New Grounds
Until now, no other wild coffee species has come close to arabica for its superior taste. Scientifically, the results are compelling because we would simply not expect stenophylla to taste like arabica. These two species are not closely related, they originated on opposite sides of the African continent and the climates in which they grow are very different. They also look nothing alike: stenophylla has black fruit and more complex flowers while arabica cherries are red.
It was always assumed that high-quality coffee was the preserve of arabica – originally from the forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan – and particularly when grown at elevations above 1,500 metres, where the climate is cooler and the light is better.
Stenophylla coffee breaks these rules. Endemic to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, stenophylla grows in hot conditions at low elevations. Specifically it grows at a mean annual temperature of 24.9°C – 1.9°C higher than robusta, and up to 6.8°C higher than arabica. Stenophylla also appears more tolerant of droughts, potentially capable of growing with less rainfall than arabica.
Robusta coffee can grow in similar conditions to stenophylla, but the price paid to farmers is roughly half that of arabica. Stenophylla coffee makes it possible to grow a superior tasting coffee in much warmer climates. And while stenophylla trees tend to produce less fruit than arabica, they still yield enough to be commercially viable.
The stenophylla harvest on Reunion Island. IRD / CIRAD, Author provided
To breed the coffee crop plants of the future, we need species with great flavour and high heat tolerance. Crossbreeding stenophylla with arabica or robusta could make both more resilient to climate change, and even improve their taste, particularly in the latter.
With stenophylla's rediscovery, the future of coffee just got a little brighter.
Aaron P Davis: Senior Research Leader, Plant Resources, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Disclosure statement: Aaron P Davis receives funding from Darwin Initiative (UK).
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.