Fresh research published in early 2024 continues to uncover the true cost on biodiversity, the economy and public health triggered by unprecedented wildfires that swept Australia in late 2019 and early 2020. “These results are an illustration of what can be expected in the future not only in Australia, but in other nations that are vulnerable to climate-change driven disasters,” said Vivienne Reiner, the lead author of an economic study published in the journal Economics of Disasters and Climate Change. On Jan. 31 Reiner and colleagues published the results of their input-output study, a standardized method of assessing changes to goods and services in an economy. The researchers found that the catastrophic fires likely erased A$2.8 billion ($1.8 billion) from output in Australia’s tourism sector, an amount greater than the economy of Guinea-Bissau, according to World Bank calculations of the West African country of more than 2 million people. The input-output study was the first occasion in which researchers have documented changes throughout Australia’s entire supply chain. As a result, the researchers’ A$2.8 billion conclusion represented a 61% increase on the direct damages previously identified to tourism as a result of the fires. This total cost of the bushfires to tourism determined by Reiner and colleagues was higher than the amount Australia will spend over five years on increases to rent assistance for 1.1 million low-income households, according to Australia’s current national budget. “I expect that the impact of the globally unprecedented 2019-20 bushfires in Australia could continue to be…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Studies still uncovering true extent of 2019-20 Australia wildfire catastrophe appeared first on EnviroLink Network.