Taiwan ranks seventh among nations most severely affected by climate change, said an annual report released on Thursday at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.
The report was published by Germanwatch, a non-profit, non-governmental development and environmental organization that lobbies for sustainable global development.
The report, titled Global Climate Risk Index 2018, analyzed the extent to which nations have been affected by weather-related events such as storms, flooding and heat waves.
It used data gathered from 1997 to last year.
In January last year, Taiwan was hit by a rare wave of low temperatures, followed by six tropical storms and typhoons later in the year, Germanwatch said.
The surge in Taiwan’s ranking from 51st last year underscores the vulnerability of small island states and poor countries when facing extreme events, Germanwatch said.
Taiwan was called “Chinese Taipei” in the ranking.
The top six most-affected nations were Haiti, Zimbabwe, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and India.
Since 1997, more than 520,000 people have been killed by more than 11,000 extreme weather events around the world, it said.
Data show that extreme weather events have become more frequent and severe due to climate change, coauthor David Eckstein said, citing Fiji’s worst hurricane in a century and severe flooding in Germany last year as examples.
The 23rd session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change began on Monday last week and is to conclude on Friday.
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