A new United Nations report warns Australia faces severe damage from increased flooding, rising sea levels and bushfires as the regional climate continues to heat up this century.

Extreme rainfall will increase across Australia and New Zealand, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.

“In many locations, continued reliance on increased [flood] protection alone would become progressively less feasible.”

Deaths from heatwaves will rise and drier conditions will lead to more destructive wildfires.

There are also “increasing risks to coastal infrastructure and low-lying ecosystems… from continuing sea level rise, with widespread damage towards the upper end of projected changes”.

However, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) says its monitoring of catastrophes shows any climate change effect is overwhelmed by losses attributable to population changes, building costs and codes, and land-use planning.

“It is not so much that there are more frequent storms or more violent storms in Australia, but that far more infrastructure has been built in coastal regions that are vulnerable to storms,” a spokesman told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

ICA believes it is the role of governments to protect communities from natural hazards.

It says four key concerns must be tackled: a systemic failure to mitigate preventable hazards such as flood; building codes that do not protect buildings; planning regimes that allow risk-inappropriate development; and a taxation system that penalises those who insure.

“Prevention is better than cure and money invested in a permanent levee to protect an at-risk community from floods before a disaster would be recouped many times over during the life of that levee,” the spokesman said.

“Recently, there have been a number of positive outcomes in Queensland following investment in mitigation works that have significantly reduced flood risk, with a flow-on effect to premiums, such as in Charleville, St George and Roma.”

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