Aside from physical damage to buildings, crops, and infrastructure, flooding can have serious ramifications for public health. The developing world is particularly susceptible to the long-term health consequences of water and mosquito borne illnesses following severe flood events.
In an effort to understand how flooding will impact the malaria burden on the African continent and determine the best approach to malaria eradication, the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) conducted the first quantitative analysis of the impact of extreme climate change driven weather events such as severe flooding across sub-Saharan Africa. The report which was announced this week during the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 29, found that by 2050, the region will see up to an 18% increase in flood area days, making investment in eradication critical in the near-term.
To enable BCG and the Malaria Atlas Project to understand future flood impacts and where investment and eradication efforts will need to focus, Floodbase provided BCG with a historical catalog of flood data dating back more than two decades covering all of sub-Saharan Africa - an area totaling more than eight million square miles (20+ million sq km). This dataset enabled researchers to analyze how flooding has changed across the 41 malaria endemic countries studied, and project where increases in malaria prevalence might be expected in coming years as flood events increase.
The report from MAP and BCG found that extreme weather events like flooding will drive 92% of the projected malaria mortality increase across the continent in coming years. However, the findings also indicate that investment in early eradication efforts now, could be up to 55% less expensive than future suppression efforts. So the time for action is now.
Floodbase is uniquely suited to support this initiative. No other data provider is capable of providing detailed geographic and historic flood data over large land areas such as states, countries, or continents. This type of previously unavailable data not only makes parametric flood insurance possible worldwide - whether for farms in Mozambique, or municipalities in California - but it can also be leveraged for humanitarian and global health research. By extrapolating future flood impact researchers and NGOs can determine where critical investment is needed as climate change induced flooding worsens globally.
The work in partnership with BCG and the Malaria Atlas Project is in line with Floodbase’s commitment to enable all communities to prepare and respond to climate disasters by reducing the barriers to scientific information and capital. Last year during her COP 28 speech in UAE, USAID Administrator, Samantha Power cited Floodbase’s data and newly launched flood insurance programs for farmers in Malawi and Mozambique as an example of innovation driving climate resilience in Africa.
Floodbase congratulates the Malaria Atlas Project for providing such a comprehensive, insightful analysis of the threat that malaria poses to sub-Saharan Africa as climate driven weather events increase.
