Natural disasters cost China 199.36 billion yuan ($29.9 billion) in direct losses over the first nine months of 2026, Reuters reported, citing the Ministry of Emergency Management. Typhoons, flooding and landslides drove most of it. The total is down 8 percent from 217.65 billion yuan a year earlier, but the human cost went the other way.
Money Down, Deaths Up
Some 1,162 people died or were listed as missing in the period, against 742 in the same months last year. The ministry said several sudden, extreme disasters in the south pushed deaths and missing persons well above the five-year average. The southwest and south also held most of the affected people and fatalities. Among them, the catastrophic August flash floods along the Nepal-Tibet border account for 562 dead or missing, a figure unchanged from earlier official counts.
The two kinds of damage fell in different places. Eastern coastal provinces took the worst property and economic losses after repeated typhoon landfalls. Typhoons did the most financial damage overall, while geological hazards, meaning rain-triggered landslides and mudslides, killed the largest share of victims and made up 60 percent of all disaster types. More than 5 million people had to relocate or find emergency shelter.
The season ran hot. Twenty-six typhoons formed in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea through September, and seven hit the Chinese coast. Both counts beat historical averages for the period.
The Bill for Nature Loss
A related cost debate is under way in Yerevan, where the 17th U.N. biodiversity conference, COP17, is reviewing progress on the Kunming-Montreal framework. A draft U.N. report shows countries off track on 22 of its 23 goals. The world is likely to protect about 27.5 percent of land by 2030, short of the 30 percent target for land and sea, and scientists say the broader goals are well behind schedule. The United Nations counts 144 countries, Brazil and China among them, with action plans. Who pays toward a $30 billion public finance goal remains unsettled, inside a broader aim of at least $200 billion a year by 2030.
Subsidies are the other big item. Governments are urged to set a two-year timeline to find and redirect the most damaging of roughly $500 billion a year in harmful subsidies, such as incentives for clearing rainforest or discounts on synthetic fertilizer. Conservation International puts the total cost to governments at $11 trillion to $24.7 trillion a year, since they pay once for the subsidy and again for cleanup. “This isn’t primarily a story about conservation,” said Eva Zabey, chief executive of Business for Nature. “It’s an economic, fiscal, political and competitiveness story.”
More than 130 businesses, H&M and Nestle among them, signed an open letter asking for clearer policy and a 12-month plan to reform incentives. The climate-focused COP31 opens Nov. 9 in Antalya, Turkey.
Sources
- World faces nature reality check at U.N. biodiversity conference
- China's natural disaster losses hit $30 billion in first nine months of 2026
- User
Photo: Ekrem Canli (CC BY-SA 3.0)
