00:00Europe is sweltering through another intense heat wave and while the human impact is clear,
00:06new research warns rising temperatures are also hitting the continent's largest economies.
00:11By 2030, countries most exposed to extreme heat could see their economies shrink by up to 7%.
00:18France is forecast to suffer the most in Europe, with potential losses of up to $240 billion over the next
00:26five years.
00:26Italy is the next most exposed, with projected losses of $147 billion,
00:32followed by Germany at $131 billion and Spain at $120 billion.
00:39Svenja Siminski is professor in practice at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
00:47Europe is experiencing a climate that it simply wasn't built for.
00:51You know, even here in the UK, heat is already the deadliest climate-related risk
00:57and systems from housing to healthcare are really struggling to cope.
01:01And I think what's striking is that these extremes are now arriving faster and actually also hitting harder than expected.
01:08When it comes to extreme heat, are we still underestimating the financial impact compared to the environmental one?
01:17Yeah, I mean, I think what we really need to take into account that this is a systemic issue.
01:24So heat is obviously a big challenge for health, but it also works through our systems.
01:30You look at infrastructure, you look at agriculture.
01:34Even here in the UK, farmers lost, you know, their sort of output was 10% down during a heat
01:42wave in 2025.
01:44So, you know, we really need to take this more seriously as a systemic, as an economic challenge.
01:51Where would you say that the biggest gaps are in how financial markets are pricing and preparing for climate risk?
01:58Heat is seen as an invisible risk, right?
02:01It can hit productivity, it can hit infrastructure and health in ways that aren't really always fully captured yet.
02:09We see that, for example, with insurance.
02:12It's not really a traditional insured risk, such as flooding or fire.
02:17It's what we call is a slow onset risk.
02:21It builds over years and decades rather than really striking in a single catastrophic event.
02:27And often our way of assessing risk and identifying it and ensuring it wasn't really built for these sort of
02:36slow onset developments.
02:38Are we approaching a point where some climate risks become too expensive or too unpredictable to insure?
02:46If these risks become foreseeable, if we know it's likely to happen, then it becomes very hard to insure.
02:56And actually that is a signal that we are not doing enough to reduce risk.
03:02So we are not investing enough in risk reduction.
03:06We're not making our built environment more resilient.
03:09We know what to do, but we really haven't started taking this serious enough.
03:15As climate leaders gather in London this week, what would meaningful progress actually look like beyond the usual statements of
03:21intent?
03:22We need to be smart in our solutions and we need to demonstrate of how we can actually work with
03:30businesses, work with communities to help them address these challenges.
03:36So if we say this country wasn't built for the climate that it is currently experiencing, well, then we need
03:43to build a whole suite of changes to our building codes, to our planning system.
03:49We need to different building materials and we need to invest in that.
03:54I mean, this is really a priority.
03:57It's no longer really a choice.
03:59We need to adapt to actually protect what we love and the places that we live in.
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