With more than 400 deaths and losses estimated at $60 billion (around €51 billion at the current exchange rate), the series of devastating fires recorded in January in the Los Angeles metropolitan area – with the fires Palisades And Eaton top – represent the costliest climate change-related disaster in the world by 2025, according to a report prepared by Christian Aid. Every December, this organization compiles the 10 costliest global warming disasters of the year, relying primarily on insured asset data. And only these fires in California accumulate almost half of the losses in this selection, which together amount to 122 billion dollars in the ten events analyzed.
Second place is taken by the cyclones and floods that hit South and Southeast Asia in November. They caused $25 billion in damage and killed more than 1,750 people in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Malaysia. In third place are the equally destructive summer floods in China, which displaced thousands, caused $11.7 billion in damage and killed at least 30 people. But beyond the list of the ten most costly events, the authors emphasize that “no continent” has been spared from “devastating climate disasters in 2025”.
As Joanna Haigh, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, explains, it’s really not correct to talk about “natural disasters” because all such disasters “are the inevitable result of the continued expansion of fossil fuels and political delay” in dealing with them.
The Christian Aid report puts this directly when it points out that “fossil fuel companies large and small are complicit in the death and suffering caused by the disasters they themselves fuel.” These fuels are mainly responsible for climate change, which makes extreme events more violent and sometimes more frequent. “The burning of coal, oil and gas reduces global GDP, and while estimates vary depending on methodology, one thing is certain: the damage caused by the fossil fuel industry is severe, growing and could reach trillions each year if nothing is done. » And he adds: “Yet this same deadly and destructive industry continues to receive billions in investment and public aid to accelerate its expansion instead of limiting it. »
“The good news is that the transition to clean energy is accelerating,” adds Patrick Watt, CEO of Christian Aid, in the introduction to the report. “This transition to an economy based on renewable energy is inevitable, but the major challenge is whether it will happen quickly and fairly enough to protect the poorest people,” he adds.
The ranking established annually by this organization is mainly based on loss estimates regularly published by the British insurance company Aon, which the authors supplement with other sources. By relying on insured assets, it excludes “other forms of losses that are difficult to quantify, such as damage to livelihoods, loss of income, long-term damage to the environment and permanent displacement of residents.” The authors therefore admit that “the real cost of disasters is almost certainly much higher than the insured losses.”
But, in addition, this classification system means that rich countries are over-represented, because the value of real estate is higher there, as is the level of insurance coverage. Despite everything, the authors recall that “some of the most devastating extreme climate events of 2025 have affected the poorest countries, which have contributed little to the climate crisis and have fewer resources to respond to it”.
Climate change footprint
Regardless, this annual classification is useful in focusing on specific economic losses caused by climate change. Because every disaster reviewed is accompanied by references to scientific studies that link it to global warming. For example, in the case of the Los Angeles fires a year ago, “the results show that climate change has significantly worsened the conditions” that made them “so destructive.”
In this year’s edition, in addition to the above top 10a dozen other significant disasters around the world were included, whose economic losses are not so well identified. And here again, fires play a central role. Concretely, two episodes from this summer are cited: the one which affected the United Kingdom, particularly Scotland, and the one which affected the Iberian Peninsula in August.
Among the fires that hit the United Kingdom, the report highlights those of Carrbridge and Dava Moor at the end of June, which “devastated large areas of moorland and woodland in the Highlands”. Together, the estimates show economic impacts across the UK of “more than £350 million (around €400 million), taking into account firefighting costs, land damage, smoke pollution and impacts on the tourism and agriculture sectors”. Concerning the causes, the authors recall that “climate change is already making forest fires” in this country “more frequent and more serious, causing hotter and drier conditions”.
The same thing is happening in the case of the Iberian Peninsula, which this summer suffered a wave of fires that brought the hectares affected by the flames to levels not seen in Spain since the 90s of the last century. Furthermore, the consequences of this episode were also intensely felt in northern Portugal. “Preliminary economic assessments suggest that direct economic losses from the fires are estimated at $810 million,” the report explains. Recall the attribution study published in September which established that “climate change made this event approximately 40 times more likely and increased the intensity of conditions conducive to fire by approximately 30%.”
Precisely, AON’s third quarter 2025 report on catastrophes and the insurance sector, which partly serves as the basis for Christian Aid’s classification, included a specific chapter on fires. “The growing risk of wildfires has become a major concern for the global insurance industry, particularly in western regions of the United States, Canada and parts of southern Europe,” AON warned. “Driven by climate change, prolonged droughts, rising temperatures and accelerating development in wildfire-prone areas, destructive fires are increasing in both frequency and severity,” warns this insurance group.
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