Earlier this month the Western Cape Government announced that the initial storm damage assesment following the recent extreme weather events had reached a staggering R9 billion, R1 billion of which was in the Garden Route District Municipality

To give context to the magnitude of the damage, Deidré Baartman, the Western Cape's finance minister, told reporters:

"Our infrastructure budget for this year is 10 billion rand and the cost of the storm damage means that the whole provincial budget will have to be re-prioritised."

Using the Western Cape disasters as an example, the process of climate induced collapse tends to unfold like this:

1. Recovery consumes future investment

Normally the province and it's municipalities spend money on:

• Expanding water infrastructure
• Maintaining roads
• Replacing aging bridges
• Improving hospitals and schools
• etc.

What is now beginning to happen is that events of this magnitude are becoming regular occurrences, which is quickly shifting the emphasis to affordability. After repeated disasters, increasing portions of the budget must now be moved from the above to rebuilding what was destroyed.

As a result spending on new infrastructure and upgrades diminishes and attempts are made to bring damaged existing infrastructure to where it was before the disaster.

Economists sometimes call this a "reconstruction trap."

2. Maintenance begins falling behind

Generally speaking infrastructure already has a maintenance backlog. Now, on top of this backlog, bridges are being repeatedly damaged, roads are being washed away sometimes annually, water pipes are exposed during floods and sewage works become inundated. Eventually there isn't sufficient funding to repair everything and assets begin failing faster than they can be restored.

3. Insurance becomes expensive or disappears

This is already happening in parts of the world. After repeated billion-rand losses insurance premiums begin to rise, deductibles increase and insurers begin to refuse cover in high-risk areas.

In the South African context, Business Tech in an article entitled Bad news about insurance premiums in South Africa quoted Dini Nondumo, Head of Commercial Insurance at Standard Bank Insurance as saying:

"Over the past five years, we’ve really seen an increase in storm, flood, and fire-related claims—very massive increases. Storms alone now account for nearly one in every three property claims that come through"

Of course all this has a knock-on effect. As insurance premiums increase or retreat altogether:

• Homeowners struggle to rebuild
• Businesses relocate
• Investment slows

4. Government debt increases

Each disaster requires emergency grants, disaster relief, infrastructure rebuilding and social assistance for impacted communities. Because tax revenue is outpaced by the recovery bill, governments need to borrow more. But as with insurance, this also has a knock-on effects. Higher debt means higher interest payments, which in turn leaves less money for essential services.

5. An economic slowdown

Of course extreme events don't only destroy infrastructure, they interrupt tourism, agriculture, forestry, transport and manufacturing which leds to lost economic activity, which then reduces tax revenues exactly at a time when governments need more money to repair damage!

6. Adaption falls behind

Of everything this is perhaps the most important. If you can invest enough in building larger bridges, improving drainage, upgrading stormwater systems and relocating or better protecting vulnerable infrastructure then you can dramatically reduce damage from extreme events. However, if every available rand is spent repairing yesterday's damage, then there is very little left to prepare for the next extreme event.

This then creates a vicious cycle of decline and eventual collapse.

Does collapse have to be inevitable

Not necessarily.

There is a critical difference between damage and unmanageable damage.

Countries like the Netherlands, Japan and Singapore all experience severe natural hazards yet they remain at this point highly resilient because they invest enormous sums in reducing future losses.

The problem arises when annual damages consistently exceed society’s capacity to adapt.

One could think about it this way, looking at the Garden Route as an example:

• If the annual damage is R1 billion but adaptation investments reduce future losses to R200 million, then the regions resilience improves.
• If the annual damage rises from R1 billion to R3 billion while adaptation spending remains at R500 million, resilience declines.
• If repeated disasters consume more than municipalities, insurers and the private sector can collectively finance, infrastructure quality and economic productivity begin to deteriorate year after year.

This is why in its annual Adaptation Gap Reports, the UNEP has, in recent years, repeatedly pointed out that we are underfunding adaptation. Their 2025 report stating rather bluntly:

Amid rising global temperatures and intensifying climate impacts, UNEP’s 2025 Adaptation Gap Report: Running on Empty finds that a yawning gap in adaptation finance for developing countries is putting lives, livelihoods and entire economies at risk.

To avoid collapse there are two things governments everywhere must do.

1. Phase out fossil fuel usage as soon as possible to avoid the global heating trajectory we are on from getting worse and
2. Urgently redirect funding into adaptation

However, we know that both of the above is not happening at the necessary speed, which is why the projection is that global GDP is set to decline by 17% at 2ºC of heating which at the current pace of 0.41ºC per decade, we will reach in 10-15 years.

Yes collapse is not inevitable, but for the most part, this seems to be the path we have chosen.