GENEVA, Switzerland — Heatwaves will become
so extreme in certain regions of the world within decades that human life there
will be unsustainable, the UN and the
Red Cross said Monday.
اضافة اعلان
Heatwaves are predicted to “exceed human
physiological and social limits” in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and south and
southwest Asia, with extreme events triggering “large-scale suffering and loss
of life”, the organizations said.
Heatwave catastrophes this year in countries like
Somalia and Pakistan foreshadow a future with deadlier, more frequent, and more
intense heat-related humanitarian emergencies, they warned in a joint report.
The UN’s Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) released the report in advance of next month’s COP27 climate
change summit in Egypt.
“We don’t want to dramatize it, but clearly the data
shows that it does lead towards a very bleak future,” said IFRC
Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain.
They said aggressive steps needed to be taken
immediately to avert potentially recurrent heat disasters, listing steps that
could mitigate the worst effects of extreme heat.
Limits of survival
“There are clear limits
beyond which people exposed to extreme heat and humidity cannot survive,” the
report said.
“There are also likely to be levels of extreme heat
beyond which societies may find it practically impossible to deliver effective
adaptation for all.
“On current trajectories, heatwaves could meet and exceed
these physiological and social limits in the coming decades, including in
regions such as the Sahel and south and southwest Asia.”
It warned that the impact of this would be
“large-scale suffering and loss of life, population movements, and further entrenched
inequality.”
The report said extreme heat was a “silent killer”,
claiming thousands of lives each year as the deadliest weather-related hazard —
and the dangers were set to grow at an “alarming rate” due to climate change.
According to a study cited by the report, the number
of poor people living in extreme heat conditions in urban areas will jump by
700 percent by 2050, particularly in west Africa and
southeast Asia.
“Projected future death rates from extreme heat are
staggeringly high — comparable in magnitude by the end of the century to all
cancers or all infectious diseases — and staggeringly unequal,” the report
said.
Agricultural workers, children, the elderly and
pregnant and breastfeeding women are at higher risk of illness and death, the report
claimed.
“As the climate crisis goes unchecked, extreme
weather events, such as heatwaves and floods, are hitting the most vulnerable
people the hardest,” said UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths.
“The humanitarian system is not equipped to handle
crisis of this scale on our own.”
‘Previously unimaginable’
Chapagain urged countries at
COP27 to invest in climate adaptation and mitigation in the regions most at
risk.
OCHA and the IFRC suggested five main steps to help
combat the impact of extreme heatwaves, including providing early information
to help people and authorities react in time, and finding new ways of financing
local-level action.
They also included humanitarian organizations
testing more “thermally-appropriate” emergency shelter and “cooling centers”,
while getting communities to alter their development planning to take account
of likely extreme heat impacts.
OCHA and the IFRC said there were limits to extreme
heat adaptation measures.
Some, such as increasing energy-intensive air conditioning,
are costly, environmentally unsustainable and contribute themselves to climate
change.
If emissions of the greenhouse gases which cause
climate change are not aggressively reduced, the world will face “previously
unimaginable levels of extreme heat”.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
