Two of the world’s biggest aid agencies will host an inaugural global summit on extreme heat on Thursday as directors warn that the climate crisis is dramatically increasing the probability of a mass-fatality heat disaster.
The conference will highlight some of the pioneering work being done, from tree-planting projects to the development of reflective roof coverings that reduce indoor temperatures.
After last year’s record-shattering temperatures, when 3.8 billion people – half the world’s population – sweltered in extreme heat for at least one day, the organisers hope the event will prompt governments to prepare for a “silent killer” that rarely gets the attention it deserves when compared with hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) have come together to stage this virtual conference, in which they will urge national governments, local authorities, humanitarian groups, companies, school and hospitals to develop heat action plans.
They will float the idea of naming heatwaves in the same way that typhoons or hurricanes are labelled to make them more prominent.
Jagan Chapagain, the IFRC secretary general, drew comparisons to Kim Stanley Robinson’s apocalyptic novel Ministry for the Future, which opens with a deadly heatwave in India that kills millions of people, some of whom are poached alive in a lake they hoped to cool off in.
“It is, for now, science fiction,” he said. “We’re not there, yet. But extreme heat, far less visually dramatic than hurricanes or floods, is claiming lives and livelihoods with a stealth which belies its impact. Climate change is dramatically increasing the probability that we will see a mass-fatality extreme heat disaster soon.”
Chapagan said heat was already a major cause of suffering in many parts of the world. In the US it accounts for more deaths than all other climate impacts put together, but this often goes unreported because it is usually less sudden, less visual, than events such as hurricanes, and the scale of fatalities can take months or years to calculate.
These types of disaster are starting to appear on the IFRC radar. The organisation’s 40-year-old Disaster Response Emergency Fund received its first appeal for a heatwave in 2018, from North Korea. The next came in 2021 from Vietnam, then two the following year (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), followed by three last year (Greece, Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan). In that period, the amount the fund provided to heatwave appeals rose more than fivefold.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.