Climate also causes death

The summer is again expected to bring record temperatures globally, which is not very good news, because as the thermometers rise, adverse weather phenomena in the form of heavy rains, fires, hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes are unleashed with equal intensity.

Its consequences are dire because Mother Nature claims not only immense material damage but also, sadly, human lives, making climate change the other pandemic for which there is no vaccine but to add the global effort of all countries to reduce their carbon footprint.

A study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, together with the University of Bern, based on data from 732 locations in 43 countries, concludes that one in three deaths worldwide -between 1991 and 2018- were caused by climate change, primarily heatwave deaths.

Some regions are more affected by the severity of this phenomenon, which concentrates the hot air, causing damage to breathe because it affects the lungs. Both Central and South America experience heat pockets every year, as does Southeast Asia, and here in Europe, the situation in Spain is a cause for concern, with an annual average of 700 deaths due to extreme heat in summer alone.

Even in the year of the pandemic there has been no respite and for the summer season of 2021, spring has been a snack with temperatures in the high 30s in cities where traditionally mild weather has been around 21 to 23 degrees Celsius. In Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden, people are nervous that July and August could be around 34 to 35 degrees Celsius.

Every year the situation becomes more extreme and the horizon of zero emissions, that of decarbonisation, seems infinitely distant with the year 2050 as a turning point and, on top of that, with the big question mark over whether the world's most polluting economies such as China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa and the United States will manage to fulfil their commitments to a renewable and clean ecological transition.

So far, the climate crisis is causing a tsunami of displacement of living beings from one place to another, mainly of people, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Last year alone, a total of 30.7 million people left their places of origin because of the impact of climate change, according to data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international agency sponsored by several world governments. 

UNHCR itself warns that 200 million people will need "humanitarian assistance annually by 2050 because of the impact of climate change" and in some parts of the world these needs, and displacements will be more acute.

The East Asia and Pacific region, for example, accounted for the largest share of internal displacement last year -a total of 12.1 million people- resulting from climate-related disasters worldwide.

"There are also places of conflict, poverty and forced displacement. The top five countries of origin of refugees are among the most vulnerable to climate emergencies and least prepared to respond to them: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar," the international agency notes.

António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations (UN) recently re-elected to his post until 2026, asserts that the impacts of this climate crisis are greater where fragility and conflicts have weakened all survival mechanisms. 

The figures provided by international organisations are worrying because they anticipate that people will continue to move from their respective homelands, not only because of violence, war, hunger and poverty, but also because of another powerful driving force: climate change, which floods crops or desertifies them and makes temperatures extreme in general. 

The UNHCR says that three quarters of the new displacements last year were caused by a series of natural disasters in a number of developing countries.