The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has released a report titled ‘Extreme Heat: Preparing for the heatwaves of the future’ in advance of next month’s UN’s COP27 climate change summit in Egypt.
Key points of report
- Heatwaves will become so extreme in certain regions of the world within decades that human life there will be unsustainable.
- 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.
- Heatwave catastrophes this year in countries like Somalia and Pakistan foreshadow a future with deadlier, more frequent, and more intense heatrelated humanitarian emergencies.
- Heatwaves prey on inequality, with the greatest impacts on isolated and marginalized people.
- The urgent priority must be large and sustained investments that mitigate climate change and support long-term adaptation for the most vulnerable people.
- The report also finds that, although the impacts of extreme heat are global, some people are hit harder than others.
- Vulnerable communities, such as agricultural workers, are being pushed to the front lines while the elderly, children, and pregnant and breastfeeding women are at higher risk of illness and death.
- The world’s lowest-income countries are already experiencing disproportionate increases in extreme heat. These countries are the least to blame for climate change, but they will see a significant increase in the number of at-risk people in the coming decades.
The report suggests the following five key steps to help the most vulnerable people:
- Provide early information on heatwaves to help people and authorities take timely action.
- Support preparedness and expand anticipatory action, especially by local actors, who are often the first responders in emergencies.
- Find new and more sustainable ways of financing local action.
- Adapt humanitarian response to accelerating extreme heat. Humanitarian organizations are already testing approaches such as more thermally appropriate emergency housing, ‘green
- roofs’, cooling centres, and adjustments to school timetables, but this will require significant investments in research and learning.
- Strengthen engagement across the humanitarian, development, and climate spheres.
