The warmest decade ends without effective measures to protect our health against climate change

Two reports published during the twenty-fifth United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP25, being held in Madrid, highlight how as the average temperature of the earth rises, with catastrophic results for life on the planet, including our own health, human beings still do not put effective remedies to stop this phenomenon or mitigate its effects.

The first of the documents, the Declaration on the State of the Global Climate, bears the signature of scientists at the World Meteorological Organization and contains many of the findings already revealed in the United in Science report in September.

The Declaration confirms that 2019 puts an end to a decade marked by exceptional heat records, ice retreat and unprecedented sea level rises worldwide, changes exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

Almost certainly, the average temperatures of the five-year period (2015-2019) and the decade (2010-2019) will be the highest on record and everything indicates that 2019 will be the second or third warmest year for which data are available.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a new all-time high of 407.8 parts per million in 2018, and in 2019 they did not stop rising. That gas remains in the atmosphere for centuries, and in the oceans for even longer periods, so it perpetuates climate change.

It has also been found that, since 1993, when satellite measurements began, sea level rise has accelerated due to the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

The ocean acts as a buffer by absorbing heat and carbon dioxide, but this has serious consequences. The accumulated heat in ocean waters has reached unprecedented levels and widespread marine heat waves have occurred. The acidity of seawater has increased by 26% since the beginning of the industrial age. As a result, vital marine ecosystems are being degraded. The minimum daily arctic extent value of September 2019 was the second lowest since satellite records were kept, and records for minimum extent were also set in October. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, ice extensions recorded unprecedented minimum values in some months of 2019.

A 3-degree increase just around the corner

Until recently, predictions about climate change were projected beyond the generations that were going to live it, but global warming has come much faster than expected.

The average global temperature is currently estimated at 1.1° C, one degree higher than pre-industrial times (1850–1900) and the consequences are being felt: extreme weather events are more intense and frequent with all the consequences that this entails.

The effects of climate change manifest themselves daily in the form of extreme and anomalous weather events.

“Heat waves and floods that used to occur once every 100 years are becoming more frequent. The effects of tropical cyclones of devastating intensity are felt from the Bahamas to Japan via Mozambique, and wildfires are raging across large areas of the Arctic and Australia,” Taalas said. And yet, it is nothing compared to what it can become.

“If we do not take urgent action to combat climate change now, everything points to a temperature increase of more than 3°C by the end of the century, and its consequences for the well-being of humanity will be even more damaging,” says The Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas.

Right now, we are a long way from meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate change goal of keeping the earth’s average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.

Health risks

An important part of the 2019 State of the Climate Declaration is dedicated to the impacts that weather and climate events have on people’s health.

For example, the same greenhouse gas emissions are from air pollution, the source of the premature death of seven million people a year.

In addition, in 2018 alone, the number of vulnerable people over the age of 65 exposed to heat waves increased by 220 million compared to the average for the reference period between 1986 and 2005.

Protecting human health from the effects of climate change is therefore more urgent than ever, and yet we are not doing much to prepare in this chapter either. Another report published by the World Health Organization highlights that only one in five countries have designed strategies to mitigate the effects of this phenomenon.

In the report, which is based on a survey carried out in more than one hundred countries, this UN agency points out that only 38% of countries have the resources to partially implement their national strategy on health and climate change, and less than 10% allocate sufficient resources for its full implementation.

Dr. María Neira, from the Department of Public Health of the WHO, who participates in the COP25 in Madrid told UN News that the Organization wants to highlight the need for “health to be much more present in the decisions” of this Conference and to accelerate measures “to fight against climate change, because it’s having a very negative impact on people’s health.”

Other devastating effects

The Declaration on the State of the Global Climate also points to other negative impacts such as access to food, migrations, and effects on ecosystems and marine life.

Climate variability and extreme weather events are some of the main factors explaining the recent increase in world hunger and one of the main causes of severe crises. After a decade of constant reduction, hunger is experiencing a rebound, given that in 2018 more than 820 million people suffered from it.

“One of the main consequences of climate change is that the configuration of rainfall is more irregular. This jeopardizes crop yields and, if population growth is also taken into account, vulnerable countries will face considerable challenges in the future to ensure their food security, says the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization.

In 26 of the 33 countries affected by food crises in 2018, climate variability and extreme weather events were – together with economic shocks and conflict situations – aggravating the prevailing situation. In 12 of those 26 countries, climate variability and extreme weather events were the main drivers of the crisis situation.

Between January and June 2019, more than ten million new internal displacements were recorded, and seven million were due to dangerous weather phenomena, such as Cyclone Idai in southeast Africa, Cyclone Fani in South Asia, Hurricane Dorian in the Caribbean and floods in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Philippines and Ethiopia. These episodes generated pressing humanitarian and protection needs among the population.

Source: UN News