Global warming has reached dangerous levels

Dry riverbed in Bangladesh. Photo by Kabiur Rahman Riyad

Source: CAFOD

Liz Cronin - Climate Change Policy Lead at CAFOD writes:

According to numerous sets of data, including NASA, the 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record. The rate at which warming is occurring is also speeding up. The temperature dial has been turning three times faster per decade since 1982, than in the pre-industrial era.

We are seeing the devastating impacts of this temperature rise - through droughts, floods, hurricanes, and many other natural disasters. Many of the low-income countries where we work are on the front lines of the climate crisis.

The communities CAFOD supports, particularly in the Horn of Africa, Bangladesh and Colombia, are finding it increasingly difficult to cope as they find their ways of life turned upside down by ever more violent and unpredictable weather events.

Bareesh Hasan Chowdhury, Campaign and Policy Coordinator of a CAFOD partner, Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), says his country feels the injustice of living at the forefront of global climate change, "while being a miniscule contributor to carbon emissions, Bangladesh already experiences the multi-pronged hazards of global temperature rise." He said: "There are many people living in the developed world who will face similar consequences."

According to a recent World Bank study, Bangladesh has already seen a temperature rise of 1.1 degrees between 1980 and 2023, and in the heat index - or 'real feel' - that equates to a drastic rise of 4.5C. This is even more pronounced in the capital, Dhaka, a metropolitan area of around 20 million people, where the temperature rise in Dhaka is 65% higher than for the rest of the country.

By some accounts up to 2000 people move to Dhaka every day, to escape climate induced impacts in the rest of the country. The city has become a global hotspot for urban heat and the 'heat island' effect. The rapid urbanisation causes a chain reaction that traps heat: population growth leads to a loss of green space, waterbodies, and vegetation.

Mr Chowdhury warns developed countries against complacency: "This type of temperature rise and heat will not be limited to poor countries like Bangladesh. There are many people living in the developed world who will face similar consequences to our casual approach to climate catastrophe."

In 2023, Dhaka had its hottest day in more than a generation when temperatures crossed the dreaded 40C mark. A year later, Bangladesh experienced a continuous heatwave for 30 consecutive days of April 2024, and at least 15 people were confirmed to have died from heat related stress.

The UK's hottest summer, in 2022, hit the same benchmark - a supposedly 'once in a lifetime' event made much more likely by climate change, resulting in some 200 wildfires and around 3,000 all-cause excess deaths associated with a heat episode. As temperatures continue to climb, these events become more frequent and more dangerous.

Apart from reducing the emissions that are destabilising the climate, richer countries have a responsibility to help those suffering the worst consequences.

Pope Francis, in his message to the 2024 COP climate summit in Azerbaijan - given on his behalf by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin, said: "a true 'ecological debt' exists, particularly between the global North and South, connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time."

The international community must act now to support climate-vulnerable people with the money they need to adapt to a crisis they have done the least to cause. How can we start to do this? If the biggest polluters had to pay the kind of taxes often proposed but not implemented, there would be plenty of funds to start to compensate the victims of their pollution.

That is just one example. Reducing the debt burden owed by developing countries to rich-world institutions is another. But the essential requirement is for the most vulnerable countries to have a real voice in the process.

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley is the current chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, which represents 70 countries at most risk from climate change. In a dialogue at the recent COP29 summit with Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, she said: "It is clear that unless we have discussions with all players at the table, we're not going to change the system." Ms Mottley was speaking the day before she was due to discuss debt with Pope Francis in the Vatican.

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In Old Testament times, a jubilee meant the forgiveness of all debts, and she made clear that debt relief should be seen as a moral issue, adding: "If the UK and the Vatican can say it's time for a jubilee moment again, then we will be doing the right thing by those who come to be on the front line, not by their own making, but by the actions of others."

The Barbados premier and others are calling for debt relief to be extended not only to the poorest countries, but also to those which have emerged to middle-income status, only to be threatened with being dragged back into poverty by climate disasters. "We need to change the rules of the game," Ms Mottley argued. "When the rules were set, our countries did not even exist … in many instances, decisions are made without reference to whether the impact on us is positive or negative."

At the recent COP summit in Baku, Mr Chowdhury went further. "Responsibility has been not only shirked by the developed countries, but instead passed down to developing countries," adding that it's time to develop a 'new normal' in managing our world, "our cities and ways of life must be fundamentally reworked", he said. "While the images of climate change are often floods and natural disasters, slow onset events like heat must also be given due attention."

The recent wildfires in California and other natural disasters continue to highlight our total dependence on the natural environment - our Common Home.

This year will see the 30th COP on climate, in Brazil, and as Mia Mottley concluded at COP29: "We can't keep doing things the same way, when everything else around us has changed."