By Gloria Dickie
LONDON (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called on countries to tackle the urgency of the extreme heat epidemic fueled by climate change – days after the world recorded its hottest day on record.
“Extreme heat is the new abnormal,” Guterres said. “The world must rise to the challenge of rising temperatures,” he said.
Climate change is making heat waves around the world more frequent, intense and longer lasting.
This year, scorching conditions have already killed 1,300 hajj pilgrims, closed schools for some 80 million children in Africa and Asia, and led to a spike in hospitalizations and deaths in the Sahel.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, every month since June 2023 is now the warmest on Earth since records began in 1940, compared to the corresponding month in previous years.
The UN called on governments to not only reduce fossil fuel emissions – the driver of climate change – but also to strengthen protections for the most vulnerable, including the elderly, pregnant women and children, and strengthen safeguards for workers strengthen.
More than 70 percent of the global workforce – 2.4 billion people – are now at high risk of extreme heat, according to a report published on Thursday by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
In Africa, almost 93 percent of the working population is exposed to excessive heat, and 84 percent of the working population in the Arab States, the ILO report shows.
Excessive heat is blamed for causing nearly 23 million workplace accidents worldwide, and around 19,000 deaths each year.
“We need measures to protect workers based on human rights,” Guterres said.
He also called on governments to ‘heat-proof’ their economies, crucial sectors such as healthcare and the built environment.
Cities are warming twice as fast as the global average due to rapid urbanization and the urban heat island effect.
Some researchers estimate that by 2050, the number of urban poor living in extreme heat will increase by 700 percent worldwide.
This is the first time that the UN has issued a global call for action against extreme heat.
“We need a policy signal and this is it,” said Kathy Baughman Mcleod, CEO of Climate Resilience for All, a nonprofit focused on extreme heat.
“It’s the recognition of how big it is and how urgent it is. It’s also the recognition that not everyone thinks about it the same way and pays the same price for it.”
