Climate change safety nets needed for vulnerable countries
By Kevin Watkins
As preparations for this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, intensify, attention is focused on efforts to prevent a future catastrophe.
However, real-time climate catastrophes are already playing out in the lives of millions of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. What will COP26 offer them?
Stick a pin in a map of global humanitarian emergencies and you will most likely land on a crisis that has been caused or aggravated by droughts, floods and storms.
In 2019, extreme weather events pushed more than 34 million people into hunger and food insecurity. In the 55 countries with food-insecurity crises, 75 million children under the age of five are chronically undernourished and face higher risks of diarrhea, pneumonia and other potentially fatal diseases that accompany droughts and floods.