Climate expert Prof Dr Saleemul Huq says that the international community must act to help the worst affected and least responsible nations with "funding and solutions" to deal with climate change impacts.
Climate change unequally impacts vulnerable nations and indiscriminately creates global crises causing chaos, new poverty and violation of human rights.
“COP27 must make good on this agenda,” said Prof Saleemul, chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) expert advisory group, speaking at a report launching event on Wednesday.
The flagship report entitled “Climate Vulnerability Monitor, 3rd edition: A Planet on Fire”, commissioned by the CVF and the Vulnerable Twenty (V20) Group of Ministers of Finance of the CVF presented stark proof that climate change impacts generate loss and damage, globally creating crises for society, human health and development.
Prof Saleemul said the Climate Vulnerability Monitor provides them with the anatomy of the loss and damage the world now lives with because of decades of insufficient climate inaction by rich, powerful and responsible countries.
He said the detailed impact data and evidence presented by the CVM3 provide a sobering reading on just how bad the situation already is, and how much worse it will become with fast-rising global health risks, extreme heat events, and economic shocks, to name a few.
“Loss and damage have become the biggest risk to global prosperity in the present age,” Prof Saleemul was quoted as saying in a message received from Accra, Ghana.
Disclosing comprehensive new data on the impact of climate change, the report also highlighted the asymmetric consequences for a society which deepens global inequalities with poorer and more vulnerable nations the hardest hit.
Ban Ki-moon, chairman of the Board of Global Center on Adaptation and 8th UN secretary-general, said with this third edition of “CVM” they see clearly just how much humanity finds itself at the crossroads. Sadly, we have become a “Planet on Fire”, as the report’s title highlights.
“If we do not act now, by the end of the century, millions of lives would be lost every single year because of scorching heat,” said the former UN secretary-general.
