Heat inequality ‘causes thousands of unreported deaths in poor countries’ | Extreme heat

A leading climate impact analyst has warned that heat inequality in poor countries and communities around the world is causing thousands of unreported deaths after global temperature records were recorded that may not have been seen for 120,000 years.

The scorching heat acts like a secret killer that hits the economically weakest, said Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution. She appealed to the media and authorities to pay more attention to the dangers.

“Heatwaves are the deadliest form of extreme weather, but they leave no trail of destruction or striking images of devastation. They kill poor, lonely people in rich countries and poor people working outdoors in developing countries,” said Otto, who is also a lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “There will be thousands and thousands of stories of poor people dying in the heat over the last 13 months that will never be told.”

This advice comes amid growing concern about the hidden consequences of heat inequality. Last month, the UN Secretary-General called for action on extreme heat, with a focus on caring for vulnerable people and protecting at-risk workers.

“Extreme heat is placing increasing strains on economies, exacerbating inequalities, undermining sustainable development goals and killing people. It is estimated that it kills nearly half a million people each year, about 30 times more than tropical cyclones,” stressed António Guterres.

This came after the three hottest days on record on July 21, 22 and 23. According to climate scientists, this was not only a record high dating back to 1940, but also probably the highest temperature on Earth in about 120,000 years, as recorded in tree rings and ice cores. The temperature did not come without warning. Until July, the Earth had set 13 consecutive monthly temperature records, mostly due to human burning of forests, gas, oil and coal.

The exact death toll from these scorching extremes will probably never be calculated, but what is certain is that the lowest income groups were hit hardest, because heat inequality is self-reinforcing. As the rich move in air-conditioned cars from their air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned offices, restaurants and shopping malls, the heat from these artificially cooled environments is channeled onto the streets, where less well-off workers sweat as couriers, construction workers or street cleaners.

Equality campaigners say the vulnerability gap exists at home too. “Heat deaths are shaped by inequality – a heatwave is far more deadly for someone living in a tin shack than for someone in an air-conditioned house,” says Alex Maitland, inequality policy adviser at Oxfam International.

“In the coming decades, deaths from heat stress are expected to rise dramatically in low-income countries. The cruel irony is that people who die from heat are the least responsible for rising temperatures. The richest 1% of the population produces more emissions than two-thirds of the world combined. Their carbon emissions in 2019 alone were enough to cause the heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people.”

The unequal suffering also extends to religious practice and migration. More than 80 percent of the 1,300 Hajj pilgrims who died from heat-related causes in June were undocumented pilgrims who could not afford air-conditioned accommodation and transport and had no access to cooling tents and water stations. Many eke out an existence on the streets in temperatures approaching 50 degrees Celsius.

Studies by World Weather Attribution have found that climate change has intensified the heatwave by up to 2.5 degrees Celsius. “This additional heat would have meant the difference between life and death for many of these people,” Otto said.

Asylum seekers, often fleeing heat and drought, also face much higher risk. In June, dozens of Sudanese migrants died from scorching heat at an illegal border crossing into Egypt. The victims included entire families, aid groups said. Later that month, the bodies of three Mexican migrants were found in Arizona's Sonoran Desert near the U.S. border as a brutal heatwave swept the region. The El Paso Border Patrol Sector, which covers parts of Texas and New Mexico, said migrant deaths more than doubled from 2022 to 2023 as a result of the rise in temperatures.

Last year, the charred bodies of 18 Syrian asylum seekers were found after a forest fire in the Dadia region of northeastern Greece.

In less developed countries, authorities often do not have the resources to collect data or investigate individual deaths. This is particularly true in conflict regions such as Afghanistan, Mali, Sudan, Somalia and the Central African Republic.

More and more countries are taking measures to protect workers from heat by implementing new laws. In Armenia, for example, special breaks are to be granted when temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius.

Some countries set different limits depending on how intense the work is. In Belgium, the limits range from 29 degrees Celsius for light physical work to 18 degrees Celsius for very hard work. In Hungary, on the other hand, the limits range from 27 degrees Celsius to 31 degrees Celsius. Cyprus, on the other hand, distinguishes between workers who are “acclimatised” to the heat and those who are not; the safe working limits for the latter are 2.5 degrees lower.

Dr Halshka Graczyk, occupational health and safety expert at the International Labour Organization, said there was evidence that with every degree of temperature increase there was a significant loss in productivity.

Although temperature limits in the workplace are becoming more common, they tend to be set on an ad hoc basis, she said. “There is no algorithm, there is no way to say the baseline temperature in your country is X and therefore your population has become accustomed to approximately that temperature.” Nor has there been enough monitoring and evaluation to know whether the limits set have helped protect human health and increase productivity.

Enforcement of these laws is also an ongoing dispute. Qatar is one of several Gulf states that ban outdoor work during the hottest times of the day in summer. From June 1 to September 15, it is prohibited between 10am and 3.30pm. However, an investigation by the Independent found hundreds of violations last year, mainly in the construction industry.

Enforcing limits indoors, such as in factories, could be even more difficult because these workplaces are less visible.

In Indonesia, a group of young people is claiming in a lawsuit that their right to work and a decent living is being compromised by inadequate government action on the climate crisis. In Bangladesh, a court ordered the nationwide closure of schools in April due to a severe heatwave.

Otto called for global attention to this poorly understood crisis. “We simply don't know how many people in poor countries die from extreme heat. But since they are much more exposed to the heat, there is no reason to assume that it is fewer people than in rich countries, where thousands die,” she said. “There is a huge need to keep reporting on these dangers.”

Instead of illustrating heatwave stories with happy people on the beach, she believes the media needs to consider the often hidden and preventable tragedies both in far-flung parts of the world and in marginalized communities in their own countries. “To bring about change, we need to create a fairer world, but we also need to tackle inequality at home.”