[Translated from French. Original text by Audrey Garric]
Global warming will not claim lives in the same proportions everywhere. The rise in temperatures is expected to cause ten times more deaths in poor countries than in rich countries by 2050—approximately 391,000 deaths per year compared to 39,000, despite populations of comparable size—according to a report from the Climate Impact Lab, a laboratory at the University of Chicago (USA), published on Wednesday, March 25. In other words, nearly 90% of this excess mortality will occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries. These findings shed new light on the massive inequalities tied to climate change.
That heat kills is not a new discovery. Summer heatwaves, from Europe to India, regularly provide proof of this. However, the scale of the upcoming phenomenon and, above all, its geographic distribution had remained poorly understood until now. The researchers have produced unprecedented data covering nearly 25,000 regions worldwide, based on a scenario where current climate policies continue, leading to a 2.1°C temperature increase by 2050.
“This report highlights one of the cruelest ironies of climate change: it is projected to cause the deaths of millions of people in countries that, generally, have contributed the least to causing it,” notes Michael Greenstone, one of the report’s authors and co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab. These countries are not only the ones that will experience the most warming, but also those where inhabitants have the fewest resources to cope with the consequences of climate change. Access to air conditioning, housing quality, workplace organization, and healthcare systems: these are all factors, closely tied to wealth levels, that mitigate—or worsen—the effects of heat.
Among the 25 most affected countries are many of the poorest nations, including Burkina Faso, Pakistan, Mauritania, Chad, Mali, and Bangladesh—even though the list also includes Algeria (in 4th place) and China (23rd). In certain Sahel countries, such as Niger or Burkina Faso, researchers anticipate an increase in heat-related mortality of more than 60 deaths per 100,000 residents each year by 2050. This is higher than the mortality rate of certain diseases in Africa, such as malaria.
In Pakistan, heat-related mortality could surpass that caused by strokes or chronic lung diseases. Unexpectedly, India does not rank among the most affected countries on a national average, even though some of its regions will be heavily impacted, such as Rajasthan.
