COP26: Why the climate crisis is also a humanitarian crisis

The increase in extreme weather events worldwide is evidence that climate change is already having an impact on our lives. The hardest hit of the global population are people in developing countries.

Host Imogen Foulkes puts the spotlight in this episode on what humanitarian agencies are expecting from leaders at COP26, the UN Climate Change conference taking place in Glasgow.

“Ninety per cent of the world’s refugees originate from countries that are on the front lines of the climate emergency. There is a linkage,” says Andrew Harper, special adviser on climate action with the United Nations Refugee Agency.

“We are collectively driving towards a cliff. There are many people who have already lost their lives at the bottom of that cliff in countries that are already two or three degrees warmer,” says Gernot Laganda of the World Food Programme.

“The fact that Switzerland did not pass a law about CO2 indicates that it’s the developed countries that have been more difficult to convince,” says political analyst Daniel Warner.

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