As Australia experiences winter, extreme heat events are unfolding across the globe, with devastating wildfires, droughts and floods impacting communities and ecosystems.
These events are a reminder that the climate crisis is already harming people’s lives, rights, and livelihoods.
Australia is no stranger to the devastating impacts of a warming planet. In recent years, communities across the country have faced catastrophic bushfires, record-breaking floods, and extreme weather events that have caused widespread destruction and displacement.
These events illustrate the urgent need for governments, including the Australian Government, to take meaningful action to prevent foreseeable climate-related harm.
As extreme heat events intensify around the world, they demonstrate that climate change is not only an environmental crisis, but a human rights crisis. Rising temperatures and climate-driven disasters threaten fundamental rights to life, health, housing, water, food, education and a safe environment, with communities already experiencing the devastating consequences of corporate greed, political failures and delayed climate action.
Marta Schaaf, Programme Director for Climate, ESJ and Corporate Accountability at Amnesty International said:
“Extreme heat is not just a weather event. This heat is political. It is where climate change driven by corporate greed and political failure collides with people’s rights, lives and livelihoods. It is a human rights emergency that threatens the rights to life, health, housing, water and sanitation, food, education, and a healthy environment.
“Extreme heat is not a stand-alone disaster. It’s a multiplier of human rights harm. While many governments and corporate actors roll back their climate action, an increasing number of people worldwide experience life altering – and in too many cases, life ending – climate change driven extreme events.
“Thanks in part to generous public subsidies and support from allies in government, fossil fuel companies continue to profit while communities are left to pay the costs of the damage these companies helped cause.”
Marta Schaaf, Programme Director for Climate, ESJ and Corporate Accountability
“Heatwaves can kill directly, and they also fuel wildfires, worsen air pollution, dry out land and disrupt rainfall patterns, deepening drought in some places and making floods more dangerous elsewhere. These harms are being made worse by authoritarian tactics that attack climate science, restrict protest, spread climate disinformation and shield powerful fossil fuel interests from accountability.
“Governments must protect people now through adaptation and climate-resilient public services including early warning systems, safe housing, access to water, and heat protections. But they must also confront the root cause of this escalating crisis.
“Thanks in part to generous public subsidies and support from allies in government, fossil fuel companies continue to profit while communities are left to pay the costs of the damage these companies helped cause. States must make polluters pay, defend climate science and civic space, and deliver a full, fast, fair and funded phase-out of fossil fuels that leaves no one behind.”
Background
The number of people exposed to extreme heat is growing exponentially due to climate change in all world regions, according to the World Health Organization.
As average temperatures rise due to climate change, the risk of extreme temperatures, heat waves, wildfires and record-breaking temperatures increases.
Extreme heatwaves have been reported this month in US, Tunisia, Middle East, Türkiye and Bangladesh while more than half of England is officially in drought.
High heat related death tolls have been reported this year globally while widespread wildfires currently rage across Europe, North Africa and Canada.
Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 10 million people who take injustice personally. We are campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all – and we can only do it with your support.
Act now or learn more about our human rights work.
