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In a year with Olympic Games in Paris, in which not only sports records will be broken, but also climate records, the Fundación Ayuda en Acción presents the campaign “People who break records. Records that break people”, with the aim of raising awareness of the consequences of climate change in vulnerable communities. According to all official international organizations, following the growing trend of recent years, in 2024 the climate will experience extreme events that will affect millions of people around the world causing hunger, poverty and forced migrations.
“The climate crisis is undoubtedly one of the major challenges of our time, a challenge for our planet and for those of us who inhabit it. It causes massive displacement, aggravates the food crisis, reduces economic opportunities, increases poverty and ultimately endangers the lives of millions of people. In this campaign we want to show the consequences of climate change on people in vulnerable situations, who suffer the most: food and nutritional insecurity, forced human mobility and humanitarian crises,” says Jorge Cattaneo, Deputy Managing Director of the Fundación Ayuda en Acción. “To tell the story, taking advantage of the situation that this year offers us, we are going to talk about records, not sports records, but those other records that really and dramatically affect people's lives,” he adds.
Records that break people
The news about new climate change records is coming in so fast every day that they are constantly being broken. We have just experienced a 12-month period with a temperature more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial reference period and the El Niño phenomenon, associated with global warming, has played a major role in the extreme events in 2024, expected to peak in 2024.
But what we do not always relate to these climate records are the consequences they produce on a daily basis on the most vulnerable people: those who need our help the most.
In Europe, the fastest warming continent, heat-related mortality has increased by around 30% in the last 20 years. Moreover, in 2022 alone, extreme weather events pushed 56.8 million people worldwide into severe food insecurity.
What is next: hunger and climate change
But if the situation today is dramatic for vulnerable people around the world, what international organizations predict for the not too distant future is even worse: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), it is estimated that climate change will reduce global food production by 2% per decade, which is equivalent to a 20% decrease by 2050. The regions most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia) are those that will experience a significant increase in food security.
Meanwhile, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that up to 3.2 billion people could be affected by water scarcity due to climate change by 2050, which will directly impact agriculture and food availability.
According to the latest data published by the United Nations, 735 million people suffer from hunger in the world today, a figure that could increase by 80 million more in the coming decades due to the effects of the climate crisis. By 2080, we would reach 600 million hungry people if nothing is done now.
Food insecurity is a growing challenge due to the climate crisis. “Changes in precipitation and temperature patterns affect agricultural production and food availability. Vulnerable rural and urban communities face food shortages, increasing malnutrition and famine,” explains Alberto Casado, Ayuda en Acción's Advocacy Director.
For this reason, Ayuda en Acción “works on adapting production models, training farmers and producers so that they can implement adapted measures,” says Eduardo Reneses, Ayuda en Acción's Economic Growth advisor.
What is next: poverty and climate change
According to the United Nations, around 70% of people living in extreme poverty depend on agriculture and are more exposed to the impacts of climate change, such as droughts, floods and rising temperatures.
The world economy is set to shrink by an average of 19% by mid-century due to global warming, and the countries least responsible for this crisis are expected to suffer a 60% greater loss of income than higher-income countries.
What is next: migration and climate change
According to the World Bank, if nothing is done, 143 million people could become climate refugees by 2050. Three regions of the world are particularly concerned by this forecast: sub-Saharan Africa (where climate impacts have already generated 7.4 million displacements), Latin America (which could register 17 million refugees in three decades) and South Asia.
Climate migrants have increased by 40% in the last 20 years. In this sense, “we work with communities to anticipate crises and prepare them to mitigate any effects, but we also focus on humanitarian aid to cover the most immediate and essential needs of people and implement protection measures in transit and socioeconomic integration at destination,” says Diego Lorente, coordinator of Ayuda en Acción's Migration programs.
Our mark, their opportunity
Ayuda en Acción works in 18 countries around the world, witnessing that the climate crisis has exacerbated forced migration, causing people to leave their lands due to the destruction of infrastructure, loss of livelihoods and lack of basic resources. Our work consists of providing support throughout the displaced people's journey, at origin, in transit and at destination.
“At Ayuda en Acción, we respond to the humanitarian needs of populations affected by disasters and empower communities to face the impacts of climate change and strengthen their economic resilience, without forgetting peace building and the gender approach, which is fundamental to guarantee a sustainable future,” explains Benjamin Thiberge, head of the organization's Humanitarian Action Unit.
“In our constant work for more than 40 years in Latin America, Africa and Europe, we have found that the needs of the most vulnerable communities are increasingly related to the effects of climate change,” says Jorge Cattaneo, adding, ”We can no longer remain passive spectators of these new records, because these records are breaking the lives of billions of people around the world. We need to act now".
