A worker moves ice blocks in a wheelbarrow in New Delhi during a heatwave on May 30, 2024. Temperatures in the city rose into the high 40s on May 29, pushing electricity use to a record high in the city of an estimated 30 million people. (Photo: Mani Sharma/AFP)
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, temperatures frequently exceed 40 degrees Celsius, and Uprudus Hossain struggles to cope.
“The heat has made me feel really sick this year,” said the 74-year-old woman. “It's so hot I feel sick. I can't even cool down.”
Her story is documented in a new report by Climate Rights International, a nonprofit that monitors and advocates for climate and human rights, which examines the impacts and risks of extreme heat from a human rights perspective.
Around the world, people of all ages and backgrounds are at risk of heat-related harm, while governments and companies are failing to meet their obligations under international human rights law to protect their citizens from rising temperatures and extreme heat caused by climate change.
“Accelerating global warming is causing rising temperatures and heat waves of unprecedented frequency, intensity and duration around the world, creating a human rights crisis that requires urgent action by governments, businesses and all other levels responsible for human health and well-being,” the report said.
Schools had to be closed in New Delhi and other parts of northern India last week as temperatures reached nearly 50 degrees Celsius.
“Extreme heat claims hundreds of thousands of lives every year, closes schools and exacerbates food and water shortages,” said Linda Lakdeer, legal director at Climate Rights International. “As climate change intensifies, the devastating impacts of rising temperatures will only worsen, but governments and companies must act now to protect people.”
The hottest year on record
The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record. “The record illustrates a disappointing trend of rising global average temperatures. The past nine years have been the hottest on record, and each of those years saw global average temperatures more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels,” the report said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated with confidence that human-induced climate change is the primary cause of the recent increase in average temperatures. Human-induced climate change also plays a large role in heat waves.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA) Initiative has concluded that many recent heatwaves have become significantly more likely due to climate change: the heatwave that hit much of Asia in April 2023, causing deaths, hospitalizations, and school closures, became 30 times more likely due to climate change.
The WWA concluded that the deadly heatwaves that occurred in the Sahel and West Africa in March and April 2024 “would not have occurred” without human-induced climate change, while the scorching heatwave that occurred in western North America in June 2022 was “virtually impossible” without human-induced climate change.
Temperature rise and human rights
According to the report, extreme heat and heat events threaten a range of human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water, education and a healthy environment.
Those most at risk include children, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, the poor, outdoor workers and those who are already marginalized.
Some groups, such as people with chronic diseases or those taking certain medications, may be biologically more susceptible to the effects of extreme heat than others. Other groups, such as women, people in prison, immigrants, the poor, and people living in social isolation, may be more vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat due to social factors.
People who work outdoors or in factories or other indoor spaces not designed for heating are also at increased risk due to their exposure to higher temperatures. The International Labor Organization recently estimated that at least 2.1 billion workers are exposed to excessive heat each year, resulting in millions of occupational injuries and approximately 19,000 deaths.
“When I do physical work like washing cars, my whole body shakes and I sometimes feel dizzy,” Muhammad Yusuf, who runs a car washer in Karachi, told Climate Rights International. “I get tired easily, but I have to work because I won't be able to earn a living if I don't.”
People living in cities are at increased risk of exposure to extreme heat due in part to the urban heat island effect – a phenomenon in which some areas of a city absorb and retain more heat than surrounding areas due to the concentration of pavement, buildings and other urban features.
The researchers documented differences of more than 6°C between some urban areas and the surrounding rural areas in both high- and low-income countries. The report cited a study that assessed data from more than 13,000 cities around the world and found that urban heat exposure increased by nearly 200% between 1983 and 2016.
By 2050, 68% of the world's population is expected to live in urban areas. “As the urban population grows, so will the number of people at risk from heat extremes.”
The heat hits the poor hardest
Across all groups, heat will place the greatest burden on the poorest, who have the fewest resources to adapt.
Heat exposure over the past decade was more than 40 percent higher in countries in the bottom income quartile compared to those in the top quartile, and “people in these low-income countries will face greater challenges in adapting to rising temperatures than those in higher-income countries, in part due to unequal access to cooling.”
The nine countries with the highest number of people at increased heat-related risk due to a lack of cooling are India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mozambique, Sudan and Brazil.
“The intersecting climate and human rights crises will be increasingly challenging. Global temperatures are likely to continue to rise due to record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, deforestation, and cyclical, naturally occurring El Niño weather phenomena,” the report says.
Studies and models predict that global average temperatures will reach or exceed 1.5°C much more quickly than originally projected, and that levels of warming will likely be much higher than 1.5°C unless countries step up and implement their greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Without urgent and effective action, the report says, large parts of the world “are likely to become simply uninhabitable, resulting in widespread mortality, large-scale human displacement, or both.”
Failure to act on climate change also poses existential risks to future generations: By 2100, temperatures will have risen so much that in parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, just a few hours outside could exceed “the upper limit of survivability even in ideal conditions: perfect health, complete inactivity, complete shade, no clothing, and unlimited drinking water,” according to a 2020 study published in Science Advances.
Heat Action Plan
There is growing knowledge about steps that governments (national, provincial and local), employers and those who run care homes, schools, prisons and other institutions can take to reduce the risks that extreme heat poses to people. “But many are woefully unprepared and their failure to act will have devastating consequences for the people they are meant to protect.”
National and local governments should adopt and implement heat action plans to guide heat wave preparedness and emergency response. “As part of any heat action plan, governments should establish a designated chief heat officer to coordinate heat-related risk mitigation and management efforts across government agencies and ensure that activities are adequately funded.”
“Governments should also invest in and maintain effective heatwave early warning systems. These systems must be designed to reach those most at risk.”
To protect workers, all governments should enact legally binding heat stress standards for indoor and outdoor workers based on actual weather conditions, in line with international best practice standards, and “businesses should protect workers from heat even in the absence of laws requiring them to do so.”
Improving access to cooling is essential, but increasing the number of air conditioners, most of which currently run on fossil fuels, creates its own climate problems. Passive cooling strategies that governments and businesses can invest in include heat-reflective roofs, increasing urban green space and trees, ventilated walkways, and the use of permeable or lightweight paving. “Where active cooling is viable, it is important to transition to sustainable cooling with clean energy.”
Companies should develop and enforce strict policies to protect all workers from heat illness, and conduct due diligence in their own operations and supply chains to determine whether employees are at risk of human rights abuses due to extreme heat, and take steps to mitigate any identified risks.
“Heat management should not be seen as a policy choice that we wait for governments and companies to decide to act or invest in,” Lakhdhir added.
“Heat protection is a human right and imposes legal responsibility on governments and companies.”
