Climate Change Amnesty International

It’s easy to take our planet for granted until we see the human cost of its degradation: hunger, displacement, unemployment, illness and deaths.

Millions of people are already suffering from the catastrophic effects of extreme weather disasters exacerbated by climate change – from prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa to devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Scorching temperatures have caused deadly heatwaves in Europe and wildfires in South Korea, Algeria and Croatia. There has been severe flooding in Pakistan, while a prolonged and intense drought in Madagascar has left 1 million people with very limited access to adequate food.

The devastation that climate change is causing and will continue to cause means it is code red for humanity. But there is still time. The world’s leading scientific body for the assessment of climate change – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – warns that global greenhouse gas emissions must ‘peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030 if we are to limit climate change to 1.5°C and avoid complete catastrophe.