Experts predict health catastrophe in 2050 due to global warming: what it would look like and what would happen in the world

Humanity may face a bleak future. This is what experts from the World Economic Forum (WEF) and that’s it The planet continues to record excessively high temperatures, caused by the global warming and pollution.

Last State of the Climate Report 2023 of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established that in 2023, three historical records will be broken on the planet: that of greenhouse gas concentrations, high temperatures in the atmosphere and temperatures at the surface of the oceans.

And if this continues, WEF researchers assure that By 2050, the planet could experience a global health catastrophe, where “the world’s most vulnerable people will pay the highest price, as climate change wreaks its worst damage.”

What could happen to humanity in this situation? Are we in time to avoid this climate change catastrophe?

This year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published the report entitled Quantifying the impact of climate change on human healthwhere a group of experts analyzed What could be the future of the planet following global warming, if it continues at the same rate?

And the prognosis was bleak: in terms of health, At least 14.5 million people could lose their lives by 2050 due to global warming, and tens of millions more could face long-term illness, disability or displacement. especially people living in developing countries.

In addition, 500 million people could be exposed to malaria and Zika diseases that could spread to North America and Europe.

In this regard, the WEF stressed that People living in more vulnerable countries will suffer more from natural disasters caused – and also intensified – by global warming, such as droughts and floods.

Regarding the above, a recent study published in the journal Nature explain that The La Niña phenomenon could be influenced by global warming: if the climate remains as it is now, we could have “historically consecutive La Niña episodes with greater frequency.”

In other words, thanks to global warming, the phenomenon La Niña could occur more frequently on the planet, and the intensity of its consequences could also be affected.

“Our result of “A likely future increase in the multi-year frequency of La Niña reinforces calls for an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate negative impacts.” wrote the authors of the research.

Furthermore, experts from the World Economic Forum have assured that due to these health problems caused by climate change, “The global economy and health system will face losses of more than $12.5 trillion, further limiting the response capacity.”

“And in a final painful misfortuneThe populations that will bear the brunt of climate disasters will reside in regions of the world that are less economically able to alleviate the pain and less responsible for warming.

With these predictions, experts are calling for significant progress to limit the impact of global warming on human health.

The solution is obvious, but difficult to implement: reduce emissions.

According to the Paris Agreement, which entered into force on November 4, 2016, all countries that have signed it —193 nations, plus the European Union— They must fight to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The idea is for each country to limit its greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible by the middle of this century.

However, the World Economic Forum has lost some optimism: “While there is still hope for reducing emissions, “Policymakers and the health sector must prepare for the likelihood that we will fail to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.”

The most realistic scenario is that warming increases by between 2.5 and 2.7°C, according to the United Nations Environment Programme .

However, we would still have time to avoid a health catastrophe due to the repercussions of global warming. For that, The researchers proposed three strategies that policymakers around the world should prioritize:

1. Focus on manufacturing local health systems are climate resilient.
2. Driving innovation in healthcare, life sciences and academia in order to combat climate-related diseases.
3. Allocate government resources and adopt policies that enable a robust global response in both developed and developing countries.

For the first point, the experts assured that Health systems must be prepared to contain “large-scale and potentially protracted health crises.” And right now, many health systems around the world are not resilient and that could be a problem in the future.

“We define resilience as the ability of a system to avoid and contain a crisis, to stabilize once a crisis has occurred, and ultimately to recover. “We saw first-hand the lack of resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hospitals around the world were overwhelmed by demand and staff absenteeism.”

On the second point, the WEF stated that Research and development in the private and academic sectors “are the cornerstone of building climate-resilient health systems and discovering new vaccines and treatments.”

“To unlock this potential and secure long-term commitments from the private sector, many more targeted research grants are needed, as well as a reduction in bureaucracy on longer-term projects, such as vaccination efforts during COVID-19.”

And, for the third point, the specialists have emphasized the importance of public funding to support points one and two, such as building climate-resilient health systems and supporting innovation to produce medicines, medical devices and digital health technologies.

“To strengthen this commitment, nations should include among their Nationally Determined Contributions to combat climate change a commitment to support addressing health challenges and ensuring a just climate transition.”

“The path forward to building climate-resilient health systems is complex and requires coordinated actions across multiple areas. We are running out of time to implement them, so policymakers and industry must act quickly.