Extreme heat is putting pregnant women and their newborns at growing risk, United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell is expected to warn on Monday.
Speaking at the “pre-COP” summit in Nadi, Fiji, Stiell will cite a new survey showing that more than two-thirds of health professionals across five continents have witnessed complications linked to extreme heat over the past five years.
“Rising temperatures mean rising danger in pregnancy,” he is expected to say.
“Climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, and maternal complications.”
“The picture is clear and very disturbing: as extreme heat worsens, pregnancy and birth are now a new faultline in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal,” Stiell will say.
“This faultline must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.”
Scientists warn that climate change is intensifying extreme weather events and causing heat records to be broken with increasing frequency.
About 33 countries stretching from western Europe to the Sahel and Central America recorded their hottest July since records began this year, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The survey of 1,000 midwives and doctors in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe was commissioned by the charitable foundation Wellcome.
Its chairwoman, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, said mothers and babies were facing growing risks as climate change drives more extreme heat.
“Extreme heat is an invisible killer, but pregnant women must not be invisible. Leaders have the evidence and solutions they need — now they must act,” Gillard said.
The survey found that nearly all the midwives and doctors questioned had cared for mothers or babies experiencing health problems they associated with extreme heat.
About one-third of respondents said they had seen cases of low birth weight or restricted growth, feeding difficulties, dehydration or heat-related illness linked to extreme heat.
Stiell is expected to tell delegates at the pre-COP summit that “pregnancy should be a time of hope”.
“But for millions, it is becoming a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk.”
The pre-COP31 summit in Fiji and the remote coral atoll nation of Tuvalu is being seen by Pacific leaders as an opportunity to draw global attention to communities on the frontline of climate change.
The meeting is a precursor to the larger United Nations-backed climate summit, COP31, which will be held next month in Turkey.
AFP
