Climate change can hurt you TODAY!

By Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood

Last year, around this time, an Indian friend mourned that climate change had turned the rain cycle topsy-turvy in his little hometown and ruined the precious short season of Alphonso mango, the pride of the Indian mango season.

But there is an even more sinister reason to fear climate change – the same weather upset that ruins our favourite fruits and foods can also favour the conditions needed by a pathogen―particularly in terms of average temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity and positively affect its ability to survive and spread.

Mosquitoes and flies will breed more numerously and spread disease, for example.

Milder winters and warmer summers make it easier for infectious diseases to expand into new geo - graphic areas and infect more people.

To understand climate change’s impact, it’s important to understand that diseases spread— through contact with animals, insects, fungi, and water – and all are impacted by a change in weather.

Sociologically, poverty and displacement are the insidious long - term result of climate change.

If an entire area where people lived before gets water-logged, then how can we expect them to continue to live there?

And if crop failure is a constant, then farming communities are likely to shut shop and migrate to cities and urban spaces.

Thus, we risk overcrowding of cities and the loss of vital communities which underpin our food security.

The oft-repeated example of small islands submerging under a rising tide of iceberg run-off is not as immediate as these issues, and it put things into perspective for us. Let us all pledge to be mindful of the environment before it is too late.