Looming climate disasters in ’20 will deepen Covid crisis: Experts

Climate disasters this year, including Cyclone Amphan expected to hit India’s eastern coast on Wednesday, are likely to compound the problems related to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 is also likely to be the warmest on record, a paper published on May 15 in British Nature journal has warned.

The paper by MIT researchers has listed heat waves in north India, floods in the delta regions of West Bengal and Bangladesh, wildfires in Siberia, bushfires in Australia, floods in Africa and hurricanes in the US among possible disasters that are climate-attributable risks. The risks are likely to overlap with the Covid 19 crisis over the next 12 to 18 months.

“These compound risks will exacerbate and be exacerbated by the unfolding economic crisis and long-standing socioeconomic and racial disparities...,” said the paper.

Twenty-two people were killed in separate road accidents in five states on Tuesday, taking the death toll in such incidents involving migrant labourers to at least 162 during the lockdown imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

Nine people died in Bihar, four in Maharashtra, six in two separate accidents in Uttar Pradesh, one in Jharkhand, and two in as many incidents in Odisha.

According to data collected by HT reporters, at least 162 migrants have died in such accidents since the beginning of the lockdown on March 25.

In the past fortnight alone, 42 migrant labourers have died in two major accidents. On May 8, a goods train ran over 16 people who were sleeping on the tracks in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad on their way back to their village in Madhya Pradesh.

Then on May 16, 26 workers died after the truck they were travelling in rammed another vehicle in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya district.

The nationwide lockdown imposed on March 25 left migrant workers without jobs and a way to get back home.

It was only on May 1 that the government started running trains.