This is an excerpt of the Sustainable Switch Climate Focus newsletter, where we make sense of companies and governments grappling with climate change on Fridays. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here.
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Today’s newsletter focuses on the need for aid in times of crisis as tens of thousands of families were left homeless after a powerful earthquake in Afghanistan and urgently need shelter as winter approaches. Reuters reporters also headed to Cameroon where a lack of aid funding has led to a growing number of malaria deaths.
The IFRC said its Emergency Appeal of CHF 25 million ($31.37 million) has only received one-third of the funding needed.
Without more money it will not be able to scale up much-needed shelter, food and protection for families and women, it said.
"With more than 1.3 million people directly and indirectly affected, many families are still living in tents, makeshift shelters, or under the open sky," the IFRC said in a statement.
Climate change has also been increasing the frequency of droughts and erratic rainfall in Afghanistan, according to aid agencies, which said that Kabul is among the most water-stressed cities in Asia, with shortages fuelling disease, malnutrition and school dropouts.
The Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent Kabul-based research group, in a report this month warned the city's groundwater could run out by 2030, with other Afghan cities also running dry.
The crisis is deepening inequality, as poor families spend up to 30% of their income on tanker water while the wealthy dig ever-deeper private wells.
In Cameroon, Reuters reporters travelled to its northern region – where the U.S. had played a leading role in the malaria response for nearly a decade – to document how the sudden aid cuts are contributing to delayed malaria diagnoses, inadequate treatment and a growing number of deaths.
Click here for the full Reuters report.
WHAT TO WATCH
Click here for a Reuters video to learn more about Namibia’s wildfires sweeping across its Etosha National Park, which have burned through bushes and grasslands, leaving animal bones across fields. Click here for a Reuters article on how the wildfires are affecting the country’s tourism industry.
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
11.8 billion euros
CLIMATE LENS
The Philippines is still dealing with the aftermath of a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck the island earlier this week – the deadliest to hit the country since 2013 – whilst still reeling from last week’s Tropical Storm Bualoi and Super Typhoon Ragasa.
Sustainable Switch Climate Focus was edited by Jane Merriman
