We need to prepare ourselves for potential global calamities: Andrew Elder

He said no nation was prepared well to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"None of us were well prepared enough to deal with it," he said, while addressing a press conference in Kolkata.

He is currently visiting the city to participate in the two-day Medicon International conference

"Global calamities do happen. This is the message which we should take from it," he said.

He said: "There are other global calamities looming which we are not perhaps taken seriously. Climate change is one of them."

"The arrival of a virus like COVID on a global scale should remind us that we need to prepare for other potential global calamities," he said.

The impact of climate change on health if carbon emissions remain high, could be up to twice as deadly as cancer in some parts of the world, according to new data released recently by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Climate Impact Lab.

The study gives the example of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where under a scenario of very high emissions by 2100, additional deaths due to climate change could rise to nearly twice the country’s current annual death rate from all cancers, and 10 times its annual road traffic fatalities.

“Because of human action, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is reaching dangerous levels, driving Earth’s temperatures higher and amplifying the frequency of intensity of extreme events”, says the newly launched Human Climate Horizons platform, adding that without concerted and urgent action, climate change will further exacerbate inequalities, and uneven development.