World leaders, heads of business and civil society members will descend on the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh on Sunday for the United Nations Climate Conference (COP27).

The climate crisis increasing its intensity and reach, with droughts, floods and heatwaves becoming regular occurrences in both hemispheres. This has triggered a global conversation on how to help people, ecosystems and economies to adapt to a new reality known as climate change adaptation.

The window to take urgent climate action is closing rapidly. Unless countries dramatically scale up their efforts to counter the climate crisis, the world faces a global catastrophe, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned today.

It was a late evening in April 2018 when Philbert Ntaciyica, exhausted from the non-stop heavy rain battering his roof, wondered if his farm would survive this latest storm.

When the 12-hour downpour finally eased in Nzove, a village perched on a hillside in north-eastern Burundi, Ntaciyica emerged from his home to find no crops or topsoil. All had been washed downhill by the deluge, and along with them, his livelihood. 

24 October marks United Nations Day, the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the UN Charter entered into force. In the past 77 years, the UN has worked to maintain international peace and security, promote social progress, improve living standards and support human rights.

The destructive impacts of the climate crisis are being felt around the world. This year, unprecedented floods have left one-third of Pakistan underwater, people and animals are dying from climate-related droughts in East Africa, and China is experiencing the most severe heat wave ever recorded.

In the aftermath of intense rains during Nepal’s 2019 monsoon season, farmer Geeta Tharu found her house submerged in a pool of water. The rains destroyed Tharu’s grain stores, which eventually plunged her family into debt.

In the Mpanda Commune in north-western Burundi, a long ribbon of rubber – about a metre high and two metres wide – snakes through a farmer’s field before disappearing into foliage.

A woman is sowing her crops alongside the structure, which is bulging with water and circles much of the commune.

Heat records continue to topple across the globe as concurrent heatwaves bake multiple countries.

From the United States to Europe and China to Japan, extreme temperatures have soared for weeks, killing hundreds of people, sparking wildfires in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Greece and displacing thousands of residents, as many seek refuge in public cooling centers.