The earthquake in Turkey is a humanitarian tragedy that has again shown that disaster risks increase with neglect, corruption, and poverty. Destruction is always associated with poorly built infrastructure and an uninformed population.

More than 270 million Indonesians live in an emerging economy with severe deficiencies in access to water and sanitation, health, and poverty.  We have been in direct contact with these endemic problems with our projects for the past five years. The government plans foster collaboration between administrations, institutions, and companies to tackle the significant challenge of financing the solutions and are a hope for demonstrating the importance of taking on the SDG 17 targets to attain SDG 6: universal water and sanitation. 

Concurrent droughts, occurring at the same time in different regions of the world, are the most concerning phenomena for ending hunger. Their effects, combined with economic crises, wars and political instability, are often devastating in humanitarian terms for the poorest countries and have dire consequences on a global scale. Climate science is redoubling its efforts to improve forecasting. But international political action is essential.

A new aid project brings us closer to the plight of Honduran farmers who, more than a year after being hit by hurricanes, have still not been able to recover from the destruction of their crops and their precarious water supply and sanitation facilities. At the epicenter of Central American migration, Honduras faces a future compromised by political instability, violence, and the climate crisis.

The increase in torrential rains expected with climate change increases the risks of flooding almost everywhere in the world. 587 million poor people are the most defenseless and find it much more difficult to recover from a disaster. Among them, 132 million live below the extreme poverty line (USD 1.9 per day). They are the most vulnerable to a disaster caused by rainfall and poor land management.

The alteration of ocean dynamics in the North Atlantic Ocean is a factor that adds uncertainty to climate change forecasts. It raises alarm bells about a possible turning point in the water cycle with irreversible negative consequences and proves the close relationship between all factors that determine life on Earth.

The pandemic and the climate crisis have shown us that we do not react to warnings until we are faced with the evidence. We face a new age of uncertainty that forces us to adapt to the constant changes that will arise. Now, the existing warning is that risks will be collective and unavoidably shared. Science and solidarity are our key assets to move forward.

The spread of the coronavirus pandemic has coincided with the confirmation of the increasing deterioration of climate data. Droughts, heat waves and violent phenomena are the source of famines, increase poverty and threaten to cause more damage than coronavirus in the long term. Both the health and climate crises, albeit with different time scales, are universal and require immediate action.