Where climate burdens fall heaviest: Nations with lightest emissions

In the crowded capital city of Dakar, jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, Senegal’s summer rains came in torrents. Rushing water became waist-high in some places; pedestrians hired horse-drawn carts to carry them across streets. Three people died in the deluge. 

Elsewhere this year, the toll was worse. Record floods in Nigeria displaced some 1.4 million people and killed hundreds. And in Pakistan, relief efforts are still underway after the deadliest floods in the country’s history. Whole communities were displaced and crop planting disrupted by deluges that, according to a recent media briefing by the country’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, have affected 1 in 7 Pakistanis.

Meanwhile, the Horn of Africa is facing the worst drought in decades – with millions facing severe food insecurity, according to aid workers – amid exceptionally dry weather for much of the world. 

All of this is giving increasing urgency to a long known, but often ignored, aspect to the gathering that started this weekend in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.