Climate apartheid in Palestine

Abstract

This summer has been one of the hottest on record, according to European climate researchers. Unprecedented temperatures were recorded across the globe accompanied by an increase in extreme weather events. These included the devastating Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas and Cyclone Idai in southern Africa, which killed over a thousand people and displaced an estimated 617,000 people across Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also recently presented a report stating that we have twelve years to limit warming before certain global climate disaster, which would displace and kill millions. Faced with impending climate catastrophe, environmental issues have come to the fore in debate amongst politicians, activists, NGOs and scientists. Climate change is a political question, highlighting questions of social inequality, uneven resource distribution and economic exploitation.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Palestine. Palestine is in one of the hottest regions of the world and is on course to experience even greater warming over the coming years.