Laurie Goering

In nations from Somalia to Pakistan, the world's poorest and most fragile communities are facing the harshest impacts of climate change - a reality that is driving worsening poverty, potential for conflict and resentment against major polluters.

But finding innovative ways to get finance directly to those communities, to build resilience that is based on local knowledge and desires, could save cash and lives, and protect a global humanitarian system increasingly overwhelmed by surging need.

Heatwaves are breaking records around the world, from India and Thailand to the normally mild U.S. Pacific Northwest, with scientists predicting that global average temperatures will likely surge to record levels in the next five years.

In particular, a combination of a new El Niño weather pattern starting this June and the continued release of climate-changing emissions will "push global temperatures into uncharted territory," scientists predicted in a report released Wednesday.

As global hunger swiftly rises - by more than a third last year - curbing it will require not growing more food but rethinking broader systems of trade and aid, farming's heavy reliance on fossil fuels, food waste and meat eating, experts said.

Farmers today grow sufficient crops to feed twice the current population - but nearly a third of food produced globally is spoiled or thrown away, said Philip Lymbery, the chief executive of Compassion in World Farming International.

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In the Indigenous community where Rukka Sombolinggi grew up, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, strict rules governed how a slaughtered buffalo's meat was divided.

The elderly, the sick and other vulnerable people received choice pieces - the head, the liver and the small intestine, considered a particular delicacy once roasted.

Pledges to slash climate-changing emissions to nearly zero now cover more than 90% of the world's economy. But emissions themselves are still rising, despite scientists warning they must plunge by nearly half this decade to keep people safe.

Dealing with climate change through voluntary commitments, especially by businesses, "has simply not worked", noted Arianne Griffith, a lawyer and corporate accountability expert with advocacy group Global Witness. 

Alongside the Brazilian Amazon's vast soy and cattle ranching economy - a major driver of deforestation - sits an older, more sustainable system of families and cooperatives producing forest products including the palm fruit açaí, rubber and pharmaceutical ingredients.

That "bioeconomy", with its legions of small producers, including Indigenous communities, receives just a fraction of the flood of investment pouring into expanding soy and cattle.

Human activities - from destroying forests to burning gas, oil and coal for energy - are disrupting the rainfall the world depends on, fuelling huge economic, health and social stability threats, scientists and economists warned on Friday.

"We've built our economies on the assumption we can rely on precipitation," said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact

After Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, European nations faced an onslaught of crippling new challenges - including working out how to swiftly replace the Russian gas that supplied 40% of their energy needs and kept families warm in the winter.

A year later, use of dirtier fossil fuels such as coal has expanded to help fill the gap, governments have spent billions subsidising heating bills as gas companies reap record profits, and countries are competing to build terminals to import gas from new suppliers, from the United States to Qatar and Nigeria.

When Japan shut down its nuclear power reactors in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, it asked its citizens to conserve scarce energy, such as by using fans instead of air conditioning during summer heat.

But that public-spirited conservation push - the kind of call being made across Europe this winter in response to gas shortages following Russia's invasion of Ukraine - is estimated to have caused 7,710 premature heat-related deaths each year, most among Japan's elderly, a new study has found.