Beyza SerenIn the summer of 2025, the climate crisis is manifesting with sharp contrasts. In Boston, residents swelter under a record 39°C heatwave, while in Athens, similar temperatures turn uninsulated homes into ovens.
Albania’s rivers have all but disappeared under relentless sun. In Portugal, the mercury hit a searing 47°C in Mora last week, among the highest ever recorded in the country.
Parched terrain and suffocating air have turned the Mediterranean basin into a stage for wildfires, erupting with devastating intensity.
In Greece, over 160 firefighters, five aircraft and 46 fire trucks were deployed to combat a major blaze on the island of Evia, forcing the overnight evacuation of entire villages including Tsakeoi and Limnionas.
Fires have also spread near Athens and scorched parts of Türkiye, Syria and Germany, advancing faster than emergency services can contain them.
Such wildfires are no longer confined to the summer months. Even in the dead of winter, the climate crisis offers no reprieve.
Back in January, California faced an unusually early and destructive fire season. The Eaton and Palisades fires swept through communities across the state, forcing evacuations and destroying thousands of structures amid record-low humidity and bone-dry vegetation.
According to the climate experts, these extremes are no longer anomalies, they are becoming the new normal. Yet the burden of climate, especially heat, is not borne equally.
From the Western Balkans to South Asia, geography, infrastructure, and income dictate how hot it gets, and how survivable that heat becomes – from one social class to another.
Cool is a class privilege
A recent heat-mapping study in Western Sydney underscores how rising temperatures expose deep social and spatial divides.
On the hottest days, temperature differences of more than 10°C are recorded across the city, depending on tree cover, building materials and wealth.
Leafy, affluent neighbourhoods remain markedly cooler. Low-income suburbs, meanwhile, with scant vegetation and densely packed housing, trap and retain dangerous levels of heat.
Simple cooling interventions like insulation or window blinds are affordable. Yet fewer than a third of renters who request such upgrades receive them. Yet there is the talk around "adaptation".
Climate adaptation might have become a buzzword at international summits, the on-the-ground reality often tells a different story. The measures needed to prepare for and adjust to heatwaves, droughts, and floods, adaptation is meant to reduce vulnerability and build resilience. It demands commitment to the resources.
“Public climate finance is shrinking even as the need explodes,” says Dr Mizan Khan, Technical Lead of the LDC Universities’ Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC) affiliated with the Saxena Center at Brown University.
Global climate finance hit a record $1.46 trillion in 2022, which is an extremely inflated calculation, even its overwhelming share - more than 95% of it is invested in the developed countries. Dr. Khan says that this is still far below what’s needed. The Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) estimates that annual funding must rise to $7.5 trillion by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5°C by the end of this century.
“What we need is 20 times more than what currently exists. Right now, only about five cents of every climate dollar goes to adaptation, and that’s not just inadequate, it’s unjust,” Dr Khan adds.
Without a dramatic increase in funding, he warns, adaptation will remain “an afterthought,” even as heat becomes the climate’s most immediate and lethal threat.
CPI analysis indicates that in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) alone, annual adaptation finance will need to reach $212 billion by 2030, and $239 billion between 2031 and 2050.
Scorched South Asia
In 2024, scorching temperatures swept across EMDEs. Heat inequality is claiming thousands of lives in poorer countries and communities, as global temperatures surge to levels not seen in as much as 120,000 years.
From Bangladesh to Thailand, record highs disrupted daily life, reaching 50°C in parts of India, 52°C in Pakistan’s Sindh region, and 53°C in the Philippines. Health alerts were issued. Humidity made even minimal exertion unbearable.
In countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, and Afghanistan, up to 60% of urban residents live in housing without reliable electricity or water.
South Asia, the region that is home to over a fifth of the world’s population, is grappling with rapid urbanisation, limited access to cooling, and sprawling informal settlements.
“These people mostly work outdoors,” Dr Khan says. “Informal labour makes up 25 to 50 percent of GDP in low-income countries. They’re exposed all day—street vendors, farmers, construction workers. They can’t just step into an office or switch on the AC. For them, this is a daily survival issue.”
Often, their suffering goes unrecorded.
“In the last 13 months, there will be thousands and thousands of stories of poor people dying in heat that will never be told,” Dr Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute told The Guardian.
The climate crisis is also compounding existing disparities in gender, geography and health. Women often face income losses and increased caregiving burdens during extreme heat. Urban poor communities, concentrated in areas with little greenery, are more exposed to the “heat island” effect.
Even Bhutan, a carbon-negative country among the least responsible for climate change, and dedicated to climate mitigation, is suffering the fallout. In its mountainous regions, glacial lake outbursts are becoming an existential threat.
As a recent UN report puts it, climate change is a borderless crisis, and those who have contributed the least are often the ones bearing the greatest burden.
“Active inaction of climate diplomacy”
Dr Khan points to the repeated failure of COP summits to produce meaningful results: no surge in adaptation funding, no serious investment in disaster risk reduction, and little attention to slow-onset threats such as extreme heat.
“Negotiations have become a process of active inaction,” says Dr Khan, offering a sharp rebuke of climate diplomacy. “Heat doesn’t flood cities or topple buildings. It kills silently, especially the poor.”
This invisibility, he adds, permits governments to defer meaningful action. To break the cycle, he proposes a radical shift in global financing: solidarity levies on military budgets, international aviation, and shipping industries, sectors that contribute massively to climate change yet remain under-taxed.
Each year, governments spend roughly $2.7 trillion on military expenditures worldwide. “We spend $2.7 trillion on perceived threats, but the climate is real,” Dr Khan adds.
The Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) echoes this call, advocating for climate finance grounded in human rights: public funding over private risk-sharing, grant-based rather than loan-based support, debt relief and progressive green taxes to ensure both equity and accessibility.
“Yet without generational change,” Dr Khan says, “such bold ideas may never be realised.”
As the planet heats faster than policy can adapt, the gap between climate ambition and lived reality is growing dangerously wide. The question now is not just whether the world will act, but whether it can act fast enough.
