About ten thousand newborns have died prematurely in the past two decades because of human-caused global warming, a new analysis published on Monday suggests.

The studyby the website Carbon Brief, reports that one in three newborns who died from the abnormal heat would have survived if climate change had not pushed temperatures above normal levels. The study looked at low- and middle-income countries between 2001 and 2019, and the findings equate to 10,000 lost children a year, it said.

The current level of global warming is about 1.2 °C; The world is currently on a trajectory to reach 2.8°C, says the United Nations.

Romario Dohmann, of the River Plate Evangelical Church in Argentina, is at the COP29 climate talks, which began on Monday last week in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“The Bible teaches that God put humans on earth to care for it, emphasizing our collective role as stewards of it rather than exploiters,” he said. “This stewardship entails the duty to protect and care for creation. The climate emergency we face today is an important sign that we have failed to be good stewards of God’s creation. We are called upon most urgently to change our ways and work for climate justice.”

The two-week summit in Baku is at an end. Government ministers from around the world are due to arrive this week; At the top of the agenda is the task of agreeing on a new climate finance target.

Participating countries agreed that rich nations in the global north, with their history of high carbon emissions, have a moral and legal responsibility to provide finance to the global south, which is bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. This money is to be used to slow and ultimately reverse climate change, deal with the loss and damage caused by extreme weather and finance the clean energy transition in poorer countries.

Henrik Grape, coordinator of the World Council of Churches’ working group on climate change, said there needed to be greater urgency in the negotiation rooms in Baku: “Today we live in a climate emergency and yet COP29 acts as if we have had all of them. world time for transition. But we need a transformation if we are to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change. And this transformation must start among the richest ten percent of the world, because they are responsible for 50 percent of emissions.”

Climate talks are expected to intensify in the coming days with the arrival of government ministers who make the final decisions. UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, arrived in Baku on Sunday. The UK has been praised by people in climate-vulnerable countries for its new pledge, made last week at COP29, to cut emissions by 81% by 2035 from 1990 levels (News, November 15).

Joe Ware is senior climate journalist at Christian Aid.