Can governments keep their people safe as global temperatures rise?

BONN, Germany, Nov 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The world is on track for a 3-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures - a level not seen in 4 million years - but most government plans to help people adapt to coming changes still assume much smaller temperature hikes, experts say.

A woman in Bangladesh looks at the ever-rising sea near her home.

Under the Paris Agreement on climate change, governments have pledged to keep global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

And they have drawn up plans to help cities, agriculture and economies cope with worsening floods, droughts, storms and sea level rise based on that.

But "we are not safe, because we are moving towards a 3 degrees world, and our governments are not ready," said Harjeet Singh, global lead on climate change for ActionAid International, at the U.N. climate talks in Bonn this week.

"We don't even have a process by which to assess whether we're safe or not," he charged. "And we're moving towards a very dangerous world where things are going to get more and more scary and complex.”

A temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius could result in large-scale sea level rise, even more, intense and frequent natural disasters, and "dramatic changes" in the availability of water, which would hit food production, predicted Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Read the Thompson Reuters Foundation story by Alex Whiting - “Can governments keep their people safe as global temperatures rise?”