Climate Facts: Global GDP could contract by 50% due to warmer temperatures

The complexities of climate change and its associated jargon can prove difficult to digest.

TheCable’s quick climate facts will help demystify these concepts through easy-to-understand and straight-to-the-point explanations.

Here are some to keep at the tip of your fingers:

• The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) says 2.2 million Nigerian students experienced school disruption due to flooding in 2024.

• The organisation said at least 242 million students — from pre-primary to upper secondary education — in 85 countries had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events in the same year.

• UNICEF added that over 107 million children in Africa are already out of school, and that climate-related disruptions in 2024 put an additional 20 million children at risk of dropping out. 

• The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has declared 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.

• UN said glaciers and ice sheets hold about 70 percent of the world’s freshwater and that their rapid loss depicts an urgent environmental and humanitarian crisis.

• A study by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and the University of Exeter, says the global economy could face a 50 percent decline in gross domestic product (GDP), except immediate action is taken to tackle the growing climate crisis.

• The report said planetary ecosystem is threatened by climate change and nature loss and that the world’s GDP could contract by 50 percent between 2070 and 2090.