A Saudi visa crackdown left Hajj pilgrims feeling unable to ask for help in a killer heatwave, survivors and the families of the dead told Climate Home.
For the first time this year, Saudi authorities required all pilgrims to wear identification on a “Nusuk Card” around their neck, allowing security forces to check they had the Hajj visa. Banners and phone messages warned against attending Hajj without this visa and many breaching these rules were deported.
A government-controlled Youtube channel said before the Hajj that the Nusuk Card “enables access to urgent medical care” and one survivor told Climate Home that, despite feeling tired and dizzy, he felt unable to ask for medical help for fear of punishment and deportation because he only had a tourist visa.
Temperatures in Mecca reached 51.8C this year, an unusually high figure which Climatemeter scientists have said was “mostly exacerbated by human-driven climate change”.
Over 1,300 people died during the heatwave and more than four-fifths of them were without official permits, according to Saudi Health Minister Fahad Al-Jalajel. Foreign governments have largely blamed travel agents for facilitating these irregular pilgrimages, while the Saudi authorities and climate change have mostly escaped blame.
One of those without a permit was Ibrahim, a retired Egyptian head teacher. To dodge visa checks, he walked 19 km in the baking heat to Arafat, a sacred hill near Mecca. He told Climate Home that he had asked buses carrying pilgrims with permits to stop and take him “but no one stopped, no one helped us”.
#No_Hajj_without_a_permit because services are directly linked to it, and accessing the Holy Sites without a permit is a violation that merits legal consequences.#Makkah_and_Madinah_Eagerly_Await_You#No_Hajj_without_a_permit#Hajj_1445H pic.twitter.com/aapODeC018
— Ministry of Hajj and Umrah (@MoHU_En) May 22, 2024
Fahad Saeed, a Pakistani climate scientist with Climate Analytics, told Climate Home: “The Hajj pilgrimage is a profound reminder to every Muslim of equality in the eyes of God. Yet, the disparity in the safety of pilgrims based on their financial means starkly contradicts this spirit of equality.”
Two-tier system
The city of Mecca is where the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, was born and lived most of his life. One of the religion’s five central pillars is that all believers should, if they’re healthy and can afford it, visit the city at least once on a pilgrimage known as Hajj and carry out a series of rituals.
Since Muhammad’s time, Islam has expanded across the globe and is now the religion of about a quarter of the world’s people. As the Hajj takes place for a single five-day period each year, there are far more people wanting to take part than the city can handle. Over 1.5 million pilgrims arrived in Mecca for the event last June.
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Official visas to enter Mecca during the Hajj are rationed through a lottery system, working with specialist travel agencies. But some travel agents also advise pilgrims on how to enter Mecca without an official visa.
That was how Ibrahim, who had been saving up for the Hajj for thirty years, got to Mecca. He did not want to reveal his second name out of fear of the Saudi government’s punishment.
He told Climate Home that he couldn’t afford an official visa 500,000EGP ($10,000). He entered Saudi Arabia with a normal tourist one and, with the help of a tourism company, he was able to bribe his way through checkpoints into Mecca.
He found accommodation in the suburb of Al-Aziziyah but authorities quickly raided the area before the start of Hajj. Many pilgrims without official visas were fingerprinted and deported but Ibrahim was just driven out of the city towards Jeddah.
For 1,000 Riyals ($267), he found a taxi to take him back to Al-Aziziya where he hid until the first day of Hajj. This is the pilgrimage’s most important day when pilgrims spend a day next to Mount Arafat, where Prophet Muhammad delivered his Farewell Sermon. There, they pray and ask for forgiveness.
Most pilgrims get buses from Mecca to Arafat but, worried about soldiers searching these buses, Ibrahim and his companions made the 19 km journey on foot. When he got there, the area was crowded and the temperature reached nearly 50C (122F).
The 62-year old said he began to feel exhausted and dizzy even though he was not fasting that day. “My foot, which had undergone three surgeries before, felt like a piece of fire. I could not walk”, he said.
Standing up in the heat lessens the blood flow to the brain, which can cause fainting but also heart or kidney failures, explained Mike Tipton, a British professor who advises athletes and soldiers on heat.
Muslim worshippers make their way to cast stones as part of a symbolic stoning of the devil ritual on June 18, 2023. (Photo: Medhat Hajjaj/apaimages)
Ibrahim said that getting water for him was difficult and that he did not want to ask the clinics along the road to Arafat for medical help because of his lack of visa. “We saw the bodies of pilgrims on the road in need of help,” he said, “some of them were dead, some were suffering from heat exhaustion and no one was helping them”.
The claim that irregular pilgrims were denied help has been made by many, including the official spokesperson for pilgrims from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region Karwan Stoni, who told Agence France Presse they could not access air-conditioned spaces that the authorities had made available.
Ibrahim survived, completed his Hajj and returned to Egypt. But Jordanian cousins Tariq, 48, and Hossam Al-Bustanji, 52, were not so lucky. Their cousin Ahmed told Climate Home that their companions told him they died after walking about for seven or eight hours without any services.
“They fell and pleaded for water but no one helped them”, he said. “Their bodies were buried in Mecca and were not sent to Jordan despite our requests”.
Pilgrims receive a spray of water from volunteers in Mecca on June 17, 2024 (Photo: Arab World Press)
While irregular pilgrims had it worse, even those with official visas suffered and some died in the heat. Jordanian Rania Bassam told Climate Home her brother and his family went to Mecca, where he volunteered as a doctor.
She said they complained to her about the services provided and the extreme heat. Bassam’s brother later died in Arafat. “His body was identified by his fingerprint but we were prevented from seeing him and saying goodbye”, she said.
Tipton said that, while many of the dead were likely to be over 65-years old with existing heart problems, the heat can kill healthy young people too from heat stroke.
Without getting bodies into cold water, heat stroke can be a “runaway route to hypothermia with death occurring at [a core temperature of] 40-44C”.
Safer Hajj
Campaigners are appealing to Saudi authorities to take measures that would reduce the risk of mass deaths, especially as the situation is expected to get worse as the world warms.
A 2021 study published in Environmental Research Letters found that if the world warms by 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, heat stroke risk for pilgrims on the Hajj will be five times greater.
Heat expert Mike Tipton said that they should encourage people to sit down when they can, reduce any stress, fan people and cool their hands, feet and bodies down with cold water. But, he said, it’s difficult to look after so many people.
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Limiting numbers would help, he said, and that’s the route the authorities have been going down. Government reactions in Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world have been to prosecute and crack down on travel agents who encourage pilgrims to evade visa laws.
But that has not been enough to dissuade Ibrahim’s wife. Despite her husband’s ordeals, she is keen to follow in his footsteps next year, performing Hajj unofficially.
But speaking in their Giza home, Ibrahim warned her against the idea. “You will not be alive again if you go unofficially – either you go on an official Hajj or not at all”, he said.
(Reporting by Eman Muhammed and Joe Lo, editing by Joe Lo and Matteo Civillini)
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Saudi visa crackdown left heatwave-hit Hajj pilgrims scared to ask for help
An Lambrechts is a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International with extensive experience in biodiversity-related multilateral negotiations. She is the head of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 happening in Yerevan, Armenia.
In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. With COP17 starting in Yerevan, we are now halfway to the deadline, and according to the first Global Review of progress, countries are not on track to meet the biodiversity targets, and implementation must accelerate fast.
One of the main findings of the Global Review is that funding falls far short of the scale needed to halt and reverse nature loss. But the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity is not an absolute scarcity of capital – it is a profound public policy distortion.
The global economy currently spends roughly $30 destroying nature for every single dollar invested in its protection. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a staggering $2.4 trillion is spent in public subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and water use, while global investment in biodiversity conservation and restoration stands at a mere $220 billion.
Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17
Yet, discussions about how to close the biodiversity finance gap continue to claim that salvation lies in mobilising private capital, scaling offsets and “derisking” investments in nature. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of ecological stewardship and of the global financial architecture.
Biodiversity conservation is not a speculative investment portfolio – it is the foundation of human survival. The health of our planet is a non-monetisable, non-excludable public good. Expecting profit-seeking private capital to protect nature perpetuates the structural drivers of ecosystem destruction in the first place.
But if private market mechanisms cannot save biodiversity, where will the necessary public resources come from?
Money going to the wrong places
The answer lies in recovering the vast public wealth currently drained by cross-border tax abuse, financial secrecy and corporate impunity. Finance and environment ministers meeting in Yerevan must give a strong political signal that, to avert ecological breakdown, countries need to take swift action to reform global tax rules, eliminate harmful public subsidies and cancel unsustainable sovereign debts for the public revenues to end up where they belong.
Extractive sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, timber and mining continue business-as-usual, often heavily subsidised by public treasuries, while voluntary carbon and biodiversity offset markets pose a serious risk to nature conservation. Offset schemes have delivered only a negligible fraction of the funding needed to preserve ecosystems, allowing industries to continue with their destructive business-as-usual practices.
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In advanced economies, public funding often actively undermines biodiversity. In Europe, over €5.3 billion in public subsidies is funnelled annually into intensive forest biomass harvesting under renewable energy directives, degrading primary forest ecosystems and undermining long-term climate resilience. Pleading with private investors to fill a “finance gap” while pouring billions into ecological destruction is an exercise in futility.
Developing countries struggle with debt burden
For developing countries, reliance on private finance is further compounded by a crushing sovereign debt crisis. In 2024, public debt in developing economies reached record levels, with net interest payments alone absorbing $921 billion. A record 61 developing countries now spend more than 10% of government revenue on foreign debt service, with many climate-vulnerable nations spending twice as much servicing external debt as they receive in climate and biodiversity finance combined.
This burden acts as a structural driver of ecosystem destruction. Under pressure from external creditors and international financial institutions to avoid default and secure foreign exchange, governments are routinely forced into austerity measures and pushed to expand raw commodity exports into pristine biomes.
Comment: World Bank and IMF should lead the financial system in responding to the climate crisis
The current negotiations for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) also offer a way forward. An estimated $492 billion in tax revenue is lost every year to offshore tax havens. Multinational corporations account for around $348 billion of this total by shifting profits away from the countries where real economic extraction and environmental degradation occur.
In the mining sector alone, developing nations lose tens of billions annually to corporate tax dodging. Furthermore, international financial secrecy shields environmental criminals, with illicit financial flows from illegal logging draining between $51 billion and $152 billion annually.
At COP17, leaders must seize the opportunity to build a bridge between the two conventions and enhance cooperation. Governments must put the world on a firm path to securing predictable, sufficient, sovereign public finance for biodiversity conservation. It’s the only path to a restorative, rights-based future for people and the planet.
The post Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity appeared first on Climate Home News.
Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity
Climate Change
Greenpeace delivers 47 metre-long petition with half a million signatures to Woodside HQ following major gas protest
Greenpeace delivers 47 metre-long petition with half a million signatures to Woodside HQ following major gas protest
PERTH, Monday 19 October 2026 — Dozens of Perth community members delivered a giant petition, signed by almost half a million people, to Woodside’s corporate headquarters this morning, calling on the government to save Scott Reef from Woodside’s reckless Browse gas proposal.
Dressed in sea creature costumes and hats, supporters carried one of Australia’s biggest environmental petitions to Woodside’s headquarters, and a local choir performed a ‘Scott Reef’ rendition of Angie McMahon’s iconic cover of ‘Reckless’ by Australian Crawl.
On the sidelines of the Perth Global Citizen Now event, it comes following a two day-long protest at Woodside’s Scarborough gas platform that saw activists scale and occupy the Floating Production Unit calling to “Stop Woodside’s Dirty Gas” and “Save Scott Reef”. The activists were taken from the platform by police helicopter on Sunday afternoon.
David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Less than a day after two Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists were arrested for their peaceful protest at Woodside’s Scarborough gas platform to save Scott Reef, we are here again with another message to Woodside: half a million of us do not want your dirty gas at Scott Reef.
“Community pressure on Woodside is rising. Today we are here to show Woodside that they can’t ignore half a million people who want Scott Reef protected, not turned into an industrialised gas zone.
“Woodside can’t be trusted with our oceans. Woodside’s plans to drill up to 57 toxic wells at Scott Reef, Australia’s largest oceanic reef, putting endangered pygmy blue whales at risk, and jeopardising a nesting ground for unique green sea turtles.
“We Australians love our oceans and this is an opportunity for our governments to do the right thing, to reject Woodside’s reckless drilling plans, and save Scott Reef.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or Emma Sangalli on +61 431 513 465
Climate Change
Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists in police custody after two-day protest against Woodside’s Browse gas project at Scott Reef
PERTH, Sunday 18 October 2026 — Two Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists are in police custody after occupying a gas platform at Woodside’s Scarborough gas project, in peaceful protest of the fossil fuel corporation’s plans to drill for oil and gas at Scott Reef.
NEW footage and photos of the peaceful protest available here and on Instagram
The activists used specialised climbing equipment to scale and attach themselves to a Floating Production Unit (FPU), a key piece of gas processing infrastructure at the Scarborough gas field over 200km off the coast of Exmouth, at around 05:45am AWST on Saturday and proceeded to occupy the platform for two days, displaying banners reading “Stop Woodside’s Dirty Gas. Save Scott Reef.”
Special police forces landed a helicopter on the FPU at around 11:30am AWST. The activists safely removed themselves from their equipment before being taken into police custody around 1:00pm AWST. At the time of writing, no charges have been laid.
David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “It takes guts and conviction to do what our activists have done, peacefully protesting Woodside’s reckless gas plans at Scott Reef.
“Woodside’s plans to drill up to 57 toxic wells at Scott Reef are outrageous. If allowed to go ahead Woodside would turn Scott Reef, Australia’s largest oceanic reef, home to nesting green sea turtles and elusive pygmy blue whales, into an industrial gas zone. Around half a million people have called on our governments to stop Woodside and to save Scott Reef.
“Our activists are highly trained and experienced in these activities. West Australia has a proud history of peaceful, democratic protest at sea, to protect our oceans from environmental threats. From whaling in Albany in the seventies, to Woodside’s threat to Scott Reef today, there’s more than fifty years of history, of Greenpeace taking action off WA’s coast to protect the places we love.
“Peaceful protest has long been part of what has given us so many of the things that are great about Australia and is part of the fabric of our democracy and our national identity.”
“The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to a healthy democracy. From Australia to the Arctic and the Amazon, Greenpeace has been peacefully protesting for more than 50 years to expose the biggest environmental threats around the world. We will not be silenced by corporations like Woodside who actively try to stop everyday people from speaking out against their reckless plans.
“Woodside’s reckless proposal to drill at Scott Reef is an unacceptable risk to Scott Reef and to the climate, which our government should emphatically reject.”
Speaking from the Rainbow Warrior, Captain of the Rainbow Warrior Hettie Geenen, said:
“It felt powerful watching from the Rainbow Warrior as these brave activists scaled Woodside’s enormous and imposing gas infrastructure, which has no place at Scott Reef. We are all out here because we feel an urge to act, in the face of Woodside’s grave threat to Scott Reef and to our climate. Now we ask for the Australian government to act too, and reject Woodside’s reckless Browse project.
“Just before this peaceful protest, the Rainbow Warrior sailed to Scott Reef, where our whole crew got to witness the magic of an untouched, healthy reef ecosystem full of marine life. It was my second time visiting Scott Reef with the Rainbow Warrior. When you see Scott Reef up close and witness its magic first hand, it is impossible not to feel driven to try and protect it.”
The activists sailed to Scarborough on the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s flagship vessel, which is in the region campaigning to protect Australia’s oceans, including Scott Reef.
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Media contact
Greenpeace Australia Pacific media team in Perth on +61 406 231 892 or +61 407 581 404 or email media.au@greenpeace.org
