LAST week, more than 1.7 million people participated in the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj, an obligation all Muslim faithful must complete at least once in their lives if they are physically and financially able to do so. The annual ritual is one of the world’s largest mass gatherings, but is increasingly becoming more difficult, and in fact perilous, due to a rapidly heating climate. The experience is an object lesson for the Philippines, not only for the sake of the thousands of our own fellow citizens who travel to perform the Hajj each year, but for our festival- and community-gathering society in general.
Government and clerical officials in Saudi Arabia no doubt breathed a sigh of relief this year, as the timing of the Hajj, which is based on the Islamic lunar calendar, shifted the event to a somewhat cooler season in that part of the world. In 2024, when the Hajj took place in mid-June, more than 1,300 people died, and many more suffered heat-related illnesses as temperatures soared to more than 50 degrees Celsius. This year, temperatures were “only” in the range of 44–47 C. Over the next 20 years or so, the Hajj will take place in these relatively cooler conditions, but experts are warning that the window for comparatively heat-safer Hajj pilgrimages is shrinking.
An arduous journey
The Hajj pilgrimage typically takes five to six days, and stretches across dozens of kilometers, which must be traveled on foot, in the desert region of western Saudi Arabia, with visits to a number of holy sites. The vast majority of pilgrims are people from outside the Middle East, and many of them are elderly, older than 65. For most people, the Hajj is an expensive undertaking, and so many pilgrims are not financially secure enough to make the journey until later in life.
Age alone, as well as the increased level of physical activity, makes many pilgrims more vulnerable to heat stress. Another significant factor, however, is that many pilgrims are coming from cooler climates, and simply cannot adapt to the physiological stress of higher heat. In 2024’s extraordinary sweltering conditions, according to a 2024 study in the journal Nature, the upper limits of heat tolerance for the human body, even for someone in peak physical condition, were exceeded for a total of 43 hours during the six-day Hajj. As the climate continues to warm, these conditions will become more commonplace, experts warn.
To counteract this, Saudi Arabia has implemented a number of heat-related interventions, such as providing more shade along pilgrimage routes, free water and umbrellas, misting areas and air-conditioned buses. These measures have helped to reduce heat-related casualties, but there is a catch: Most are available only to registered pilgrims, and evidently, according to news reports, a significant proportion of Hajj participants are not registered, as permits are expensive and sometimes difficult to acquire.
Even for registered participants, heat mitigation measures may not be enough. The same Nature study suggested that the trend of heat data for Hajj periods over the past decades indicated that “the intensifying heat may be outpacing current mitigation efforts, signaling a need to recalibrate existing approaches.”
Lessons for PH
What this means for the Philippines is twofold. First, our countrymen who travel for the Hajj each year need extra protection. Filipinos are perhaps fortunate to be more accustomed to hotter conditions, but there are physical limits for everyone. The government, in cooperation with our Islamic authorities, should ensure that proper efforts are being made to educate pilgrims on heat safety and physical acclimatization measures.
For the country more generally, we have the experience of a couple of months of extraordinarily hot weather to remind us that heat risks are real, and are only going to increase as time passes. Already there are predictions for a severe El Niño this year, which is expected to bring hotter, drier weather punctuated by severe storms. Organizers of festivals, religious events, pageants and outdoor activities of all types — even, or perhaps especially outdoor work such as agriculture or construction — should be made aware of heat risks, even to the extent of heat mitigation measures being made mandatory.
