Flamingos, herons and fish once filled a freshwater lagoon in southern Spain. Today, it's a fetid brown splotch. The whisper of wind in the grass is a sad substitute for the cacophony of migratory birds.

Biologist Carmen Díaz steps onto cracked mud. The lagoon in the heart of Spain's Doñana nature reserve is a puddle. The park called "the crown jewel of Spain" may be dying.

World leaders are making the case for tougher action to tackle global warming Tuesday, as this year's international climate talks in Egypt heard growing calls for fossil fuel companies to help pay for the damage they have helped cause to the planet.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned Monday that humanity was on "a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator," urging countries to "cooperate or perish."

It was a total loss — the type that is usually glossed over in big impersonal statistics like $40 billion in damage from this summer's Pakistan floods that put one-third of the nation underwater.

"We lost everything, our home and our possessions," said Taj Mai, a mother of seven who is four months pregnant and in a flood relief camp in Pakistan's Punjab province. "At least in a camp our children will get food and milk."

An extremely hot, dry summer that shrank reservoirs and sparked forest fires is now threatening the heartiest of Spain's staple crops: the olives that make the European country the world's leading producer and exporter of the tiny green fruits that are pressed into golden oil.

Industry experts and authorities predict Spain's fall olive harvest will be nearly half the size of last year's, another casualty of global weather shifts caused by climate change.

In the 12 years that he has been the priest of a small temple by the mighty Brahmaputra, Ranajit Mandal had never witnessed the river's fury like this. Not only the temple, but the 50 homes in his native Murkata village were washed away in a matter of days.

"I feel like the earth has given way under my feet now. I have been the temple's priest ever since it was built, I feel really lost now," Mandal said.

More than 100 world leaders are about to discuss a worsening problem that scientists' call Earth's biggest challenge, yet observers say it will be hard to make progress given all that is happening in the world.

Nearly 50 heads of states or governments on Monday will take the stage in the first day of "high-level" international climate talks in Egypt with more to come in the following days. Much of the focus will be on national leaders telling their stories of being devastated by climate disasters, culminating on Tuesday with a speech by Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Sharif, whose country's summer flood caused at least $40 billion in damage and displaced millions of people.

The U.N.'s COP27 climate summit kicked off Sunday in Egypt after a year of extreme weather disasters that have fueled calls for wealthy industrialized nations to compensate poorer countries.

Indian authorities on Friday shut factories and construction sites, restricted diesel-run vehicles and deployed water sprinklers and anti-smog guns to control haze and smog enveloping the skyline of the capital region.

The Delhi government closed primary schools and restricted outdoor activity for older students as the air quality index exceeded 470, considered "severe" and more than 10 times the global safety threshold, according to the state-run Central Pollution Control Board.

Thirty years ago there was hope that a warming world could clean up its act.

It didn't.

When world leaders, diplomats, campaigners and scientists descend on Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt next week for talks on tackling climate change, don't expect them to part the Red Sea or other miracles that would make huge steps in curbing global warming.

Each year there are high hopes for the two-week United Nations climate gathering and, almost inevitably, disappointment when it doesn't deliver another landmark pact like the one agreed 2015 in Paris.