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With 333 million people facing acute food insecurity, WFP faces a 60 percent shortfall in funding
by WFP, New Humanitarian, agencies
 
As the United Nations 2024 Global Humanitarian funding appeal, the World Food Programme, UNICEF, UNHCR, the Red Cross and humanitarian agencies face serious shortfalls in funding to address the most urgent needs of over 350 million people in crisis, news agencies report bumper profits for billionaires, record company super profits and a new world record for global military spending.
 
http://www.wfp.org/publications/wfp-global-operational-response-plan-update-10-february-2024 http://www.wfp.org/stories/2023-pictures-ration-cuts-threaten-catastrophe-millions-facing-hunger http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/press-releases/global-hunger-funding-gap-hit-65-percent-for-neediest-countries/ http://humanitarianaction.info/document/global-humanitarian-overview-2024/ http://www.savethechildren.net/news/2023-review-nearly-16000-children-day-plunged-hunger-top-10-worsening-food-crises
 
22 Apr. 2024
 
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) reports global military spending of $2440 billion in 2023.
 
Global military expenditure has reached a record high of $2440bn after the largest annual rise in government spending on arms in over a decade, according to a report.
 
The 6.8% increase between 2022 and 2023 was the steepest since 2009, pushing spending to the highest recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in its 60-year history.
 
The two largest spenders – the United States (37%) and China (12%) – made up around half of global military spending, increasing their expenditure by 2.3% and 6% respectively. While dwarfed by the US in military spending, China, as the world’s second biggest spender, allocated an estimated $296bn in 2023, an increase of 6% on 2022. Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and the UK follow in Sipri’s league table..
 
http://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity
 
Mar. 2024
 
The Forbes 2024 Billionaires list reports that the number of worldwide billionaires grew by 141 in the past year, with 2,781 people holding wealth that exceeds $1 billion. These people own combined assets of $14.2 trillion, exceeding the gross domestic product of every country in the world except the U.S. and China.
 
Their collective wealth has risen by 120% in the past decade, at the same time as billions of people across the world have seen their living standards decrease in the face of inflation and the cost of living crisis.
 
“It’s been an amazing year for the world’s richest people, with more billionaires around the world than ever before,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes’ wealth editor. “Even during times of financial uncertainty for many, the super-rich continue to thrive.”
 
Luke Hildyard, the executive director for the High Pay Centre thinktank, said: “The billionaire list is essentially an annual calculation of how much of the wealth created by the global economy is captured by a tiny caste of oligarchs rather than being used to benefit humanity as a whole. It should be the most urgent mission to spread this wealth more evenly.”
 
While the global population is "living through incredibly unequal times, lurching from one crisis to the next," says Robert Palmer, executive director of Tax Justice U.K., the richest people in the world amass "extraordinary levels of wealth."
 
"World leaders need to ensure the super rich are paying their fair share, for example through introducing wealth taxes. This would help provide the resources needed to tackle multiple crises from hunger, to inequality and climate change."
 
Jan. 2024
 
Taxing windfall profits of fossil fuels and financial companies. (ActionAid, Oxfam)
 
In the two years running up to June 2023, 36 companies (14 in fossil fuels and 22 in the banking sector), made windfall profits of US$424 billion. These are not their overall profits, these are just the profits that are above and beyond their normal profits.
 
In the last two years, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and high inflation and interest rates in much of the world have helped contribute to the bumper profits of fossil fuels companies and the banking sector. By applying a 90% tax on these windfall profits, close to US$382bn could be raised. This money is urgently needed to address hunger, for climate action, to protect vulnerable communities and to build resilience through improved social protection and public services.
 
Dec. 2023
 
With 333 million people facing acute food insecurity, WFP faces a 60 percent shortfall in funding to address urgent needs.
 
What WFP cuts mean for people in hunger crises around the world. (New Humanitarian)
 
Amid an unprecedented global hunger crisis fuelled by climate change and conflict, the World Food Programme’s bleak funding outlook has forced it to make deep cuts to the assistance it provides to many people experiencing acute hunger around the world.
 
“Today, WFP is facing a 60% funding shortfall,” a WFP spokesperson told The New Humanitarian via email on 13 December. “Nearly half of 86 WFP country operations have already implemented, or plan to shortly implement, significant reductions in the size and scope of life-saving food, cash and nutrition assistance programmes.”
 
Globally, more than 333 million people are facing acute food insecurity. The cuts to WFP programming could push 24 million more people into that category over the course of the next year, the UN agency estimated in September.
 
A series of often overlapping factors are driving the current global hunger crisis, including the effects of the climate crisis, conflict, disruptions to the global food supply chain caused by the war in Ukraine, sky-high inflation, and slow post-COVID-19 pandemic economic recoveries.
 
But hunger has deeper structural roots too. Food security systems in many colonised countries were weakened as communities were forced to grow export cash crops to suit the demands of colonial powers. In the post-colonial period, agricultural policies remained focused on exports at the expense of local needs, while global organisations pushed farmers to adopt industrial technologies that can erode food sovereignty. Hunger elimination was further undermined by the unequal trade system, by land-grabbing, and by the conditional lending practices of global financial institutions.
 
One of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies, WFP raised a record $14.1 billion last year – a substantial increase over the $8 billion it reported in 2019. But the funding hasn’t been able to keep pace with rising needs or the pace of inflation, which increased the agency’s procurement costs by 39% between 2019 and 2022.
 
For 2023, WFP says it needs $23.5 billion to fund its global operations but is projecting it will receive only $10 billion, a spokesperson told The New Humanitarian.
 
An expected, sector-wide “donor reset” could also see funding decrease significantly after years of growth, meaning the lean times at WFP – and their consequences for people facing hunger – may be here to stay for the foreseeable future.
 
A recent “Hunger Hotspots” report from WFP and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts that acute food insecurity is likely to worsen in 18 hunger hotspots through April 2024, with highest concern of starvation in Burkina Faso, Mali, Palestine, South Sudan, and Sudan.
 
Over the course of the last several months, The New Humanitarian spoke to WFP staff and dozens of people in countries around the world who rely on the agency’s rations and cash assistance to better understand the impact of the cuts on those living on hunger’s edge.
 
Here’s a region-by-region breakdown:
 
Asia and the Pacific
 
Over half of the people in the world facing moderate to severe food insecurity reside in Asia and the Pacific, where the number of acutely food insecure people rose from 62.2 million in 2021 to more than 69.1 million by the end of 2022.
 
WFP’s cuts are having a particularly severe impact in countries where years-long crises are overlapping with disruptions to the global food supply chain, rising inflation, natural disasters, and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events linked to the climate crisis.
 
In Afghanistan, for example, the cuts have meant that WFP has been forced to choose “between the hungry and the starving”, Philippe Kropf, head of communications for the agency in the country, told The New Humanitarian during an aid distribution event in Kabul in September.
 
Kropf said some 15 million Afghans are currently facing some kind of hunger, but that WFP would only be able to reach three million of them as the country’s winter set in. The agency has had to drop 10 million Afghans from its assistance rolls in 2023.
 
There is “a new face of hunger” in Afghanistan, according to Kropf, one that is popping up in urban centres, where people were previously able to rely on blue and white collar salaries to feed their families.
 
Up to 900,000 jobs were lost in the country following the Western withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul in August 2021.
 
Kropf said the new urban poor were among the first who lost assistance due to the WFP cutbacks. With its limited resources, the UN’s food agency has prioritised particularly vulnerable groups, such as widows, households headed by women, and children.
 
For those who continue to receive support, the monthly cash assistance amount WFP provides to households has also been cut from 5,000 afghanis (about $72) to 3,200 afghanis (about $46). That amount is intended to cover food costs for two weeks, rather than a full month. Because of the funding cuts, WFP is not able to provide even those still receiving aid a full monthly ration.
 
Razia, one woman at the distribution, who only provided her first name and was in her 30s, said she would use the money to try and feed her 11-person household. “Realistically, this will only buy us some flour and oil. That’s it,” she said.
 
Razia was grateful for the help she had received from WFP over the past four months, but said it just doesn’t go very far. “You try and try, but each month 3,000 afghanis will only really buy you a couple of items,” she said.
 
Kropf described Razia as one of the “fortunate ones” as her family is at least continuing to receive some assistance after the cuts.
 
The situation is also dire in Bangladesh, where around 900,000 Rohingya refugees who fled a campaign of genocidal violence by the military junta in neighbouring Myanmar are packed into sprawling tent settlements and overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar.
 
WFP has had to cut the assistance it provides back to just $8 per month – or $0.27 per day – from $12 at the beginning of the year, which was already considered the bare minimum people needed to be able to survive.
 
Mohammed Zonaid, who has lived in Cox’s Bazar since 2016, told The New Humanitarian that 2023 has been the worst year for Rohingya there. Zonaid, who shares his shelter with eight other members of his family, said the drop in financial assistance has shrunk the diets of people in the camps.
 
When families were receiving $12 per person, they could buy rice, lentils, onions, salt, cooking oil, and eggs each month. Now, families can only afford rice, cooking oil, and salt, according to Zonaid. “We are 100% dependent on what WFP provides us,” he added.
 
Africa
 
Multiple regions on the African continent are experiencing food crises due to the same overlapping effects mentioned above, and due to the long-term disruption of traditional food security systems by external forces during the colonial and post-colonial periods.
 
According to a new regional food security analysis, nearly 50 million people will face hunger in West and Central Africa in mid-2024, an increase of 4% from the same period this year. Conflict is driving this high number, according to the analysis, with the nutritional situation particularly worrying in Burkina Faso and Mali, where military juntas are battling jihadist insurgents.
 
In East Africa, 65 million people are facing acute food insecurity. Drought and flood events in the Horn of Africa region are among the most recent proximate causes, with Somalia suffering over 40,000 excess deaths last year, half of which may have been children under five. In Ethiopia, the impact of the war fought primarily in the northern Tigray region continues to be felt, with recovery hampered by the aid freeze ordered by WFP and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) over allegations of large-scale food theft. Hunger rates have also soared in Sudan since conflict broke out in April between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
 
In Chad, WFP is struggling to feed more than 540,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur who fled to the east of the country between April and November, escaping massacres and acts of alleged ethnic cleansing by the RSF. As RSF atrocities continue, that number will only increase, while WFP said that food aid to 1.4 million people, including many of the newly arrived refugees, will end in January because of a shortage of funds. The UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, reports that 5.7 million people in Chad are food insecure, with 2.1 million suffering from acute hunger.
 
In September, The New Humanitarian witnessed a delayed food distribution operation in Ourang camp, one of the hastily built refugee settlements near the border town of Adre, which opened in June to accommodate Sudanese refugees. Many of those in need failed to receive assistance. “The number of refugees was much higher than the [distribution] lists,” said a frustrated WFP official, who asked not to be named.
 
The operation’s start was postponed by several days as aid trucks struggled to navigate eastern Chad’s rough roads, increasing the anxiety of the 44,000 refugees in Ourang waiting for rations.
 
“We received some sorghum sometime after we arrived in Chad [in June], but nothing since,” said Um Zuhor Adam Osman, a 19-year-old from El Geneina, the capital of Sudan’s West Darfur state. “It’s very difficult for us. Some people in the camp have received food, but we haven’t yet. The children eat only once a day.”
 
Malnutrition is widespread among the new arrivals. MSF supports a 250-bed paediatric ward in Adré hospital, which is always full.
 
“The kids were fine before. They never had to go to hospital when we were in Geneina,” said Zeinab Yacoub Arbab, a 29-year-old mother of two who lives with her family in the Ourang camp. “Everything was available there. But now we can’t feed them and ourselves properly. We left with nothing and don’t have money to buy food on the market. We are totally dependent on aid, and what we receive is not enough.”
 
In Uganda, WFP has had to cut the rations it provides to refugees several times since 2020. The country hosts more than 1.5 million refugees, one of the largest refugee populations in the world. The WFP cuts have led people to go hungry and contributed to factors pushing many families to return to their countries of origin, even when they are not stable or safe.
 
WFP introduced its latest cuts in July after rolling out a new system based on refugee vulnerability. Those considered most vulnerable now get 60% of what WFP calls basic survival rations; the moderately vulnerable get 30%; and the least vulnerable get nothing.
 
Refugees told The New Humanitarian that the successive cuts and new “prioritisation” system have left them struggling to meet basic needs, especially as changing weather patterns make it harder for them to farm around their settlements.
 
In Bidi Bidi, a large refugee camp in northwestern Uganda, Loy Mama said her family has been eating only one meal a day to make the meagre rations they receive as members of category two last as long as possible.
 
“This food is not enough for me and these children,” Mama told The New Humanitarian during a visit to Bidi Bidi in August. “I do not know how I will complete a month.”
 
Moses Nyang, a South Sudanese refugee in the Adjumani settlement, which is also in the northwest, said the prioritisation system has had a negative impact on community cohesion.
 
“It has set refugees against themselves,” said Nyang. “It compromises our peaceful co-existence. You are getting something; I am not getting something. What do you expect my attitude towards you to be?”
 
Middle East and North Africa
 
The Middle East relies heavily on food imports, exposing countries with food insecurity due to war and economic collapse to new fluctuations in global food prices due to the war in Ukraine and ongoing supply chain issues. Increasing heat waves and droughts make conditions even worse, with local farms producing less food and income.
 
An April World Bank report predicted that economies in the Middle East and North Africa would grow at a slower pace this year, with double-digit food inflation hitting poorer households and threatening food security.
 
"The report estimates that close to one out of five people living in developing countries in MENA is likely to be food insecure this year,” said Roberta Gatti, World Bank Chief Economist for the MENA region, in a statement released with the report. “Almost 8 million children under 5 years of age are among those who will be hungry. Food price inflation, even if it is temporary, can cause long-term and often irreversible damage.”
 
That’s not taking into account the war in Gaza, where 63% of people were estimated to be food insecure even before Israel began bombing and laying siege to the enclave in October – following the deadly attack and hostage-taking by the Palestinian political and militant group Hamas. A recent WFP assessment found that, with around 85% of the population forced to flee their homes, extremely limited and irregular aid access, and no commercial goods allowed in by Israel or Egypt, food consumption levels are “extremely alarming”.
 
People desperate for food have broken into UN warehouses; and at the end of a December ceasefire WFP warned that renewed fighting “will only intensify the catastrophic hunger crisis that already threatens to overwhelm the civilian population”.
 
Some of the countries in the region where WFP works have long-standing problems with food insecurity and poverty. Yemen, home to one of its largest interventions in the world, has been on the edge of famine more than once since its war began in 2015. As of the end of October, 13 million people in a country of around 29 million were receiving food assistance, although low funding meant “reduced rations equivalent to 41%” of the standard food basket.
 
In early December, WFP announced it was pausing its general food distributions in northern parts of the country controlled by Houthi rebels, due to limited funding and “the absence of an agreement with the authorities on a smaller programme that matches available resources to the neediest families”.
 
Even before these changes, WFP estimated that food insecurity – as of October – was down slightly from the previous year: 50% of households it surveyed in parts of the country controlled by the internationally recognised government were still unable to meet their minimum food needs – the number was 46% for households surveyed in parts of the country run by the Sana’a-based Houthis.
 
The situation is also growing increasingly dire in Syria, where conflict, economic collapse, the climate crisis, and the aftermath of earthquakes earlier this year are overlapping with global factors and severe aid underfunding to drive a hunger crisis. A WFP spokesperson told The New Humanitarian by email that 12.7 million people were projected to be food insecure across the country in 2024, with a further 2.6 million “at risk of falling into hunger”. The agency predicts a 29% increase in the number of severely food insecure people living in camps for internally displaced people in the country in 2024, as compared to this year.
 
Suhaib Abdou, 40, lives with his family of 14 in a camp for displaced people in Kafr Aruq, in the northern countryside of rebel-held Idlib province. Home for his wife, five sons, and seven daughters is a well-worn tent, six metres long and four metres wide, in which they have sectioned off a kitchen, a sitting room, and a space for sleeping.
 
The camp where they live is home to 295 families in total, and there are only 11 shared restroom blocks, or one block for every 27 families. Hunger and humanitarian needs have been rising for years in the rebel-held northwest, which is home to 4.5 million people; 2.9 million have been displaced at least once. The last few months have seen an increase in bombings by the Syrian government and its Russian allies, forcing even more people to flee their homes.
 
Abdou began receiving food aid after he had to flee his own home in the city of Saraqib in late 2019. His family currently receives one food basket from WFP every 60 days, down from once every 30 days in the past. He said the contents of the basket were reduced in the spring.
 
“We’re having one meal a day,” Abdou said. “When he can, my brother living abroad sends me some money to buy food for my kids.”
 
Without the extra cash, the family struggles to get enough to eat.
 
“If my brother doesn’t send me money, I’m not able to provide food for my kids,” he said. “There are kids who go to the trash containers to get food when their share is out, and they sometimes collect scraps to sell it so they can buy bread.”
 
Abdou said his family doesn’t eat fruit, vegetables, or meat because they can’t afford them. “If the amount is decreased again, you won’t find a camp that will agree to receive the aid as it’s not enough for anything,” he added.
 
Abdou spoke to The New Humanitarian before the WFP’s early December announcement that, starting in January 2024, it would be stopping its general food assistance programme in Syria altogether.
 
The WFP spokesperson said that low funding forced WFP to reduce the number of people who receive general food assistance from 5.5 to 3.2 million in July. That lower number “will no longer receive general food assistance from January 2024 onwards”, according to the spokesperson.
 
The total number of people who will still receive some sort of WFP aid in Syria is not clear, as some programmes – including those for earthquake survivors – will likely be ongoing. And general food aid could be restarted if new funding comes in but, for now, the spokesperson said that “discontinuation of general food assistance amid this situation is expected to have serious consequences on people who need it the most”.
 
Latin America and the Caribbean
 
Between 2021 and 2022, the prevalence of hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean fell from 7% to 6.5% of the region’s population – or some 43.2 million people. But this bird’s-eye view masks a dramatic rise in hunger in the Caribbean and fails to capture that in some countries, such as Ecuador, overall hunger rates plateaued while the percentage of people slipping from moderately to severely food insecure increased.
 
In 2023, WFP only received funding to finance 37% of identified needs, reducing mostly its emergency response activities. Cuts have already affected four countries: Haiti, Ecuador, Honduras, and Colombia.
 
In Colombia, WFP’s funding has dropped by 30% to 40% this year, and in Ecuador by 50% for emergency response. Programmes targeting pregnant and lactating women and children under two in Ecuador have been suspended, while rations were reduced for others, and the duration of time the aid was provided for fell as well. In Honduras, WFP reached only about 50% of the targeted population. Among those who received assistance, 95% were children benefiting from school meals. Funding for other operations is extremely scarce.
 
In Haiti, where soaring gang violence has been both driving up needs and hampering aid work, funds for emergency response were almost exhausted by September, and operations in the country have only received 10% of the funding needed. Some 4.9 million people in Haiti – over 40% of the population – now face severe hunger. In July, WFP had to cut 100,000 people – 25% of emergency food assistance recipients – from its rolls due to dwindling funds. A total of 750,000 people who are in need of assistance have fallen through the cracks because of this lack of resources.
 
“It’s a very bad time to have to reduce the coverage of emergency programmes,” Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP country director in Haiti, told The New Humanitarian.
 
The New Humanitarian interviewed residents of the Saint-Aude Camp, a cramped settlement for internally displaced people in the heart of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where 115 people, including about 30 children, live in tiny, sweltering houses.
 
Although the camp was established after the 2010 earthquake, it is now receiving people fleeing gang violence in other parts of the capital.
 
Nickencia Sidney, a 23-year-old single mother, fled the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince for the Saint-Aude Camp after gangs set her house on fire last July. Her two-year-old daughter, Naella Jean-Louis, is staying with friends while Sidney tries to find more permanent housing, and a reliable food source.
 
“It may happen that I eat once a day. It may happen that I don’t eat anything; I just stay like that,” Sidney told The New Humanitarian. “Sometimes, I have weakness and dizziness. When I stand up after sitting, I black out. When I’m out on the streets, my eyes hurt with the glare of the sun. Sometimes, I take to the streets, and I cannot walk because I feel so weak.”
 
In mid-September, by reprioritising funding, the WFP managed to finance 49,000 hot meals at 19 sites around the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area for seven days. People in Saint-Aude received one hot meal per day for a week. But Haitians who are living in camps often prefer to receive raw food because it lasts longer and gives them more flexibility to consume it or trade it for other items they need.
 
“I am very worried,” said Bauer, the WFP country director. “When there is an earthquake, you rebuild the country; when there is drought, you tell yourself that there will be an agricultural campaign and harvesting the year after. But now, we don't see the end of the problem.”
 
The ongoing El Nino climate pattern – which typically brings more extreme weather, including more severe storms and rainfall in some places and drought in others – is expected to exacerbate food insecurity around the world, including in Ecuador, which is also facing a surge in gang violence.
 
Hunger levels in the country have not yet risen, but the number of people who are severely food insecure rose from 6% to 7.5% in 2022, according to Crescenzo Rubinetti, head of WFP’s emergency preparedness and response team in the country.
 
“We are trying to prepare for [El Niño],” said Rubinetti. “​​But we had at the beginning of 2023 a high impact from heavy rain, with 100,000 people affected... There is no capacity in the country to respond to this kind of crisis.”
 
In Honduras, WFP estimates that about 2.8 million people are exposed to the climate crisis, but if donors do not pledge more funding, they won't receive any food assistance in case of emergency.
 
Meanwhile, in Colombia, WFP expects those affected by El Niño to reach 1.5 to 3.5 million. “When we look at what has been foreseen for El Nino, there is a serious concern,” said Carlo Scaramella, the WFP country director there. “At WFP, at the moment, we do not have the capacity to respond to these needs.”
 
WFP Colombia expects funding cuts to be less dramatic in 2024 but is still anticipating a 15% reduction across all its programmes. At the regional level, however, WFP expects funding shortages for emergency response to increase and cuts to affect additional countries from the dry corridor of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
 
(Ali M. Latifi reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Harold Isaac reported from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Abd Almajed Alkarh reported from Idlib, Syria. Sophie Neiman reported from Kampala, Uganda. Patricia Huon reported from Adré, Chad. Additional reporting from Philip Kleinfeld, Paisley Dodds, and Annie Slemrod in London, UK; Daniela Mohor in Santiago, Chile; and Kristof Titeca in Antwerp, Belgium. The interactive map was produced by Marc Fehr, Sofia Kuan, and Namukabo Werungah. Edited by Tom Brady, Eric Reidy, and Andrew Gully).
 
http://www.wfp.org/stories/2023-pictures-ration-cuts-threaten-catastrophe-millions-facing-hunger http://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis http://www.wfp.org/publications/wfp-global-operational-response-plan-update-9-november-2023 http://reliefweb.int/report/burkina-faso/hunger-hotspots-fao-wfp-early-warnings-acute-food-insecurity-november-2023-april-2024-outlook http://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/en/
 
http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2023/12/13/wfp-aid-food-cuts-mean-people-hunger-crisis-around-world http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2024/01/08/why-these-10-humanitarian-crises-demand-your-attention-now http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2024/01/02/trends-driving-humanitarian-need-2024-and-what-do-about-them http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2024/01/03/editors-picks-stories-2024 http://www.care-international.org/resources/breaking-silence-ten-humanitarian-crises-didnt-make-headlines-2023


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The overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency
by Christopher Wolf, William Ripple, Johan Rockstrom
Bioscience Journal, UNU-EHS, BMJ, agencies
 
Oct. 2023
 
Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
 
Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.
 
In the present report, we display a diverse set of vital signs of the planet and the potential drivers of climate change and climate-related responses first presented by Ripple and Wolf and colleagues (2020), who declared a climate emergency, now with more than 15,000 scientist signatories.
 
The trends reveal new all-time climate-related records and deeply concerning patterns of climate-related disasters. At the same time, we report minimal progress by humanity in combating climate change.
 
Given these distressing developments, our goal is to communicate climate facts and policy recommendations to scientists, policymakers, and the public. It is the moral duty of us scientists and our institutions to clearly alert humanity of any potential existential threat and to show leadership in taking action.
 
Climate-related all-time records
 
In 2023, we witnessed an extraordinary series of climate-related records being broken around the world. The rapid pace of change has surprised scientists and caused concern about the dangers of extreme weather, risky climate feedback loops, and the approach of damaging tipping points sooner than expected.
 
This year, exceptional heat waves have swept across the world, leading to record high temperatures. The oceans have been historically warm, with global and North Atlantic sea surface temperatures both breaking records and unprecedented low levels of sea ice surrounding Antarctica.
 
In addition, June through August of this year was the warmest period ever recorded, and in early July, we witnessed Earth's highest global daily average surface temperature ever measured, possibly the warmest temperature on Earth over the past 100,000 years. It is a sign that we are pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability.
 
We are venturing into uncharted climate territory. Global daily mean temperatures never exceeded 1.5-degree Celsius (°C) above preindustrial levels prior to 2000 and have only occasionally exceeded that number since then. However, 2023 has already seen 38 days with global average temperatures above 1.5°C by 12 September—more than any other year—and the total may continue to rise.
 
Even more striking are the enormous margins by which 2023 conditions are exceeding past extremes. Similarly, on 7 July 2023, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest daily relative extent since the advent of satellite data, at 2.67 million square kilometers below the 1991–2023 average. Other variables far outside their historical ranges include the area burned by wildfires in Canada, which may indicate a tipping point into a new fire regime.
 
Recent trends in planetary vital signs
 
On the basis of time series data, 20 of the 35 vital signs are now showing record extremes. As we describe, these data show how the continued pursuit of business as usual has, ironically, led to unprecedented pressure on the Earth system, resulting in many climate-related variables entering uncharted territory.
 
Climate change is contributing significantly to human suffering, with many climate impacts expected to further intensify in the coming years. We may have already experienced abrupt increases in certain types of extreme weather, possibly surpassing the rate of temperature rise.
 
In 2023, climate change likely contributed to a number of major extreme weather events and disasters. Several of these events demonstrate how climate extremes are threatening wider areas that have not typically been prone to such extremes.
 
As these impacts continue to accelerate, more funding to compensate for climate-related loss and damage in developing countries is urgently needed. The United Nations’ new loss and damage global fund established at COP27 is a promising development, but its success will require robust support by wealthy countries.
 
Motivated by recent events and trends, we continue to issue specific warnings and recommendations involving topics ranging from food security to climate justice. Coordinated efforts in each of these areas could help to support a broader agenda focused on holistic and equitable climate policy.
 
Economic growth, as it is conventionally pursued, is unlikely to allow us to achieve our social, climate, and biodiversity goals. The fundamental challenge lies in the difficulty of decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts. Although technological advancements and efficiency improvements can contribute to some degree of decoupling, they often fall short in mitigating the overall ecological footprint of economic activities.
 
The impacts vary greatly by wealth; in 2019, the top 10% of emitters were responsible for 48% of global emissions, whereas the bottom 50% were responsible for just 12%. We therefore need to change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption by the wealthy.
 
The elevated rates of climate disasters and other impacts that we are presently seeing are largely a consequence of historical and ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. To mitigate these past emissions and stop global warming, efforts must be directed toward eliminating emissions from fossil fuels and land-use change and increasing carbon sequestration with nature-based climate solutions.
 
We should not rely on unproven carbon removal techniques. Although research efforts should be accelerated, depending heavily on future large-scale carbon removal strategies at this juncture may create a deceptive perception of security and postpone the imperative mitigation actions that are essential to tackle climate change now.
 
The effects of global warming are progressively more severe, and possibilities such as a worldwide societal breakdown are feasible and dangerously underexplored. By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals—approximately one-third to one-half of the global population—might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.
 
Big problems need big solutions. Therefore, we must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat.
 
Although global heating is devastating, it represents only one aspect of the escalating and interconnected environmental crisis that we are facing (e.g., biodiversity loss, fresh water scarcity, pandemics). We need policies that target the underlying issues of ecological overshoot where the human demand on Earth's resources results in overexploitation of our planet and biodiversity decline. As long as humanity continues to exert extreme pressure on the Earth, any attempted climate-only solutions will only redistribute this pressure.
 
To address the overexploitation of our planet, we challenge the prevailing notion of endless growth and overconsumption by rich countries and individuals as unsustainable and unjust. Instead, we advocate for reducing resource overconsumption; reducing, reusing, and recycling waste in a more circular economy; and prioritizing human flourishing and sustainability.
 
We emphasize climate justice and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of climate action, particularly for vulnerable communities. We call for a transformation of the global economy to prioritize human well-being and to provide for a more equitable distribution of resources.
 
As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms. The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.
 
Conditions are going to get very distressing and potentially unmanageable for large regions of the world, with the 2.6°C warming expected over the course of the century, even if the self-proposed national emissions reduction commitments of the Paris Agreement are met.
 
We warn of potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems in such a world where we will face unbearable heat, frequent extreme weather events, food and fresh water shortages, rising seas, more emerging diseases, and increased social unrest and geopolitical conflict.
 
Massive suffering due to climate change is already here, and we have now exceeded many safe and just Earth system boundaries, imperiling stability and life-support systems.
 
As we will soon bear witness to failing to meet the Paris agreement's aspirational 1.5°C goal, the significance of immediately curbing fossil fuel use and preventing every further 0.1°C increase in future global heating cannot be overstated.
 
Rather than focusing only on carbon reduction and climate change, addressing the underlying issue of ecological overshoot will give us our best shot at surviving these challenges in the long run. This is our moment to make a profound difference for all life on Earth, and we must embrace it with unwavering courage and determination to create a legacy of change that will stand the test of time.
 
http://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biad080/7319571 http://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/1/8/5610806 http://wmo.int/news/media-centre/climate-change-indicators-reached-record-levels-2023-wmo
 
Oct. 2023
 
A United Nations University report released today finds that drastic changes are approaching if risks to our fundamental socioecological systems are not addressed.
 
The Interconnected Disaster Risks report 2023 published by the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) warns of six risk tipping points ahead of us:
 
Accelerating extinctions; Groundwater depletion; Mountain glaciers melting; Space debris; Unbearable heat; Uninsurable future
 
Systems are all around us and closely connected to us: ecosystems, food systems, water systems and more. When they deteriorate, it is typically not a simple and predictable process. Rather, instability slowly builds until suddenly a tipping point is reached and the system changes fundamentally or even collapses, with potentially catastrophic impacts.
 
A risk tipping point is defined in the report as the moment at which a given socioecological system is no longer able to buffer risks and provide its expected functions, after which the risk of catastrophic impacts to these systems increases substantially.
 
These diverse cases illustrate that risk tipping points extend beyond the single domains of climate, ecosystems, society or technology. Instead, they are inherently interconnected, and they are also closely linked to human activities and livelihoods.
 
Many new risks emerge when and where our physical and natural worlds interconnect with human society.
 
One example of a risk tipping point that the report explains is groundwater depletion. Underground water reservoirs called aquifers are an essential freshwater resource around the world, and they supply drinking water to over 2 billion people. Around 70 per cent of groundwater withdrawals are used for agriculture, oftentimes when there is not sufficient water from above-ground sources available. Today, aquifers help to mitigate half of the losses in agriculture caused by drought, a phenomenon which is only expected to increase in the future due to climate change.
 
But the report warns that now it’s the aquifers themselves that are approaching a tipping point: More than half of the world’s major aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be naturally replenished. If the water table falls below a level that existing wells can access, farmers can suddenly find themselves without the ability to access water, which puts entire food production systems at risk of failure.
 
“As we indiscriminately extract our water resources, damage nature and biodiversity, and pollute both Earth and space, we are moving dangerously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points that could destroy the very systems that our life depends on,” said Dr. Zita Sebesvari, Lead Author of the Interconnected Disaster Risks report and Deputy Director of UNU-EHS.
 
In the case of the “Unbearable heat” risk tipping point described in the report, it is human-induced climate change that is causing a global rise in temperatures, leading to more frequent and intense heatwaves that will in some areas reach temperatures in which the human body can no longer survive.
 
http://ehs.unu.edu/media/press-releases/press-release-new-un-university-report-warns-about-risk-tipping-points-with-irreversible-impacts-on-people-and-planet.html http://interconnectedrisks.org/ http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
 
Oct. 2023
 
More than 200 health journals have urged the World Health Organization to sound the alarm on climate change and dwindling biodiversity. (BMJ)
 
Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency.
 
The world is currently responding to the climate crisis and the nature crisis as if they were separate challenges. This is a dangerous mistake. The 28th UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change is about to be held in Dubai while the 16th COP on biodiversity is due to be held in Turkey in 2024. The research communities that provide the evidence for the two COPs are unfortunately largely separate, but they were brought together for a workshop in 2020 when they concluded: “Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem … can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and maximize the beneficial outcomes.”
 
As the health world has recognised with the development of the concept of planetary health, the natural world is made up of one overall interdependent system. Damage to one subsystem can create feedback that damages another—for example, drought, wildfires, floods, and the other effects of rising global temperatures destroy plant life and lead to soil erosion and so inhibit carbon storage, which means more global warming. Climate change is set to overtake deforestation and other land use change as the primary driver of nature loss.
 
Human health is damaged directly by both the climate crisis, as the journals have described in previous editorials,89 and the nature crisis.10 This indivisible planetary crisis will have major effects on health as a result of the disruption of social and economic systems—shortages of land, shelter, food, and water, exacerbating poverty, which in turn will lead to mass migration and conflict. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, air pollution, and the spread of infectious diseases are some of the major health threats exacerbated by climate change.
 
“Without nature, we have nothing,” was UN Secretary General António Guterres’s blunt summary at the biodiversity COP in Montreal last year.12 Even if we could keep global warming below an increase of 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, we could still cause catastrophic harm to health by destroying nature.
 
Access to clean water is fundamental to human health, and yet pollution has damaged water quality, causing a rise in waterborne diseases.13 Contamination of water on land can also have far reaching effects on distant ecosystems when that water runs off into the ocean.
 
Good nutrition is underpinned by diversity in the variety of foods, but there has been a striking loss of genetic diversity in the food system. Globally, about a fifth of people rely on wild species for food and their livelihoods.
 
Declines in wildlife are a major challenge for these populations, particularly in low and middle income countries. Fish provide more than half of dietary protein in many African, South Asian, and small island nations, but ocean acidification has reduced the quality and quantity of seafood.
 
Changes in land use have forced tens of thousands of species into closer contact, increasing the exchange of pathogens and the emergence of new diseases and pandemics.
 
People losing contact with the natural environment and the declining loss in biodiversity have both been linked to increases in non-communicable, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases and metabolic, allergic, and neuropsychiatric disorders.
 
For Indigenous people, caring for and connecting with nature is especially important for their health. Nature has also been an important source of medicines, and thus reduced diversity also constrains the discovery of new medicines.
 
Communities are healthier if they have access to high quality green spaces that help filter air pollution, reduce air and ground temperatures, and provide opportunities for physical activity.
 
The health effects of climate change and biodiversity loss will be experienced unequally between and within countries, with the most vulnerable communities often bearing the highest burden. Linked to this, inequality is also arguably fuelling these environmental crises. Environmental challenges and social and health inequities are challenges that share drivers, and there are potential co-benefits from addressing them.
 
Global health emergency
 
In December 2022 the biodiversity COP agreed on the effective conservation and management of at least 30% of the world’s land, coastal areas, and oceans by 2030. Industrialised countries agreed to mobilise $30bn a year to support developing nations to do so. These agreements echo promises made at climate COPs.
 
Yet many commitments made at COPs have not been met. This has allowed ecosystems to be pushed further to the brink, greatly increasing the risk of arriving at “tipping points”— abrupt breakdowns in the functioning of nature. If these events were to occur, the impacts on health would be globally catastrophic.
 
This risk, combined with the severe impacts on health already occurring, means that the World Health Organization should declare the indivisible climate and nature crisis as a global health emergency.
 
The three preconditions for WHO to declare a situation to be a public health emergency of international concern are that it is serious, sudden, unusual, or unexpected; carries implications for public health beyond the affected state’s national border; and may require immediate international action. Climate change seems to fulfil all those conditions.
 
While the accelerating climate change and loss of biodiversity are not sudden or unexpected, they are certainly serious and unusual. Hence, we call for WHO to make this declaration before or at the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024.
 
Health professionals must be powerful advocates for both restoring biodiversity and tackling climate change for the good of health. Political leaders must recognise both the severe threats to health from the planetary crisis and the benefits that can flow to health from tackling the crisis. But, first, we must recognise this crisis for what it is: a global health emergency. http://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2355


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