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Doing More with Less: Ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 18:29:47 -0500

Every year, about one third of all food produced—about 1.3 billion tonnes—is wasted while 1 billion people remain undernourished and another 1 billion go to bed hungry. Households consume 29% of global energy contributing to 21% of carbon dioxide emissions (UNEP, 2020), pointing to the significant linkage between sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and the climate change challenge of ensuring access to renewable energy and the regulation of building standards to reflect best practice in green architecture.

A family in the Global North throws away an average of 30 kg of clothing each year. Only 15% is recycled or donated, and the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated. Every year, 70 million trees in endangered and ancient forests are cut down and replaced by plantations of trees used to make wood-based fabrics, such as rayon, viscose, and modal (Sustain Your Style, 2020).

Sustainable consumption and production: The use of services and related products, which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardise the need of future generations.

Norwegian Ministry of Environment, Oslo Symposium on SCP, 1994

Should the global population reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets would be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles (UNEP, 2020). Ensuring SCP has been one of the greatest global challenges over the past fifty years.

Evolution of the “Sustainable Consumption and Production” Theme at the UN

Declarations and plans to take responsibility for sustainable consumption and production patterns have been part and parcel of the United Nations cycle of sustainable development conferences stretching back to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The conferences continue trying to respond to scientific and civil society demands to recognize “Spaceship Earth” (Fuller, 1968; Ward, 1966) is a closed system with limited capacity to fuel economic growth and absorb its by-products, including pollution and greenhouse gases.

A ground-breaking initiative came in 1972 with the publication of the report, Limits to Growth, by a network of scientists and industrialists known as the Club of Rome (Meadows et. al., 1972). They commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to use computer simulations to dramatically demonstrate the futility of the human race we cannot win: the race between our capacity to sustain static stocks of resources and satisfy geometric growth rates in population and consumption.

Arguments for restraints in consumption and a steady-state economy followed with Herman Daly’s Toward a Steady-State Economy (1973). This swell of concern had little impact on mainstream debates until 1987 and the publication of the World Commission on Sustainable Development’s report, Our Common Future (Brundtland Commission report). This report stressed that meeting essential human needs requires not only a new era of economic growth for nations where the majority remain in poverty, but an assurance that those living in poverty get their fair share of the resources. Equally, the report called on the affluent to adopt lifestyles within the planet’s ecological means. It has become increasingly well understood that economic growth as an ideology has been used to disguise and defer tackling the persistent problem of inequality.

Sustainable global development requires that those who are more affluent adopt life-styles within the planet's ecological means—in their use of energy, for example... sustainable development can only be pursued if population size and growth are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem.

Our Common Future, Paragraph 29

Five years later, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) adopted the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which called on states to reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. After another ten years, the World Summit on Sustainable Development convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, and called for fundamental changes in the way societies produce and consume. This call was accompanied by a mandate for a ten-year framework of programmes (10YFP) to support regional and national initiatives to accelerate the shift toward SCP. This mandate was developed through what was known as the Marrakech Process, launched in 2003, which led to the adoption of the Framework at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

In 2015, the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to end poverty and set the world on a path to peace, prosperity, and opportunity on a healthy planet. SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns,” links worldwide consumption and production—a driving force of the global economy—to the use of the natural environment and resources in a way that has destructive impacts on the planet.

Yet with all this attention, the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 warned the global material footprint is increasing faster than population growth and economic output. It also notes how improvements in resource efficiency in some countries are offset by increases in intensity in others. Fossil fuel subsidies are also cited as a serious concern, as is the high proportion of food waste lost in long supply chains.

Despite decades of multilateral commitments, the world’s reliance on natural resources has accelerated. The SDG Report 2020 observes the material footprint (primary materials required to meet basic needs for food, clothing, water, shelter, infrastructure and other aspects of life) grew from 73.2 billion metric tons in 2010 to 85.9 billion metric tons in 2017, a 17.4% increase in just seven years. In addition, while 79 countries and the European Union reported on at least one national policy instrument contributing to the implementation of the 10YFP between 2017 and 2019, only 10% of all policies reported in 2019 related to economic and financial instruments, reflecting a limited operationalization of the 10YFP vision.

A shift has taken place in the UN discourse on SCP. While the Brundtland Commission focused on inter-generational equity, consumption volumes, and norms, and made an important distinction between addressing justified universal human “needs” and the “felt wants” of elite consuming classes, the language has changed. Now there is a different and more business-friendly focus on innovation and design in methods of production. This has steered the conversation away from norms and new regulations, enshrining the belief that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation and resource depletion (Gasper et al., 2019, p.84) and created a significant blind spot around the role of corporate power to manufacture desire and elite consumer demands using ever more refined tools in the service of the attention economy.

Sustainable Consumption and Production Timeline

1972	The Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth	Highlights the contradiction between static stocks of resources and growth in population and consumption
1972	UN Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, Sweden)	Recognizes the Earth's resources are finite and its capacity to re-absorb the by-products of production processes is limited.
1973	Herman Daly, Toward a Steady-State Economy	Calls for a steady-state economy, entailing stabilized population and per capita consumption.
1987	World Commission on Environment and Development report, Our Common Future	Distinguishes between human needs and felt wants; highlights an imbalance between the consumption patterns of the wealthy and the poor.
1992	UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)	Recognizes unsustainable patterns of consumption and production as a major cause of continued deterioration of the global environment.
1994	Oslo Symposium on Sustainable Consumption (Oslo, Norway)	Provides what would become an authoritative definition of SCP.
2002	World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, South Africa)	Calls for the development of a 10YFP to accelerate the shift towards SCP and promote social and economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems by de-linking growth from environmental degradation.
2003	First meeting of the Marrakech Process, a global multi-stakeholder platform to develop the 10YFP (Marrakech, Morocco)	The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) lead the development of the 10YFP.
2012	World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)	Calls for a set of SDGs. The Summit also adopted the 10YFP as part of a global commitment to accelerate the shift towards SCP in developed and developing countries.
2015	UN Sustainable Development Summit (New York, US)	Adopts “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” and its 17 SDGs, including SDG 12 “Ensuring sustainable consumption and production.”

Key Debates about the UN Approach and Conceptual Developments

The fundamental terms of reference for the institutional debates on SCP can be traced back to a challenge to dominant assumptions in neo-classical economic theories that depend on notions of infinite growth and a planet without ecological boundaries. These early debates are populated by a colourful cast of pioneering thinkers and campaigners, notably Andre Gorz, Herman Daly, and Serge Latouche. They have their counterparts today in figures such as Kate Raworth, the author of Doughnut Economics, and the thought leaders on sustainable prosperity and growth, Tim Jackson and Peter Victor. None issued a more formative challenge than Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the intellectual pioneer of ecological economics and bioeconomics. In his Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971), Georgescu-Roegen performed for economics the intellectual equivalent of colliding two high-energy particle beams at the speed of light. He did this by bringing physics and the natural sciences into a conversation (or collision) with conventional economics. His writing exposed how the fundamental aim of economic activity—the unlimited growth of production and consumption based on finite sources of matter/energy—is incompatible with the laws of nature. His key contributions to the laws of energy conversion, including the concept of “entropy,” explain the degradation of those vital qualities of matter/energy that make them valuable for production and consumption, namely concentration and organization. Matter and energy degradation is countered by a constant inflow of solar energy and other renewable sources of heat and tidal momentum, which explains the current global transition to new sources of energy infrastructure.

Georgescu-Roegen’s ideas helped give rise to the degrowth movement—at first focused in the 1970s on resource limits, then re-emerging in the 2000s as a fundamental assault on what Serge Latouche and others have described as the “oxymoron” concept of “sustainable development.” The degrowth movement is also associated with the birth of political ecology and attempts to re-locate our environmental challenges within dominant institutional and cultural ideas, including capitalism. Advocates call for the decolonization of public debate and the abolition of economic growth as a primary social objective. Instead, they support alternative social practices of sharing, simplicity, conviviality, care, and commoning that are consistent with equitable downscaling of production and consumption, leading to a reduced societal throughput of energy and raw materials. These practices are pursued in new forms of collaborative consumption and ecovillage communities.

SDG 12–Toward a Systems Approach?

The SCP concept is prominently recognized in the 2030 Agenda. SDG 12 recognizes production and consumption habits are at the root of the planet’s sustainability problems and places them at the centre of the sustainable development agenda. Implementation of SDG 12 is linked to the achievement of overall development plans, the reduction of future economic, environmental, and social costs, strengthening economic competitiveness, and the reduction of poverty.

The SDG 12 targets cover a full range of issues, including:

12.1: Implement the 10YFP
12.2: Sustainable management and use of natural resources
12.3: Halve global per capita food waste
12.4: Responsible management of chemicals and waste
12.5: Substantially reduce waste generation
12.6: Encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices and sustainability reporting
12.7: Promote sustainable public procurement practices
12.8: Promote universal understanding of sustainable lifestyles
12.A: Support developing countries’ scientific and technological capacity for SCP
12.B: Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable tourism
12.C: Remove market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption

At the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2016, the International Resource Panel was mandated to prepare a report, Assessing Global Resource Use: A systems approach to resource efficiency and pollution reduction (2017). The Panel identified decoupling economic activity and human well-being from resource use as an imperative. The report highlighted the complex linkages between human well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental resilience and the need for policy makers to act across all three domains to bring about transformative outcomes.

Adopting a systems approach, the Panel asserted that improving the well-being of people while minimizing resource use and environmental impacts, in particular through enhanced resource efficiency, is necessary to deliver SDG 12 as well as the other SDGs. To achieve this, the Panel supported the transformation of today’s “linear” material flows—from extraction to use and disposal—to become “circular” through intelligent design of products that incorporates standardization, reuse, recycling, remanufacturing, the development of efficient and inclusive infrastructure, and a new focus on the delivery of services rather than the sale of material products.

Sustainable Consumption and COVID-19

In his introduction to the SDG Report 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres observed the root causes and uneven impacts of COVID-19 have demonstrated why we need the 2030 Agenda. He noted the pandemic has underscored the urgency of implementation and has called for an international response and recovery effort guided by the SDGs. The pandemic has prompted similar responses across the world, notably among advocates of a transformation of economic priorities so that public health and well-being are placed more centrally at the heart of government priorities.

Far from undermining the case for the SDGs, the root causes and uneven impacts of COVID-19 demonstrate precisely why we need the 2030 Agenda…

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, SDG Report 2020

A European research and advocacy initiative, the Foundational Economy, is developing new ways to think about economic policy, placing a focus on healthcare, education, housing, and the food supply. In their manifesto, the organization explains that the well-being of citizens in current and future generations depends less on individual [private] consumption and more on their social consumption of essential goods and services. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic goods and services in a socially responsible way, and not boost private consumption to deliver economic growth.

Similar arguments have been advanced by a worldwide movement advocating government prioritization of well-being and well-being indicators to help steer qualitative and inclusive economic growth, as a replacement or complement to gross domestic product (GDP).

What Future Do We Want?

Both the climate emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated public and governmental understanding of the need to shift our economic paradigm, with calls for “building back better” acknowledging there can be no wholesale retreat to the old economic order. Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in response to the Great Depression in the United States in the early 1930s, proposals for green new deals have proliferated in response to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The most useful measures of progress toward SCP, however, will not be found in the indicator set used to monitor the progress of the SDGs. The key indicator to look for is a shift from a downstream focus on the re-design of private or corporate production and consumption to an upstream focus on the fundamental drivers of national and international economic priorities. Rather than treating markets, for example, as free-standing entities subject to occasional regulatory intrusions, markets must be regarded once again as outcomes of a social process amenable to democratic decision-making. This must accompany a wholesale shift in how society approaches the core question of what it values and whether we are prepared to continue to allow market exchange and pricing mechanisms a privileged status in determining what is to be valued, produced, and consumed. Until this macro-level economic debate on value is resolved in favour of equality and socio-ecological regeneration it will be difficult to see how market and pricing mechanisms applied to biodiversity, forests, and land can produce long-term shifts in consumption practices.

The economist Mariana Mazzucato is making waves with her powerful calls for a green revolution founded on deliberate and conscious changes in social values: a redirection of the entire economy, transforming production, distribution, and consumption in all sectors in favour of the common good. She has called for the concept of “value” to find its rightful place at the centre of economic reasoning if we are to meaningfully respond to the question: “What future do we want?” To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the future cannot be left in the hands of cynics—or economists—who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Northern border heats up with fresh rocket fire, Hezbollah attacks on IDF posts

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 18:19:39 -0500

Lebanon on October 18, 2023. (Jalaa Marey / AFP)

Rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel towns, and the Hezbollah terror group attacked several Israeli army posts along the border, as skirmishes on the frontier continued, amid the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, nine rockets were launched from Lebanon, setting off sirens in Kiryat Shmona and several nearby communities. The IDF said four were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

At least one rocket landed in the northern city, causing no injuries or damage.

Shortly before the rocket sirens, the IDF said one of its tanks shelled two anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) launch positions in southern Lebanon, where the military identified an attempt to carry out an attack.

A third ATGM launch site was struck following a missile attack on the northern town of Metula.

At the same time, the IDF said projectiles were also launched from Lebanon at the contested Mount Dov area, where there are a number of military posts and no towns.

Smoke rises from an Israeli army position that was hit by the Hezbollah terror group as it is seen from Tair Harfa village, south Lebanon, October. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The IDF later said it had carried out a drone strike against a terror cell launching mortars from Lebanon at the Malkia area on the border.

Hezbollah later announced the deaths of two members, saying they were killed while “performing jihad.” The terror group did not elaborate on where Ali Muhammad Marmar and Taha Abbas Abbas were killed, but it was believed that they were targeted in one of the Israeli strikes on Wednesday.

Throughout Wednesday, Hezbollah said it had launched several missiles and attacked a number of Israeli army posts along the border with gunfire.

A video published by the terror group showed it shooting at Israeli cameras and surveillance equipment on the border.

The IDF said the missiles targeted areas near Metula, Malkia, Kibbutz Manara, and Rosh HaNikra. The gunfire targeted a number of military posts in the area, according to the IDF.

The military did not immediately report any casualties among IDF troops.

Rambam Hospital in Haifa said it was admitting one person who was listed in moderate condition as a result of one of the missile attacks, without elaborating on how or where he was hurt.

The IDF said it had responded with artillery shelling of the sources of the missile fire and gunfire in southern Lebanon and had carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah sites.

The military said that among several targets it had hit overnight in airstrikes was a military observation post from which a missile was fired toward Rosh Hanikra earlier.

Smoke rises following an Israeli artillery strike in al-Bustan, a Lebanese border village with Israel, south Lebanon, October 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, Hezbollah fired a missile at Israeli forces near Shtula, a moshav in northern Israel, lightly wounding four soldiers.

Shtula, Metula, Malkia, Manara, and Rosh HaNikra are among 28 communities being evacuated from the north under the increasing threat of war.

The incidents were the latest in a series of increasingly frequent skirmishes on the northern border with the Iran-backed Hezbollah as well as Hamas operatives there. The tit-for-tat attacks have remained limited in scope, amid threats from Israel that Lebanon could suffer if Hezbollah steps up its attacks.

In total, at least five Israeli soldiers, 13 Hezbollah terrorists and five Palestinian terrorists have been killed in the exchanges. One Israeli civilian was killed in a Hezbollah attack Sunday, and two Lebanese civilians and a journalist were also reported killed by Israeli shelling.

The attacks from Lebanon have come as Israel is waging war in Gaza against Hamas after the terror group’s murderous assault on the country on October 7, in which some 1,400 people were massacred and some 200-250 were kidnapped and taken to the Strip.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Tuesday that if Hezbollah “makes a mistake,” it will face “destruction.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi is seen at the Northern Command in Safed, October 17, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

There have been escalating warnings from Iran regarding the possibility of the war being widened, as Israel prepares a ground offensive with the stated goal of toppling Hamas’s rule over the Palestinian enclave.

Israel and the US have both warned Iran and Hezbollah to remain on the sidelines, with Washington dispatching two aircraft carrier groups to the region, signaling it could step in to defend Israel.

As the area has heated up, the IDF and Defense Ministry were working to evacuate civilians who live in towns up to two kilometers (1.25 miles) from the Lebanese border, due to the repeated rocket and missile attacks by Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions in recent days.

The ministry’s National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) said the estimated 27,000 residents would be taken to state-funded guesthouses.

‘Tipping point’ for climate action: Time’s running out to avoid catastrophic heating

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 18:16:34 -0500

According to the landmark United in Science 2021, there “is no sign of growing back greener”, as carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly accelerating, after a temporary blip in 2020 due to COVID, and nowhere close to the targets set by the Paris Agreement.

“We have reached a tipping point on the need for climate action. The disruption to our climate and our planet is already worse than we thought, and it is moving faster than predicted”, UN Secretary General António Guterres underscored in a video message. “This report shows just how far off course we are”, he added.

A world in danger

According to scientists, the rising global temperatures are already fueling devastating extreme weather events around the world, with escalating impacts on economies and societies. For example, billions of working hours have been lost due to excessive heat.

“We now have five times the number of recorded weather disasters than we had in 1970 and they are seven times more costly. Even the most developed countries have become vulnerable”, said the UN chief.

Mr. Guterres cited how Hurricane Ida recently cut power to over a million people in New Orleans, and New York City was paralysed by record-breaking rain that killed at least 50 people in the region.

“These events would have been impossible without human-caused climate change. Costly fires, floods and extreme weather events are increasing everywhere. These changes are just the beginning of worse to come”, he warned.

Unsplash/Mikhail Serdyukov

Climate change increases the risk of hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires.

A bleak future

The report echoes some of the data and warnings from experts in the last year: the average global temperature for the past five years was among the highest on record, and there is an increasing likelihood that temperatures will temporarily breach the threshold of 1.5° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, in the next five years.

The picture painted by United in Science is bleak: even with ambitious action to slow greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels will continue to rise and threaten low-lying islands and coastal populations throughout the world.

“We really are out of time. We must act now to prevent further irreversible damage. COP26 this November must mark that turning point. By then we need all countries to commit to achieve net zero emissions by the middle of this century and to present clear, credible long-term strategies to get there”, urged the UN chief.

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, is scheduled to be held in the city of Glasgow, Scotland between 31 October and 12 November 2021. The pivotal meeting is expected to set the course of climate action for the next decade.

“We must urgently secure a breakthrough on adaptation and resilience, so that vulnerable communities can manage these growing (climate) risks…I expect all these issues to be addressed and resolved at COP26. Our future is at stake”, Mr. Guterres emphasized.

“We are not yet on track towards the Paris 1.5 to 2 degrees’ limit, although positive things have started to happen and the political interest to mitigate climate change is clearly growing but to be successful in this effort, we have to start acting now. We cannot wait for decades to act, we have to start acting already in this decade”, added Prof. Petteri Taalas, World Meteorological Organization’s secretary general.

The report also cites the conclusions of the most recent IPCC report: the scale of recent changes across the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years, and it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.

UNU-EHS/Tanmay Chakraborty

Cyclone Amphan, struck the border region of India and Bangladesh in May 2020 causing widespread destruction.

Notable findings

Concentrations of the major greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2 O) continued to increase in 2020 and the first half of 2021.

According to WMO, reducing atmospheric methane (CH4) in the short term, could support the pledges of 193 Member States made in Paris. This measure does not reduce the need for strong, rapid and sustained reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warns that five years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the emissions gap (the difference between where emissions are heading and where science indicate they should be in 2030) is as large as ever.

Although the increasing number of countries committing to net-zero emission goals is encouraging, to remain feasible and credible, these goals urgently need to be reflected in near-term policy and in significantly more ambitious actions, the agency highlights.

“Last year, we estimated that there was 5.6 per cent drop in emissions and since the lifetime of carbon dioxide is so long, this one year anomaly in emissions doesn't change the big picture. We saw some improvements in air quality, these short-lived gases, which are affecting air quality. We saw positive evolution there. But now we have returned more or less back to the 2019 emission levels", further explained the WMO chief.

Unsplash/Maxim Tolchinskiy

Air pollution from power plants contributes to global warming.

A warmer future

The report explains that the annual global average temperature is likely to be at least 1 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels (defined as the 1850–1900 average) in each of the coming five years and is very likely to be within the range of 0.9 °C to 1.8 °C.

There is also a 40% chance that the average temperature in one of the next five years, will be at least 1.5 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels. However, it is very unlikely that the 5-year average temperature for 2021–2025 will pass the 1.5 °C threshold.

High latitude regions, and the Sahel, are likely to be wetter in the next five years, the report also warns.

NOOR/Kadir van Lohuizen

In Seychelles, efforts are undertaken to improve coastal protection from flooding caused by storms and a rise in sea level due to climate change.

Sea level rise is inevitable

"We don't know what's going to happen to the Antarctic glacier, where we have the biggest mass of ice worldwide and in the worst case, we could see up to two meters of sea level rise by the end of this century if the melting of the Antarctic glacier happens in a speedier manner”, cautioned Prof. Taalas.

Global sea levels rose 20 cm from 1900 to 2018, and at an accelerated rate from 2006 to 2018.

Even if emissions are reduced to limit warming to well below 2 °C, the global average sea level would likely rise by 0.3–0.6 m by 2100 and could rise 0.3–3.1 m by 2300.

Adaptation to the rise will be essential, especially along low-lying coasts, small islands, deltas and coastal cities, explains WMO.

Unsplash/Alexander Popov

Transport is a huge driver of air pollution.

World’s health also at risk

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that rising temperatures are linked to increased heat-related mortality and work impairment, with an excess of 103 billion potential work hours lost globally in 2019 compared with those lost in 2000.

Moreover, COVID-19 infections and climate hazards such as heatwaves, wildfires and poor air quality, combine to threaten human health worldwide, putting vulnerable populations at particular risk.

According to the UN health agency, the COVID-19 recovery efforts should be aligned with national climate change and air quality strategies to reduce risks from cascading climate hazards, and gain health co-benefits.

“We had this temperature anomaly in western Canada and the United States, where we were up to 15 degrees warmer temperatures than normally. And that led to a record breaking, forest fires and major health problems, especially amongst elderly people”, highlighted WMO Secretary General.

The United in Science 2021 report, the third in a series, is coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with input from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Global Carbon Project (GCP), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the Met Office (UK). It presents the very latest scientific data and findings related to climate change to inform global policy and action.

Israeli troops trade fire over its northern border with Hezbollah

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 18:05:56 -0500

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Troops from Israel spent much of yesterday trading fire with a militia just over its northern border.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Yeah. The Hezbollah militia controls southern Lebanon, and we witnessed their low-level warfare with Israel as our team drove into Israel's northern mountains. Our producer, Ziad Buchh, noticed something as we arrived at a village near the border.

Oh, we're here.

(CROSSTALK)

ZIAD BUCHH, BYLINE: Did you see the Virgin Mary?

INSKEEP: No. I missed the Virgin Mary. Like a statue at the end of this...

BUCHH: Yeah. Right on the sign for the city.

INSKEEP: It is called Fassuta, and it's a Catholic village, centuries old, with multiple statues of saints on the streets. Leila, we're talking about an overwhelmingly Muslim region and a predominantly Jewish state, but of course, there are Christian communities in this region, as well.

FADEL: So how close is the fighting to that village?

INSKEEP: Well, last night we could hear it. And this is what it sounded like as we walked through a courtyard where kids were playing.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Non-English language spoken).

(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)

BUCHH: Listen.

INSKEEP: I heard.

BUCHH: Yeah.

INSKEEP: This was just after sunset, and we heard booms like that every few minutes, sometimes more often. The Israeli Defense Forces are out there in the hills blasting back as Hezbollah fighters were firing weapons into Israel.

FADEL: So why are these residents still in their village? I know that Israel told many to evacuate. Why did they stay?

INSKEEP: Yeah. The residents say the government cleared out people within four kilometers of the border. And this village is 4 1/2...

FADEL: Oh.

INSKEEP: ...So they're staying for now. I did talk with members of one family who sat outside on their deck as we listened to these booms. And through our interpreter, I asked Mike Benowi (ph) what it is like to live here.

MIKE BENOWI: (Through interpreter) It's terrifying that you - that being out and about in the village, you feel like you're in a prison, that they're - that you're - they're chased - the rockets are chasing you. At any time, anyone could be hit. And it's a rocket that could really kill quite a number of people and that there's only five seconds to get to a shelter because we're so close to the border that if you go up on a hill, you can see over the border.

INSKEEP: Yeah. Some of the people in that village have military experience, as people across Israel do, and they recognize different kinds of firing in the dark.

FADEL: Now, you were so close, we can hear the booms. What is the fighting like out there?

INSKEEP: Well, we talked with an Israeli officer who called this a slow-motion war. Israel, of course, knows that Hezbollah in the north has allied with Hamas in the South. Many days in the last few weeks, Hezbollah fires antitank weapons into Israel. Normally these would be short-range weapons, but if you shoot them high, the projectiles go high and go for miles across the border. Israeli forces respond with artillery or drones or rockets. Some people have been killed, including civilians, including a journalist a couple of weeks ago on the Lebanese side of the border. And yesterday, multiple rockets came out of Lebanon and three of them fell into a different Israeli border town, the one we visited. And later, we went to a city on the coast, and as soon as we arrived, a warning siren went off, a sign of incoming rocket fire.

FADEL: Are the soldiers aware of the risk that this sparks a wider war?

INSKEEP: They are trying not to be. We're told Israeli soldiers are encouraged not to watch the news, not to follow social media. They might even get their phones taken away. They're told not to be manipulated and just respond to the tactical challenge in front of them. Of course, Leila, you and I do follow the news. We're aware of the wider picture, and we know this is a dangerous game. Hezbollah is seen as a proxy for Iran, whose foreign minister made warnings on NPR that groups like Hezbollah have their finger on the trigger of a wider war. So each side is aware of the pressure not to go too far.

FADEL: Yeah. Thanks, Steve.

INSKEEP: You're welcome.

Great Barrier Reef in 'recovery' but experts say progress will be threatened by climate-related disturbances

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 18:03:44 -0500

The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing a rare window of recovery due to a break in weather and bleaching events according to the latest observations from marine scientists.

According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science's Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition, which was released today, conditions have been relatively good for coral recovery during 2020-21.

Researchers surveyed 127 reefs and found that at least 69 had seen an increase in hard coral cover since they were last surveyed.

"This indicates that recovery is well underway, after a particularly intense decade of disturbances prior to this," monitoring team leader Mike Emslie said.

"We've had very few acute disturbances this year," Dr Emslie said.

"There were no sustained heatwaves leading to coral bleaching, there were no large tropical cyclones.

"Essentially the Great Barrier Reef has had a bit of a breather."

AIMS researchers are towed over the Great Barrier Reef to conduct surveys.(Supplied: Australian Institute of Marine Science)

The improvements come after the Great Barrier Reef experienced its most widespread bleaching event on record early last year.

Dr Emslie said the majority of the coral cover growth was driven by common, fast-growing table and branching corals.

However, he said these corals were the most vulnerable.

"Their fast growth comes at a bit of a cost, their skeletons aren't as dense as other corals," Dr Emslie said.

AIMS has warned that the recovery the Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing is likely to be short-lived with the "increasing prominence" of climate-related disturbances.

"The biggest risk to the reef going forward is climate change," AIMS chief executive Paul Hardisty said.

"We must reduce emissions if the Great Barrier Reef and frankly other reefs around the world are going to continue to exist in the state in which we recognise them today," Dr Hardisty said.

Dr Paul Hardisty delivered an update on the reef's condition in Townsville. (ABC North Qld: Chloe Chomicki)

The World Heritage Committee, which sits under UNESCO, made a draft recommendation to list the Great Barrier Reef as "in danger" in June.

The decision is expected to be finalised at a meeting in China in the coming days.

AIMS declined to comment on the World Heritage Committee recommendation.

However, research program leader Britta Schaffelke said the latest observations of the Great Barrier Reef did not change a grim outlook which was delivered by the institute in 2019.

"The outlook report assessed the future outlook for the reef to be very poor," Dr Schaffelke said.

"The reef outlook into the future is still very poor because of the dangers of climate change and other factors."

'Incredibly rare moment'

The World Wildlife Fund's Richard Leck said the report told a story of hope and one of a warning.

"It's great to see the reef still has resilience and we have seen some significant bounce back in coral species," he said.

"But this is an incredibly rare moment in time where we haven't had extreme heat events or crown of thorns outbreaks.

"Those events are more likely to continue into the future."

Mr Leck said the report strengthened arguments to list the Great Barrier Reef as "in danger".

"This report reinforces the importance of the decision faced by the World Heritage Committee this week," he said.

Long-lasting healthy changes: Doable and worthwhile

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:57:44 -0500

I've been a physician for 20 years now, and a strong proponent of lifestyle medicine for much of it. I know that it's hard to make lasting, healthy lifestyle changes, even when people know what to do and have the means to do it. Yet many studies and my own clinical experience as a Lifestyle Medicine-certified physician have shown me a few approaches that can help make long-lasting healthy lifestyle changes happen.

What is lifestyle medicine?

In the US, lifestyle medicine is built around six pillars: eating healthy foods; exercising regularly; easing stress; getting restful sleep; quitting addictive substances like tobacco and limiting alcohol; and nurturing social connections.

How will this help you? Here's one example. A study published this summer in the Journal Neurology followed over 70,000 health professionals for more than two decades. Those who reported eating a diet high in colorful fruits and vegetables had a significantly lower risk of subjective memory loss — which is a sign of dementia — compared with those who did not.

A multitude of studies over many years have mined health data on this same cohort. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health nutrition expert Dr. Walter Willett observed that, based on these studies, four combined healthy lifestyle factors — a healthy diet, not smoking, engaging in moderate activity, and avoiding excess weight — could prevent about 70% to 80% of coronary heart disease and 90% of type 2 diabetes. The catch, he noted, is that only about 4% of people participating in these studies attained all four.

Abundant research shows healthy lifestyle factors protect us against serious, often disabling health problems: diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia, heart disease, strokes, cancer, and more. Clearly, taking steps toward a healthier lifestyle can make a big difference in our lives, but it can be hard to change our habits. Below are a few tips to help you start on that path.

Science has proven that chronic, low-grade inflammation can turn into a silent killer that contributes to cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and other conditions. Get simple tips to fight inflammation and stay healthy -- from Harvard Medical School experts.

Find motivation

What motivates you? Where will you find good reasons to change? Yes, studies show that being at a healthy weight and shape is associated with a longer life and lower risk of many chronic diseases. However, in my experience, only emphasizing weight or waist size isn't helpful for long-term healthy lifestyle change. Indeed, studies have shown that focusing too much on those numbers is associated with quitting a health kick, whereas small goals related to positive actions were associated with successful long-term lifestyle change.

Examples of this include aiming for at least 21 minutes of activity per day and/or five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. (These activity and nutrition goals are actually recommendations of the American Heart Association, FYI!) If we strive to live healthy so that we can live a long, healthy life, we have a greater chance of long-term success — which typically will result in weight and waist loss.

Put healthy habits on automatic

Healthy choices can become more automatic if you remove the "choice" part. For example, take the thinking out of every eating or activity decision by planning ahead for the week to come:

Choose a basic menu for meals and build in convenience. Focus on simple, healthy recipes. Frozen produce is healthful, easy to keep on hand, and sometimes less expensive than fresh. Shopping the salad bar costs more, but could help on busy nights.
Jot down your activity schedule. Choose some physical activity most days — the more vigorous and the longer the better, but anything counts! Even as little as 10 minutes of light to moderate activity per week has been associated with a longer life span.
Track food and activity choices each day. Using an app or notebook for this can help you become more aware and accountable. Try noting barriers, too, and brainstorm workarounds for overly busy days and other issues that push you off track.

Understand how emotions affect you

If feeling stressed, angry, or sad is a trigger for overeating or another unhealthy activity, it's important to recognize this. Writing down triggers over the course of a week can enhance your awareness. Building better stress management habits can help you stick to a healthy lifestyle plan. Getting sufficient restful sleep and scheduling personal time, regular activity, and possibly meditation, therapy, or even just chats with good friends are all steps in the right direction.

A healthy lifestyle is key to a long, healthy life, and is attainable. Success may require some thoughtful trial and error, but don't give up! I have seen all kinds of patients at all ages make amazing changes, and you can, too.

Clean energy can fuel the future — and make the world healthier

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:53:59 -0500

Clean energy can fuel the future — and make the world

healthier

Research challenges the myth that clean energy acts as a brake on global economic development.

The 2030 targets laid out by the United Nations for the seventh Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 7) are clear enough: provide affordable access to energy; expand use of renewable sources; improve energy efficiency year on year; and enhance international cooperation in support of clean-energy research, development and infrastructure. Meeting those goals, however, will be anything but simple. As seen in many of the editorials in this series examining the SDGs at their halfway stage, the world is falling short.

This is due, at least in part, to the influence of the fossil-fuel industry, which drives the economics and, often, the politics of countries large and small, rich and poor. Rising human prosperity, as measured by economic growth, has long been linked to an abundance of fossil fuels. Many politicians fear that the pursuit of clean-energy sources will compromise that economic development. The latest science clearly counters this view — but the voice of the research community is not being heard in the right places. To meet the targets embodied in SDG 7, that has to change.

There is much to be done. In 2021, some 675 million people worldwide still did not have access to electricity. This is down from 1.1 billion a decade or so ago, but the pace of progress has slowed. On the basis of current trends, 660 million people, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, will remain without electricity by 2030. And projections indicate that some 1.9 billion people will still be using polluting and inefficient cooking systems fuelled by coal and wood (see go.nature.com/3s8d887). This is bad news all round: for health, biodiversity and the climate.

Carbon emissions hit new high: warning from COP27

Achieving the energy-access targets was always going to be a stretch, but progress has been slow elsewhere, too. Take energy efficiency. More energy efficiency means less pollution, and energy efficiency has increased by around 2% annually in the past few years. But meeting the target for 2030 — to double the rate of the 1990–2010 average — would require gains of around 3.4% every year for the rest of this decade.

The picture for renewable energy is similarly mixed. Despite considerable growth in wind and solar power to generate grid electricity, progress in the heat and transport sectors remains sluggish. Renewable energy’s share of total global energy consumption was just 19.1% in 2020, according to the latest UN tracking report, but one-third of that came from burning resources such as wood.

One reason for the slow progress is the continued idea that aggressive clean-energy goals will get in the way of economic development. It’s easier and more profitable for major fossil-fuel producers to simply maintain the status quo. Just last month, ministers from the G20 group of the world’s biggest economies, including the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia and the United States, failed to agree on a plan to phase out fossil fuels and triple the capacity of renewable energy by 2030.

But this is where science has a story to tell. In the past, researchers say, many models indicated that clean energy would be more expensive than that from fossil fuels, potentially pricing the poorest nations out of the market as well as driving up people’s food bills and exacerbating hunger. But the latest research suggests that the picture is more complex. Energy is a linchpin for most of the SDGs, and research that merges climate, energy and the SDGs underscores this¹. For example, the agriculture and food-transport sectors still depend on fossil fuels, and that generates pollution that kills millions of people each year. Other links are indirect: lack of access to light at night and to online information — as a result of energy poverty — hampers educational attainment and contributes to both long- and short-term inequality.

US aims for electric-car revolution — will it work?

The lesson from research is that it might be easier, not harder, to address these challenges together. In 2021, researcher Gabriela Iacobuţă at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability in Bonn and her colleagues showed that technologies centred on renewable resources and efficiency tend to come with few trade-offs and many benefits, including improved public health and wealth, thanks to a cleaner environment and better jobs². And climate scientist Bjoern Soergel at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and his colleagues found that a coordinated package of climate and development policies could achieve most of the SDGs while limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels³.

The study assessed 56 indicators across all 17 SDGs. One proposed intervention is an international climate finance mechanism that would levy fees on carbon emissions that would be redistributed through national programmes to reduce poverty. A second focuses on promoting healthy diets — including reducing the consumption of meat, the production of which requires a lot of water, energy and land. This would benefit people on low incomes by lowering both food and energy prices.

The biggest challenge lies in translating these models to the real world. To do so, we need leaders who are not bound by outmoded thinking, are aware of the latest science and can draw on the research to build public support for the necessary energy transition. We require more national and international public institutions that are willing to address problems at the system level. And all of this needs a science community that is willing and able to champion knowledge and evidence.

Explainer: What is offshore wind and what does its future look like?

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:51:41 -0500

Explainer: What is offshore wind and what does its future

look like?

Energy Transition

Offshore wind farms are hitting the headlines for their size and for gaining government backing across the globe.
Boosting offshore wind power is seen as a way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and speed the journey to net zero, and it can also create jobs and economic growth.
There are still challenges to overcome to scale the technology, especially for floating offshore wind, which is not yet industrialized.

Picture a plate of cupcakes. Look tempting don’t they? But each one took energy to bake - energy that could in future be generated by offshore wind farms.

In fact, just one rotation of a GE Haliade-X 12 MW offshore wind turbine generates enough power to bake 28 plates full of cupcakes or, perhaps more usefully, power the average UK home for 24 hours.

Offshore wind farms are hitting the headlines across the globe for their sheer scale - and as countries increasingly turn to them to decrease their dependency on energy from Russia as well as speed up their energy transition.

Global capacity of large-scale wind farms is expected to increase 10-fold, from 34 GW in 2020 to 330 GW in 2030, and spread throughout 24 countries (up from nine today), according to a report by consultancy Wood McKenzie. It estimated $1 trillion would flow into the offshore wind industry over the next decade.

Winds of change around the globe

Kincardine, off the coast of Scotland, is currently the world’s largest floating wind farm, with five giant V164-9.525 MW turbines made by Danish company Vestas.

In August, eight EU countries on the Baltic Sea pledged to increase offshore wind power generation capacity sevenfold by 2030, up from 2.8 GW currently, most of which is in Danish and German waters.

Putting further wind in the sails of the renewables sector, the Biden administration in the US unveiled its Floating Offshore Wind Shot in September. It aims to “reduce the costs of floating technologies by more than 70% by 2035, to $45 per megawatt-hour” and increase capacity to 15 GW by 2035, enough to power 5 million homes.

This is in addition to the 30 GW by 2030 of offshore wind power target, which will be mainly met through ‘fixed-bottom’ technology.

How is the World Economic Forum facilitating the transition to clean energy?

The southern Chinese city of Chaozhou is planning a wind farm that would dwarf all of Norway’s power plants combined, according to Bloomberg. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects China to have the largest installed offshore wind capacity by the end of 2022 - more than the UK and EU combined.

Boosting offshore wind power is seen as a way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and speed the journey to net zero. But it’s also providing jobs and economic growth to coastal towns and revitalizing industries, with the Global Wind Energy Council in 2021 predicting both onshore and offshore wind would create 3.3 million jobs over the next five years across the entire value chain.

But what exactly are offshore wind farms and what does the future hold?

Offshore wind farms: floating vs fixed bottom

Kincardine might be the world’s largest floating windfarm, but Hornsea 2, off the coast of Yorkshire in the UK, is the world’s largest fixed-bottom offshore wind farm and became fully operational in September.

Hornsea 2, off the coast of Yorkshire in the UK, is the world’s largest fixed-bottom offshore wind farm. Image: Ørsted.

Run by Danish energy company Ørsted, which pioneered the first offshore wind farms 30 years ago, Hornsea 2’s 165 wind turbines are sited next to its older sibling Hornsea 1 - and together they can power 2.5 million homes, contributing to the UK government’s goal of 50 GW in offshore wind capacity by 2030.

In July, Ørsted were awarded the contract for Hornsea 3, which will power 3.2 million homes, while Hornsea 4 is going through the planning process and a decision is expected in early 2023.

It’s hard to imagine how colossal these feats of engineering are. The giant blades on Vestas’ V164 turbines are each 80 metres long, for example, and when they’re installed on towers, the tip of the blade can reach more than 200m above sea level - that’s more than twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

Then there are the 390km of subsea export cables that take the power generated from Hornsea 2 to the shore at Horseshoe Point in Lincolnshire.

So what’s the difference between floating and fixed-bottom wind farms?

It comes down to location. Floating wind turbines don’t need to be grounded in the seabed, like fixed-bottom ones, so they can be sited further out to sea in water deeper than 60m, where winds are stronger. They are then anchored to the seabed with multiple mooring lines, borrowing technology from floating oil platforms, according to the Norwegian state-owned energy firm Equinor.

Floating vs fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines. Image: IOP Publishing/Creative commons.

Is the future floating?

If onshore wind was the first generation in wind-farm technology, which informed offshore fixed-bottom wind farms, floating wind farms are effectively the third generation.

“Floating offshore wind will be able to build on the developments made in seabed fixed offshore wind to reach scale even faster – much as today’s offshore wind industry was built on achievements onshore,” says Gabriel Davies, Ørsted’s Programme Director, Floating Wind.

As of October 2022, only around 50 floating offshore wind turbines have been commissioned, says Davies. But global stock is expected to exceed 5 GW by 2030 and 25 GW by 2035.

While fixed-bottom wind farms cost less to install, the real potential for power generation is floating on the horizon. The IEA found, in 2019 the potential for offshore wind power globally could be 18 times the current global power demand - with the majority where waters are deeper than 60m and better suited to floating turbines.

Global installations of floating offshore wind are due to reach 25 GW by 2035. Image: Ørsted

To scale, companies are working together to create a global offshore wind ecosystem - for example, UK company Principle Power created the floating structure for Kincardine, and the turbines themselves were made by Danish firm Vestas.

To ensure the turbines can withstand North Sea storms, a mechanism of pumps shifts liquid ballast between the floating yellow cylinders which balances the platform and puts the turbine at the best angle, Principle Power’s Greg Campbell-Smith told the BBC.

What are the challenges in building offshore wind farms?

Investment and government backing is crucial to ensure capacity grows in a sustainable way. But with growing competition for projects that take years to complete, require local ‘content’ when the local industry may still be in its infancy, as well as access to deep sea ports, wind turbine installation vessels and other essential infrastructure, uncertainty can creep in.

“With all the political ambition going into this space, in the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea, in the US, building up capacity in the industry to actually deliver in a cost-effective way is very important,” says Nils Askær-Hune, Ørsted’s Lead Public Affairs Advisor on Socio-Economics, Global Public Affairs.

“We have to have a long horizon for planning. In order to ensure efficient resource utilization, it is essential that the expansion takes place sequentially and is planned in accordance with the expansion of capacity in the industry.”

The current auction process is precarious, with some governments using ‘zero bid’ auctions and toying with the concept of ‘negative bidding’, which would see wind companies paying them for the right to develop, according to Wind Europe.

Added to the rise in transport and materials costs due to COVID-19 and compounded by the energy crisis and war in Ukraine, it’s becoming harder to build viable projects with sustainable supply chains.

How offshore wind is growing globally. Image: Statista.

Decarbonizing the wind-farm value chain is also a major challenge, as the turbines themselves are made from steel and other metals which require energy-intensive processes to manufacture.

Askær-Hune says: “We can build offshore wind farms which will help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions as they produce green energy and enable the production of green hydrogen that enables the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors. However, in order to create a world that runs entirely on green energy, as a company we must decarbonize our full value chain. At Ørsted we work every day to achieve net-zero emissions in our full value chain (scope 1-3) by 2040.”

Another challenge is around the impact of an offshore wind farm on marine biodiversity. Ørsted aims to have a net-positive impact on biodiversity by design, such as turning the foundations of fixed-bottom turbines into artificial reefs - habitats and shelter for species like mussels, Atlantic cod and even coral.

For example, the company has just launched a global partnership with WWF to advance offshore wind deployment that enhances ocean biodiversity.

Floating wind turbines can be installed with less noise and disruption to marine mammals and beyond the foraging ranges of breeding birds, says Ørsted. But the anchors and mooring lines will need monitoring for their impacts on life on the seafloor.

What governments can do to support offshore wind farms

The ambition and will for wind is there, but bureaucracy around permits is slowing down the process.

At COP27, nine new countries joined the Global Offshore Wind Alliance initiated by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Denmark and the Global Wind Energy Council, which wants to "lift the barriers" to developing offshore wind.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has proposed temporary new emergency regulation designed to speed up the REPowerEU Plan to develop renewables to accelerate the energy transition and end the EU’s dependence on Russian gas.

Specifically, this would help to fast-track lengthy and complicated administrative and permitting procedures stopping the development of renewables projects.

As Vestas notes in this Economist article: “The climate and energy crises are hugely complex, but the solutions are available. By accelerating the permitting process governments will not only ensure their energy security and reduce emissions, but also unlock swathes of economic potential. The time to act is now.”

Both Ørsted and Vestas are members of the World Economic Forum’s First Movers Coalition of companies creating a market for the emerging technologies that are crucial in order to reach Net Zero by 2050.

Nov 22, 2022

Kate Whiting

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

India ranks 111th of 125 on Global Hunger Index. What it means & why govt says it’s ‘erroneous’

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:44:16 -0500

New Delhi: The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023 report ranked India 111 out of 125 countries, with a score of 28.7 — indicating a ‘serious’ level of hunger in the country. While the Indian government has rejected the findings of the report, terming its methodology “erroneous”, an expert in the field says India should focus on improving poor child nutrition levels, regardless of what any index says.

The GHI is an annual peer-reviewed report that tracks hunger in countries on a multi-dimensional scale. According to the report, released Thursday, China, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh all continue to rank higher than India on the index compiled annually by international NGO Concern Worldwide and German private aid agency Welthungerhilfe.

India falls in the ‘serious’ category of the ‘Hunger Severity Scale’ of the GHI, similar to last year, when it ranked 107 out of 121 countries. The scale ranges from 50 (extremely alarming hunger).

However, the problem area, in India’s case, is the child wasting rates.

Child wasting rates indicate acute undernutrition, according to the GHI, and India has the highest rates in the world — 18.7 percent in 2023, as against 19.3 percent in 2022.

In response to the report, the Ministry of Women & Child Development in a statement issued Thursday, said the report had “serious methodological issues” and a “malafide intent” and that it “continues to be an erroneous measure” of hunger.

Countering the GHI findings, the ministry cited central government schemes including Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0, which are aimed at challenging malnutrition in the country.

“Three out of the four indicators used for calculation of the index are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population,” it said.

The ministry further contended that the “fourth and most important indicator ‘Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population’ is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3000”.

However, Dr Arun Gupta, central coordinator of the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), told ThePrint that, regardless of the findings of international reports or their veracity, the issue of malnutrition in India remains.

“A child who is malnourished requires the same set of interventions regardless of what any index reports,” said Gupta, formerly a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges. “Instead of denying or rejecting international reports, we should focus on reducing malnutrition in the country,” he added.

Also Read: As PM’s ‘Mann ki Baat’ urges awareness, experts say malnutrition as much a food availability issue

Methodology & sources

According to its stated methodology, the Global Hunger Index uses published data from “internationally recognized sources”.

It looks at four main categories: undernourishment (percentage of population with insufficient caloric intake), child wasting (percentage of children under 5 with low weight for their height), child stunting (percentage of children under 5 with low height for their age), and child mortality (percentage of children who die before the age of 5).

It used data from sources that are included in the WHO’s Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates (JME) and the WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition.

For India, these included the National Family Health Survey (2019-2021), which is conducted by the Government of India, the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation report (UN IGME), and the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The latest SOFI report is what the Government of India has cited to raise an issue with the GHI. The SOFI report had pegged the undernourishment value of India at 16.6 percent, based on information provided by the FAO.

The FAO normally relies on data from every country’s household consumption and expenditure surveys to calculate the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU). India’s last available household consumption and expenditure data is for the year 2011-12, since the 2017-18 data was not released by the government due to issues with the ‘quality of data’.

In places where suitable national survey data is not available, the FAO has to rely on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) to calculate the PoU. The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) that the SOFI report relied on is a poll with eight questions asked to 3,000 respondents, to calculate the undernourishment value of India.

According to the ministry’s statement, this data is “not only wrong and unethical but reeks of obvious bias”.

The ministry also stated that the GHI should have used data from the Poshan Tracker application, launched in 2021 by the government to track child healthcare indicators.

However, the GHI website clarifies that the Poshan Tracker data is not verified by either the Joint Malnutrition Estimates and/or the WHO Global Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition.

The statement issued by the ministry also said that there was “hardly any evidence” that child mortality, one of the key indicators in the report, was caused by hunger.

“Be it undernutrition, lack of access to healthcare, or breastfeeding — they are all due to system failures,” Gupta told ThePrint. “You can call it a hunger index or a health index if it makes it more accurate, but the numbers stay the same.”

Indiana ranks 40th in the nation for women’s equality

Jarret Frank — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:38:29 -0500

Indiana ranks 40th in the nation for women’s equality

(WEHT)– According to WalletHub’s study, Indiana ranks among 10 of the worst states for gender equality. Kentucky and Illinois both fall close to the middle among 2021’s best and worst states for women’s equality.

Although women’s rights in the U.S. have evolved since the 19 Amendment gave women the right to vote, the U.S. isn’t leading the world in gender equality. The U.S. ranked 53 of the World Economic Forum’s ranking of 156 countries based on gender equality. WalletHub’s recent study shows the workplace shows evidence of inequality in America.

Despite their advances toward social equality, women are disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions. Women make up more than 50 percent of the population, but constitute only around 27% of legislators and 25 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.

Women also faced inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Women were initially laid off at a greater rate than men and re-employed more slowly.

The gap has started to close. For example, more than half of job gains in May went to women, and the June unemployment rate for women was 5.5%, compared to 5.9% for men.

WalletHub compared the 50 states across 17 key indicators of gender equality. The data ranges from the gap between female and male executives to the disparity in unemployment rates for women and men. You can find the full study here but can see how the Tri-State fairs through the data listed below.

Indiana
- Overall rank 40 out of 50 states
- Total Score: 49.27
- Workplace Enviroment: 47
- Education and Health: 37
- Political empowerment: 25

Illinois
- Overall rank 22 out of 50 states
- Total Score: 58.84
- Workplace Enviroment: 37
- Education and Health: 30
- Political empowerment: 10

Kentucky
- Overall rank 20 out of 50 states
- Total Score: 59.29
- Workplace Enviroment: 21
- Education and Health: 2
- Political empowerment: 43