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Are we really ready to tackle the climate crisis? Yes, here are 6 reasons how

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:53:57 -0500

Since the adoption of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, global momentum to tackle the climate crisis has been building. Progress has been made on almost every front, from bold corporate emissions-reduction targets and investors shifting a

From wildfires in Australia and the western United States to this year’s record-breaking hurricane season, communities around the world continue to face devastating extreme weather events, many exacerbated by the climate crisis. A lot of work lies ahead of us.

The coronavirus pandemic, while first and foremost a health, employment, and economic crisis, will also impact efforts to advance climate action. On the one hand, most leaders are not focused on climate action these days, and the COP26 climate summit originally scheduled for November 2020 in Glasgow was postponed until next year. On the other hand, this health crisis shows that countries can respond rapidly to a global emergency.

Here are six ways the world has shown it’s ready for more ambitious climate action since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015:

1. Over 1,000 big companies pledged major emissions reductions

Private sector leaders increasingly recognize that transitioning our high-carbon economy to one built on low-carbon activities is not only essential to limit dangerous climate change crises; it’s also good for companies’ bottom lines.

Under the Science Based Targets initiative, over 1,000 companies have committed to set emissions reduction targets based on the science, and more than 340 have committed to set net-zero targets across their operations and value chains. The net-zero targets align with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).

Collectively, these high-ambition companies — including many globally recognized brands, from Chanel to Nestlé — represent $3.6 trillion and have an annual carbon footprint larger than the annual emissions of France.

Companies’ approaches to cutting their emissions vary. For example, 270 are committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy. This includes Nike, which already powers all its North American facilities through renewables. The Consumer Goods Forum recently launched an initiative leading major brands, retailers and manufacturers in an effort to eliminate deforestation and forest degradation from supply chains of commodities including soy, palm oil and paper. Ninety-two companies — including Air New Zealand, Baidu and HP — have joined EV100, a worldwide initiative seeking to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles by 2030. And IKEA and H&M — companies known globally for the affordability of their products — are exploring ways they could profit from repairing and reselling products in a circular economy.

Many of these companies are leaders within their sectors and are setting a new standard for what corporate climate action should look like. Microsoft, one of the world’s largest companies, will shrink its carbon footprint and invest in carbon removal solutions to become carbon negative by 2030.

2. Major cities are improving urban life while building climate resilience

Major cities are improving urban life while building climate crisis resilience. Image: Open Street Map

For the interactive chart visit: https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/12/paris-agreement-progress-climate-action

More than half the world’s population lives in cities, and the U.N. predicts that percentage to grow to two-thirds of humanity by 2050. As a result, how cities act now against climate crisis will directly affect the lives of billions.

Worldwide, around 400 cities have committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, and more than 10,500 have joined the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy. In the United States, cities are a major player in America’s Pledge, a coalition of cities, states and businesses committed to fulfilling the Paris Climate Agreement’s target despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal. Together, these entities account for almost 70% of the U.S. economy. If they were a country, their economy would be larger than China’s and second only to the full United States.

Many individual cities worldwide are also taking commendable action to reduce emissions and create better lives for their residents. In Medellín, Colombia, the installation of an aerial tram system called Metrocableis linking low-income hillside communities with the center of the city and thus boosting access by residents to jobs, education and other services. The mayor of Paris made her plan for a “15-minute city,” where residents can meet all their needs within 15 minutes of traveling from home, a cornerstone of her re-election campaign. And in China, the city of Shenzhen more than tripled its number of electric buses since 2015, making it the first city in the world to electrify 100% of its bus fleet.

Others are focused on adapting to a changing climate. In the northern Indian city of Gorakhpur, city officials are encouraging a range of tactics — from reducing monoculture to protecting water bodies — to reduce flooding and boost resilience as monsoons get stronger and more unpredictable. To help all cities reduce emissions and weather climate impacts, WRI and C40 have created a roadmap for equitable city climate action that will include and benefit all residents without leading to unintended burdens on poor and otherwise vulnerable communities.

3. Financial institutions recognize that funding fossil fuels is a bad investment

To shift onto a more sustainable path, the world’s leading public and private financial institutions need to not only invest more in the new clean alternatives, but also stop investing in the old polluting technologies. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, governments are providing unprecedented levels of investment to reflate economies and generate jobs. As they do so, there is strong evidence that these investments should be targeted to projects that are low carbon and climate resilient.

South Korea provides a good example; after the 2008-09 economic crisis, the country invested more in green stimulus measures than any other OECD country — and was one of the countries that rebounded the quickest. As a recent WRI paper revealed, the countries that invested in green measures after the Great Recession can show what worked, what didn’t and how to apply these lessons to green COVID-19 recovery.

So far, the European Union is leading the pack when it comes to investing in green recovery. About 30% of its €750 billion ($891 billion) EU-wide stimulus plan and its €1.1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) 2021-2027 budget will be dedicated to climate-friendly investments. The European Investment Bank (EIB) aims to align its strategy with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees C goal by the end of 2020 and plans to stop funding oil, gas and coal projects at the end of 2021 — both pioneering moves for multilateral development banks. In addition, the bank’s new “climate roadmap” promises to invest €1 trillion ($1.2 trillion) in climate and other green actions by 2030.

Meanwhile, more than 130 private banks — representing one-third of the global banking sector — signed onto the Principles for Responsible Banking. This framework that seeks to align banking practices with the Paris Agreement.

Through the United Nations-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, 33 major institutional investors with $5.1 trillion in assets committed to net-zero investment portfolios by 2050. In January 2020, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm which alone manages $7 trillion, announced that it was shifting its financial strategy to center around climate change progress. With this move, it joined more than 370 other investors in an initiative called Climate Action 100+, whose members are engaging companies that produce two-thirds of global industrial emissions.

4. Technological advances make renewable energy and other solutions more attainable

Renewable energy is increasingly cost-competitive with coal. Between 2010 and 2019, solar energy prices dropped 90%. In sunny regions around the world, it’s already cheaper to get electricity from solar than fossil fuels. Similarly, the cost of wind energy has declined significantly in recent years and is cheaper than natural gas in some regions, including parts of the United States.

As prices drop and the adoption of renewable energy expands, so does the industry behind it. In the United States, clean energy already employs almost 3.3 million Americans, more than fossil fuel generation.

The last few years have also seen further signs of technological progress toward tipping points for a zero-carbon future. Electric vehicle technology improved so quickly that an increasing number of major automakers, including Toyota and Daimler, are planning to stop making internal combustion engines.

Iron and steelmakers, which have struggled to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are now exploring using hydrogen as a clean fuel to replace carbon within their industrial processes. Knowledge about the opportunities to sequester carbon in trees and soil, as well as how to sequester carbon industrially, is also advancing rapidly.

5. Expanding social movements reflect the public’s growing demand for climate change action

In 2019, Greta Thunberg and other young climate activists exploded onto the global stage with their weekly school strikes, known as Fridays for Future, protesting the lack of climate action by world leaders. Bolstered by other youth-fueled activist groups — including the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion — more than 7 million people across 185 countries joined the world’s largest climate strike in history in September 2019 to demand stronger governmental action. And during the 2020 protests for racial justice in the United States and around the world, participants frequently spoke out about the disproportionate threats that climate change and other environmental hazards pose for communities of color and other vulnerable groups.

But activists aren’t the only ones who want climate action. According to a September 2019 poll taken in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Brazil, France and Poland, climate change ranks ahead of migration and terrorism as the most important issue facing the world. In a separate U.S. poll conducted in April 2020, two in three Americans are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming; the majority of both Republicans and Democrats support the United States’ participation in the Paris Climate Agreement.

6. Country-level action against climate crisis is starting to accelerate

way from coal to a surge of support for net-zero targets and a rising movement of youth activists from Uganda to India, culminating in Greta Thunberg being recognized as Time Magazine’s 2019 “Person of the Year.”

At the same time, the progress on climate action has not been anywhere near fast enough.

The climate movement faced plenty of troubling headwinds over this period. President Donald Trump officially withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement in November 2020 — the only country to do so — although President-elect Joe Biden has promised to rejoin on his first day in office in January 2021.

While the coronavirus pandemic led to a historic drop in global emissions this year, this drop will be a blip in the ongoing trend of ever-climbing GHG emissions unless backed up by changes in policy and business practices. Last year was the second-hottest on record globally, and 2020 is on track to be the warmest year ever.

Business executives, city mayors, investment bankers, technological innovators and young people everywhere have spoken: They want greater global action on climate change progress. Now countries need to step up.

Twenty-five countries and the EU are currently working toward some sort of net-zero commitment (in many cases by 2050, though some countries such as Denmark and Finland have earlier deadlines). This year several Asian economic powers made net-zero commitments, including South Korea and Japan (by 2050) and China — the world’s largest emitter — by 2060.

However, all these goals are purely aspirational if they are not reflected in ambitious actions that countries begin to take now, Including their economic recovery plans from COVID-19 and the 2030 national climate plans countries are slated to update under the Paris Agreement this year. So far, 15 have already done so, and 130 others have promised to follow suit. Ensuring that they follow through by COP26 will be critical to get global climate action on track.

Achieving a net-zero future

Slashing greenhouse gas emissions can’t be done overnight; countries should use their short-term climate plans as steppingstones that can help them reach a net-zero future. As countries around the world now start to consider how to approach their economic recovery following the coronavirus crisis, they can use this turning point to accelerate investments in a low-carbon, inclusive and resilient economy to build back a better future for all.

Projects that Made Cities Greener

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:50:56 -0500

Has 2021 been a great year for the planet? Well, almost certainly not – and that’s putting it lightly. The climate crisis is worsening and governments around the world are continuing to dither and delay. Despite another year of stern warnings and worrying predictions, we’re all severely and irreversibly damaging the planet.

But things aren’t all bad. There are still plenty of reasons to be cheerful – or if not exactly cheerful, to be not that miserable. Cities are still innovating and doing their best to embark on green initiatives. And all around the world, people, businesses and local governments have found ways to do their bit to be more sustainable.

From mass reforestation projects and sustainable department stores to cooperative housing and revolutionary urban planning, cities are transforming their citizens’ way of life. Indeed, the bright side of the current crisis isn’t just bright: it’s blindingly promising. There are obviously plenty of people around the world who want to create real change, and they definitely deserve a bit of recognition.

As part of this year’s Time Out Love Local Awards, we asked you to name the best green city projects that you heard about in 2021. Here are all the award winners, along with a handful of other standout works that cropped up across the globe this year.

Amazing projects that made cities around the world greener in 2021

1. London’s Restart Project teaches us how to reduce waste

Photograph: Mark Sepple

Reducing waste from electronic devices requires a pretty niche skillset, but the Restart Project is trying to rectify that – one community event at a time. It is helping Londoners learn more about sustainable electronics and how to reduce consumption of everything from smartphones and tablets to toasters and vacuum cleaners. This year, the Project went further and launched Materials Matter, an educational site that aims to help children across the UK understand the environmental impact of a smartphone.

2. Making NYC’s gardens greener with the Restoration Project

Photograph: The New York Restoration Project

The New York Restoration Project, founded founded by actress/singer/icon Bette Midler, has been working on regreening NYC for almost a quarter of a century, but in 2021 the team’s programmes really caught our eye. The Jefferson Houses in East Harlem, Cauldwell Youth Garden in the South Bronx and Hill Street Community Garden in Staten Island were just a few of the places spruced up by the NYRP’s trellises, terraces, shrubs, raised beds, composts and rainwater harvesting systems.

3. Superblocks are transforming the city streets in Barcelona

Photograph: Shutterstock

Barcelona’s glorious superilles continue to swallow up greater areas of the city, greenifying and pedestrianising as they go. In 2021, the Catalan capital completed the transformation of streets in Sant Martí, extending the overall superblock area by more than 14,000 square kilometres, and started work on the streets of Rector Triadó and Torre d’en Damians. One of the twenty-first century’s most ambitious urban-planning projects grows more impressive by the year.

4. The pioneering cooling measures in Tokyo

Photograph: Hirohito Takada / Shutterstock.com

Keeping cities naturally cool reduces the need for air conditioning and so lowers energy consumption. In the lead-up to the 2021 Olympics, Tokyo needed to find ways to make its sweltering, 40C summer more bearable. The result was an ingenious array of cooling tech, from wooden architecture (like the cedar National Stadium) to solar paint (on running surfaces and roads) and water spray systems.

5. Milan’s 35km of new cycle lanes

Photograph: Alessandro Perazzoli / Shutterstock.com

Milan’s been investing a lot in green initiatives over the past few years, but 2021 saw the rise and rise of the city’s cycle lanes. After being announced in 2020, the Strade Aperte (Open Roads) project has built more than 35km of new bike paths, stretching all the way to the outskirts and totally transforming central streets like the Corso Buenos Aires. As such a flat and compact city, Milan could one day be a cyclist’s paradise – and that potential is starting to be fully realised.

6. The foodie revolution of Écotable in Paris

Photograph: MIKA COTELLON

Écotable doesn’t just point the general public towards eco-friendly restaurants (although that’s useful enough on its own) – it also trains and supports establishments that are involved in sustainable catering. But in 2021 it succeeded in something else: the Écotable Community (La Communauté Écotable) rallied to support those in need. From March through June, it mobilised a network of 24 restaurants throughout Paris to provide more than 12,000 meals to students with food insecurity. Santé!

7. Sustainable building tech at the Sara Cultural Centre in Sweden

Photograph: Jonas Westling

What’s a better way to beat back misconceptions that wood is a poor building material than to build an enormous, gorgeous skyscraper out of it? At 75 metres and 20 storeys tall, the Sara Cultural Centre in Skellefteå, Sweden, shows that reinforced timber can be the sustainable building material of the future. The ‘plyscraper’ opened its doors to the public in September, but it’s just the latest in a long line of green projects in Skellefteå, a town that is already full of wooden buildings and soon aims to be 100 percent powered by renewable electricity.

8. The cooking bags changing lives in Durban

Photograph: Wonderbag

Durban’s Wonderbags are essentially big slow-cookers made out of cloth. Not only are they great for the environment – limiting fuel consumption, pollution and water usage – but they also help families save money and reduce the amount of time women have to spend doing dangerous things like collecting fuel alone (that in itself is a sobering thought, we know). Throughout 2021, a year of power cuts and social unrest in the third-biggest city in South Africa, Wonderbags really came into their own.

9. Design beauty plus wind tech at Rotterdam’s Flower Turbines

Photograph: Flower Turbines

Pledging to make wind turbines that ‘you want to live and work next to’, Flower Turbines are small, quiet and, if we’re being honest, strikingly beautiful works of design. Throughout 2021 they’ve been popping up all over Rotterdam, from the Kleinpolderplein transport hub to a Roodhart warehouse in the city’s harbour district. Tulip-shaped and often fitted with solar panel ‘leaves’, they’re perfect examples of how cities can combine environmental tech with stunning design.

10. In Reykjavik, the Orca consumes carbon by the tonne

Photographs: Climeworks

Just half an hour’s drive from Reykjavik lies the Transformer-like Orca, the world’s largest climate-positive direct air capture plant. Made by Climeworks, it was turned on in September and, put simply, it absorbs carbon – 4,000 tonnes of it – from the air every year. While that might not seem like much (in the grand scheme of things, we’d need 10 million of these things to absorb as much carbon as we currently pollute), it’s the most exciting hint yet that, one day, carbon-capture technology might find a solution to global warming.

11. We Park’s community spaces are changing Bangkok

Photograph: Nontawat Sutthikorn / Time Out Bangkok

We Park takes Bangkok’s abandoned and idle urban spaces and rejuvenates them into delightful community parks. The first of those parks opened in September in Wat Hua Lamphong and features not just lush greenery but exercise machines, benches and a colourful children’s playground. There’s due to be four pilot We Parks throughout Bangkok and hopefully many, many more in the years to come.

12. Tower block = green haven at Ørsted Gardens in Copenhagen

Photograph: Hampus Berndtson / Tegnestuen LOKAL

How do you turn a harsh, tired and frankly dull building into a glorious environmental statement? It’s simple, really. You add plants – lots of them. Danish architecture studio Tegnestuen LOKAL saw a tower block in Copenhagen and thought: this has the potential to be transformed into a green residential haven. They added a façade of shared balconies, complete with trellises of plants, huge windows, wooden decking and flower beds. The result was Ørsted Gardens, a marvellous work of upcycling.

13. The Green Pea eco shopping centre is transforming Turin

Photograph: Green Pea

While most of us are lucky to find an eco-friendly aisle in a supermarket, Turin has an entire shopping centre dedicated to green goods and services. Since opening at the very end of last year, Green Pea has quickly established itself as the mall of a sustainable future. All of the retail park’s five floors and 60-plus shops are focused on reusable, recyclable, locally-sourced goods. One day, we might all be lucky enough to have a Green Pea on our doorstep.

The Clean Energy Economy is Gaining Ground

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:47:43 -0500

IEA’s Tracking Clean Energy Progress update finds only EVs and lighting advancing quickly enough in 2021 – but positive signs are growing in renewables, heat pumps and elsewhere

Despite encouraging signs of progress across a number of sectors, stronger efforts are needed to bring the world on track to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, according to the IEA’s latest appraisal of global progress on clean energy technologies.

The annual Tracking Clean Energy Progress (TCEP) update assesses 55 components of the energy system – sectors, technologies, infrastructures and cross-cutting CO2 mitigation strategies – and evaluates their progress in 2021 towards reaching key medium-term milestones by the end of this decade that are set out in the IEA’s pathway to Net Zero Emissions by 2050. The TCEP analysis is available as a comprehensive online resource on the IEA’s website.

Recent technology developments and policy actions suggest momentum is accelerating in some important regions and sectors. Initial estimates point to 2022 being a record year for renewable electricity capacity additions, with an increase of about 340 gigawatts, roughly equal to the entire installed power capacity of Japan. China accounts for about half of those additions. This year is also expected to see another all-time high for electric vehicle sales, lifting them to 13% of total light duty vehicle sales globally. The pipelines for both hydrogen projects and carbon capture and storage facilities continue to expand, and last year saw record sales of heat pumps. A pilot project last year used hydrogen to produce fully fossil-free steel, and the first commercial production of sodium-ion batteries without lithium is set to start next year.

“There are more signs than ever that the new global energy economy is advancing strongly,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “This reaffirms my belief that today’s global energy crisis can be a turning point towards a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system. But this new IEA analysis shows the need for greater and sustained efforts across a range of technologies and sectors to ensure the world can meet its energy and climate goals.”

On the policy front, the United States’ historic Inflation Reduction Act – enacted in August – provides USD 370 billion in energy security and climate change investments, giving a boost to a huge array of clean energy technologies, from solar, wind and electric vehicles to carbon capture and hydrogen. Meanwhile, with its REPowerEU plan, the European Union is raising its renewables and energy efficiency targets and putting significant resources behind achieving them.

Governments are also spending more on clean energy research and development, which could reach USD 35 billion in 2022, while venture capital investments in clean energy start-ups reached an all-time high in 2021. Governments are supporting major R&D and demonstration projects through measures such as the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the EU Innovation Fund, Japan’s Green Innovation Fund and China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, with an increasing focus on heavy industry, hydrogen, and carbon capture.

Despite these positive signs, this year’s TCEP, which evaluates the state-of-play in 2021, found that only two components – electric vehicles and lighting – were fully on track for their 2030 milestones in the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 Scenario, the same two as the previous year. EV sales doubled worldwide last year to account for almost 9% of the car market, while over 50% of the global lighting market now uses LED technology. Of the remaining tracking areas, 30 were rated as “more efforts needed” and 23 were “not on track”. Areas not on track include improving the energy efficiency of building designs, developing clean and efficient district heating, phasing out coal-fired power generation, eliminating methane flaring, shifting aviation and shipping to cleaner fuels, and making cement, chemical and steel production cleaner.

Along with TCEP, the IEA is also releasing an expanded clean energy innovation tracker, which includes an update of the Clean Technology Guide, as well as a new publicly available global database of clean energy demonstration projects that provides project-by-project information including location, sector, technology, technology readiness, status, funding and timeline of operations. The database responds to the need to monitor how public and private support for demonstration projects translates into projects on the ground.

Clean energy transitions will require a diversity of technologies and fuels across all parts of the energy system, calling for comprehensive and ambitious policy packages that adequately support transitions in all sectors, the TCEP analysis shows. This current decade is a critical time for laying a strong foundation for achieving longer-term goals.

Mind the Water Gap

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:44:17 -0500

Mapping the world’s water shortages

Human water consumption has soared. In some parts of the planet, the demand is greater than rivers or groundwater can sustain.

Schoolbooks show a simple picture of the water cycle—water evaporates from the ocean, drifts in clouds over land, falls as rain, flows in rivers to the sea—that is no longer accurate. Humans intrude on the cycle now: Each year we extract 4,000 cubic kilometers of water, eight times more than a century ago. We consume it in kitchens and bathrooms, factories and power plants; we use it to irrigate our crops. Growing populations and aspirations drive a growing demand for water.

The result is a water gap in an increasing number of places. Humans are using more water than the water cycle can provide, and so we deplete shallow aquifers, and may need to tap into deep ones that will not be renewed in our lifetime. In the process we threaten not only our own health, peace, and well-being, but also the health of ecosystems and wildlife.

The information presented in the world water map is based on a global model developed at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Led by National Geographic Explorer Marc Bierkens, this World Water Map helps us understand where and why water gaps arise, how climate change might aggravate them—and even how they might be managed.

Click here for the full article experience at National Geographic

15 Strategies Helping to Close the Gender Gap Around the World

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:41:55 -0500

Universal Access to Education: We can Do Better

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:38:31 -0500

Education is a fundamental human right. Yet millions of children and adults remain deprived of educational opportunities.

Linda Klaassen

UNESCO

Everywhere, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the most vulnerable and marginalized the hardest – affecting 1.6 billion learners at its peak, when the majority of the world’s schools were temporarily closed. It has widened inequalities and could erode decades of hard-won progress. About 24 million children and youth – from pre-primary to tertiary education – are at risk of dropping out because of the pandemic’s economic impact alone, according to UNESCO’s estimates.

Girls and women constitute a particularly vulnerable group regarding the right to education. They account for 131.7 million out-of-school children and for two-thirds of the 773 million illiterate adults. The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated already existing inequalities – it is estimated that 11 million girls may not return to school. Girls aged 12 to 17 are especially at risk of dropping out in low and lower-income countries.

This is particularly alarming as education is one of the most powerful tools by which marginalized children and adults can lift themselves out of poverty and fully integrate into society.

Source: Guidelines to strengthen the right to education in national frameworks, UNESCO, 2021. #HerEducationOurFuture: Keeping girls in the picture during and after the Covid-19 crisis, 2021.

Vaccine Inequity Undermining Global Recovery

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:35:11 -0500

New Global Dashboard on COVID-19 Vaccine Equity finds low-income countries would add $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021 if they had the same vaccination rate as high-income countries. Global economic recovery at risk if vaccines are not equitably manufactured, scaled up and distributed.

COVID-19 vaccine inequity will have a lasting and profound impact on socio-economic recovery in low- and lower-middle income countries without urgent action to boost supply and assure equitable access for every country, including through dose sharing, according to new data released today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Oxford.

An acceleration in scaling up manufacturing and sharing enough vaccine doses with low-income countries could have added $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021 if they had similar vaccination rates as high income countries. At a time when richer countries have paid trillions in stimulus to prop up flagging economies, now is the moment to ensure vaccine doses are shared quickly, all barriers to increasing vaccine manufacturing are removed and financing support is secured so vaccines are distributed equitably and a truly global economic recovery can take place.

A high price per COVID-19 vaccine dose relative to other vaccines and delivery costs – including for the health workforce surge – could put a huge strain on fragile health systems and undermine routine immunization and essential health services and could cause alarming spikes in measles, pneumonia and diarrhea. There is also a clear risk in terms of foregone opportunities for the expansion of other immunization services, for example the safe and effective rollout of HPV vaccines. Lower income countries need timely access to sustainably priced vaccines and timely financial support.

These insights come from the Global Dashboard for COVID-19 Vaccine Equity, a joint initiative from UNDP, WHO and the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, which combines the latest information on COVID-19 vaccination with the most recent socio-economic data to illustrate why accelerating vaccine equity is not only critical to saving lives but also to driving a faster and fairer recovery from the pandemic with benefits for all.

“In some low- and middle-income countries, less than 1 per cent of the population is vaccinated – this is contributing to a two-track recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic”, said UNDP Administrator, Achim Steiner. “It’s time for swift, collective action – this new COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Dashboard will provide Governments, policymakers and international organisations with unique insights to accelerate the global delivery of vaccines and mitigate the devastating socio-economic impacts of the pandemic.”

According to the new Dashboard, which builds on data from multiple entities including the IMF, World Bank, UNICEF and Gavi, and analysis on per capita GDP growth rates from the World Economic Outlook, richer countries are projected to vaccinate quicker and recover economically quicker from COVID-19, while poorer countries haven’t even been able to vaccinate their health workers and most at-risk population and may not achieve pre-COVID-19 levels of growth until 2024. Meanwhile, Delta and other variants are driving some countries to reinstate strict public health social measures. This is further worsening the social, economic and health impact, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalised people. Vaccine inequity threatens all countries and risks reversing hard won progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Vaccine inequity is the world’s biggest obstacle to ending this pandemic and recovering from COVID-19,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. “Economically, epidemiologically and morally, it is in all countries' best interest to use the latest available data to make lifesaving vaccines available to all.”

Designed to empower policy makers and development partners to take urgent action to reduce vaccine inequity, the Global Dashboard breaks down the impact of accessibility against a target for countries to vaccinate their at-risk populations first to reduce mortality and protect the health system and then move on to vaccinating larger shares of the population to reduce disease burden and re-open socio-economic activity.

The Dashboard is facilitated by the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All (SDG3 GAP), which aims to improve collaboration across the multilateral system to support an equitable and resilient recovery from the pandemic and drive progress towards the health-related SDGs.

Notes to editors

https://data.undp.org/vaccine-equity/

6 Solutions for Zero Hunger

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:31:32 -0500

1. Break the Cycle of Conflict and Hunger

With almost 60% of the world’s hungriest people living in conflict affected zones, conflict is the greatest challenge to Zero Hunger.

Conflict and hunger create a vicious cycle. When war erupts, instability forces people to find illicit and sometimes violent means of acquiring their necessities. In this unstable period where access to food is fought over, the risk of social unrest heightens.

The U.N. World Food Programme is on the frontlines of the world’s worst conflicts, going where others can’t to deliver lifesaving food in the hardest-to-reach areas. The agency’s work to solve hunger has contributed to improving prospects for peace – effectively breaking the conflict and hunger cycle. In conflict zones, the U.N. World Food Programme is there to provide food and cash assistance, keep kids in classrooms with school meals and rebuild infrastructure through community projects.

In 2020, the U.N. World Food Programme became the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and was recognized by the Nobel Committee “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.” The U.N. World Food Programme’s Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful call to action, recognizing the important link between conflict and hunger and the critical role of food assistance as a building block to peace and stability.

2. Increase Sustainability and Build Resilience to Climate Change

Climate extremes are one of the main drivers of severe hunger. We have entered a ‘new normal’ where consecutive and extreme weather events – like droughts, flooding, hurricanes and cyclones – decimate farming and drive displacement. As a result, communities constantly operate in recovery mode: Diminished economies, destroyed infrastructure and disrupted access to food significantly reduce people’s capacity to rebuild their livelihoods and prepare for the next imminent disaster.

The U.N. World Food Programme helps communities build resilience to climate change through long-term solutions including:

Reforestation and land rehabilitation projects
Climate insurance for small-scale farmers
Providing local institutions with access to sustainable energy solutions

To tackle the challenges of climate change, food availability and food access, we must also help farmers grow a more diverse range of crops and livestock. That’s why the U.N. World Food Programme teaches farmers new techniques, equips them with tools and educates their communities about the nutritional importance of eating a wide range of foods.

3. Address Poverty & Inequality Through Social Safety Nets

Poverty and inequality are the root causes of global hunger. Imagine being a mother who must forgo her daily meals to feed her children, or a farmer who must sell food rations in exchange for farming equipment.

The U.N. World Food Programme helps governments strengthen national safety nets that safeguard their citizens from poverty, inequality and hunger. By 2030, the U.N. World Food Programme aims to substantially increase people’s access to their national social protection systems – thereby promoting equitable economic growth.

The U.N. World Food Programme is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian cash, distributing cash to over 40 million people across 70 countries. The global food crisis is mainly one of access where record-high prices mean people cannot buy what they need. Where markets are functioning, the U.N. World Food Programme can provide cash-based assistance in the form of bank notes, vouchers, debit cards, e-money or mobile money. Cash transfers empower families to decide how to spend their money while supporting local markets and economies.

Through Food for Assets projects, the U.N. World Food Programme offers food or cash assistance while participants work on community assets like roads, dams and irrigation systems. The community-centered approach of coming together to reinvigorate participants’ environment has extra benefits like promoting nutrition, gender equality and social protection. For example, in Mozambique, the Food For Assets program provides female farmers with opportunities to test out innovative farming techniques designed to build their harvests’ resilience to climate change. Participants may also receive agricultural training, which boosts their income and access to food.

4. Help Rural Farmers Connect to Markets

One of the cruelest ironies of hunger is its disproportionate impact on small-scale farmers—the very people who grow food for a living. Small-scale farmers make up the majority of people living in poverty. Their economic losses come from lack of access to production inputs like proper storage, fertilizer and farming equipment as well as constant challenges from climate extremes.

The U.N. World Food Programme works to connect small-scale farmers to local economies while providing them with the resources to improve production, reduce their post-harvest losses, develop business skills and gain access to financial tools.

In over 40 countries the U.N. World Food Programme connects small-scale farmers to markets so that they can supply their own communities with lifesaving food. The program Purchase for Progress (P4P) partners farmers with the private sector, encouraging investments that diversify their crops and expand their business prospects.

5. Reduce Food Waste & Food Loss

The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone, and yet 828 million people still go to bed hungry each night. In high-income countries, 40% of food is wasted because people buy more food than they can consume. In low-income countries, where the vast majority of the world’s hungriest people live, most food loss occurs during the early stages of growth, harvest and storage.

The U.N. World Food Programme is working to eliminate food loss and waste by:

Providing farmers with modern storage equipment like silos and air-tight bags
Offering long-lasting foods like flour, dried beans and salt – all properly packaged in sturdy containers
Investing in innovations like hydroponics that allow communities to grow, sell and store food in the harshest conditions
Selling and storing food in impossible places due to exposure of extreme temperatures, excess dust and general pollution
Advocating for policy that distributes American-grown crops to people in need – like the U.S. Farm Bill which supplies the U.N. World Food Programme with U.S. agricultural commodities like rice, corn, wheat and soybeans for people abroad.

6. Eliminate Malnutrition in Mothers & Children

5% of deaths among children under age 5 are caused by malnutrition. The first two years of a baby’s life are critical when it comes to receiving the nourishment they need to grow into a healthy adult. From Fortified Blended Foods to High Energy Biscuits, the U.N. World Food Programme ensures millions of children and pregnant and nursing women have access to specialized nutritious food. Last year, the U.N. World Food Programme reached more than 17 million mothers and children with programs to prevent and treat malnutrition.

What You Can Do to End World Hunger

Zero Hunger may seem like an impossible goal, but through these six solutions we can make this dream a reality. The U.N. World Food Programme plays a vital role in that work by:

Ensuring people in conflict-affected areas will not have food weaponized against them

Anticipating, responding to and building resilience against the shocks and stresses of climate extremes
Leveraging social safety nets, cash assistance and infrastructure to financially empower communities and local markets
Connecting small-scale farmers with the tools they need to maintain sustainable agriculture for their country’s food security
Making sure that the ample food that is grown across the world does not go to waste due to improper management or redistribution
Protecting groups affected by or at risk of malnutrition (primarily mothers and children) by supplying them with specialized nutritious foods

You also play a vital role in ending world hunger. There are a lot of ways you can be part of creating a Zero Hunger world like playing the Freerice game, signing advocacy petitions or starting a fundraising campaign. Discover how you can be part of the solution for global hunger.

Unless action is taken now, millions of people have the potential to fall into deeper levels of hunger. We can respond to this global emergency by addressing hunger at its root causes. We all have an obligation to build a future that better serves our planet and all the people that live on it.

Solutions to Poverty that Actually Work

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:25:43 -0500

Last year, the United Nations announced that the world is “nowhere near” meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, a series of humanitarian targets to reach by 2030. This includes the number one goal: “End poverty in all its forms everywhere.”

However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t end poverty. Every day, countless initiatives, interventions, and projects are led by Concern, our partners, and the communities we work with that help thousands of families break the cycle of poverty, once and for all. Here are nine solutions to poverty that actually work.

1. Foster equality

One of the main causes of poverty is inequality — the systemic barriers that lead to groups of people going without representation in their communities. For a community or country to work its way out of poverty, all groups must be involved in the decision-making process — especially when it comes to having a say in the things that determine your place in society.

One key example of this is gender equality. According to the UN, the cost of women’s unpaid labor adds up to $10 trillion per year. That’s 13% of the global GDP. In parts of Africa and Asia, women own less than 20% of agricultural land, yet make up 60% of the agricultural workforce. Former FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said in 2016 that “women are the backbone of our work in agriculture… when women have opportunities, the yields on their farms increase – also their incomes. Natural resources are better managed. Nutrition is improved. And livelihoods are more secured.”

Gender is just one of the many inequalities, and many people face more than one form of marginalization at a time. While correcting these inequalities won’t be a solution to poverty in and of itself, it’s essential to every other solution we work towards.

Since partaking in the Umodzi gender equality program with Concern Malawi, Forty Sakha helps his wife Chrissy with household chores like drying maize. (Photo: Chris Gagnon / Concern Worldwide)

2. Build resilience

Poverty is most likely to occur when there is a high combination of inequality and risk. In this case, risk being the hazards a person or a group faces, combined with their level of vulnerability within a community.

For instance, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered decades of ongoing conflict. Millions of Congolese have been displaced to temporary camps and shelters, and still face the threat of violence. Those hazards are compounded when you take into account other crises currently affecting the country, and are even greater for internally-displaced women and children, as well as the elderly and disabled.

This is why emergency and humanitarian responses are key to fighting poverty in fragile contexts such as the DRC. With health and nutrition emergencies, such as the protracted hunger crisis in the DRC or the rising cholera epidemic in the country, we work to ensure that communities (and especially the most vulnerable members of each community) have the resources they need, including food assistance, cash transfers, and medical care, as well as longer-term development solutions that help build resilience — giving even displaced communities the material and financial safety nets they need to handle uncertain situations.

3. Focus on communities most affected by the climate crisis

When we talk about “resilience” in the context of Concern’s work, more often than not we are speaking about climate resilience. According to the World Bank, climate change could force an additional 100 million people into extreme poverty over the next decade without any urgent action taken. Climate resilience comprises a series of responses to climate change that help the communities most affected by the crisis to weather the storms (and every other weather event that may threaten their safety and way of life).

At Concern, many of the communities where we respond to the climate crisis are affected largely through agriculture and pastoralism, which they rely on for both their livelihoods and food. Solutions like Climate Smart Agriculture are proven to help farmers adapt to the changing ecosystem on their land and improve both the quality and quantity of their harvests. Early warning/early action (EWEA) and other disaster risk reduction strategies help communities avoid excessive loss and damage when a disaster hits.

4. Increase access to education

According to UNESCO, if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills (and nothing else), an estimated 171 million people could escape extreme poverty. If all adults completed secondary education, we could cut the global poverty rate by more than half. Education develops skills and abilities, corrects some of the inequities that come from marginalization, and decreases risk and vulnerability.

Some of the key areas of focus for making sure that education is truly for all involve breaking down the barriers to education — creating access in remote areas and supporting teachers in their work to deliver quality education. We also ensure that education is available to children living in fragile contexts, which often adapts to the events that they’ve faced (such as violence, conflict, and displacement) to ensure that they have the proper psychosocial support to really learn, rather than fall behind.

Students attending classes at Jalaqsan School. (Photo: Mustafa Saeed/Concern Worldwide)

5. Improve food and nutrition security

Poverty is fueled by inequality, vulnerability, and hazards, and hunger is a driving force behind vulnerability. When a person doesn’t have enough to eat, their immune system is more easily compromised, they don’t have the physical or cognitive strength to make it through the day, and they often lack enough energy to work. This creates a vicious cycle between poverty and hunger.

Stark evidence now demonstrates the enormous scale of nutritional issues in low-income countries, as well as their human and financial costs. As a result, Concern — along with many other NGOs and governments — has made an unprecedented commitment to prioritizing nutrition in the fight to end poverty. Many of our livelihood programs also include nutrition components, such as our recent work in Ethiopia and Kenya with Lifesaving Education and Assistance to Farmers. Getting the right amount of calories and nutrients every day can go a long way to ending poverty.

Ramya* (29) prepares food for her family of nine people. She rolls out the dough to prepare the famous Syrian dish shashbark, in which the dough is stuffed with meat and onions, but the poverty that the family suffers from has forced her to use less expensive fillings. (Photo: Ali Haj Suleiman/DEC/Fairpicture)

6. Increase access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene services

Like hunger and malnutrition, contaminated water can lead to debilitating illnesses. What’s more, over the last 20 years, the lack of safe drinking water and basic sanitation has gone up — from affecting 197 million people in 2004 to 211 million people in 2024. This adds up: The waterborne illnesses that result from this shortage contribute to 1.4 million deaths per year, as well as 50% of global malnutrition.

The link between improved water access and declining poverty rates goes beyond health. When communities have better access to safe and clean water, those who often spend their time collecting water from further away will have more time to spend on other, more meaningful pursuits. Water is also an issue of gender equality: Current estimates suggest that women and girls collectively spend 200 million hours every day walking long distances to fetch water.

Rebecca Sarwah supervises the use of the community water point in Kaytor Town, Grand Bassa, Liberia. (Photo: Kieran McConville/Concern Worldwide)

7. Provide quality and affordable healthcare for all

One of the knock-on effects of nutritional or waterborne diseases is that the most vulnerable people — people who are often more likely to get these illnesses in the first place — usually lack affordable and quality healthcare options, both for treatment and preventative care. This is also true for people who sustain injuries that may prevent them from working.

What’s more, maternal health is a huge link in the chain of how we end poverty. Pregnant people need regular checkups and more nutritional care to ensure that their child is born with the best possible future for their health and development (malnourished mothers often pass that on to their unborn child). Concern helps to train local healthcare workers who in turn work within their communities, monitoring childhood nutrition, and providing health demonstrations. We’ve also found mobile clinics to be an effective way of providing regular care in hard-to-reach communities, whether they’re in the remote Lake Chad Basin or on one of Bangladesh’s many islands.

Tasnu lives in Rahmanpur, Bhola district, Bangladesh. A midwife visits Tasnu and her baby by speedboat for check ups. (Photo: FrameIn Productions/Concern Worldwide)

8. Achieve lasting peace

While estimates around data for the country vary, Syria’s poverty rate has increased from approximately 12% in 2007 to 83% in 2019. On the other hand, the end of conflict in Cambodia helped to grow its middle class: The country’s poverty rate dropped from 47.8% in 2007 to 13.5% by 2014.

Ending all wars and conflicts is a tall order, but conflict is one of the biggest contributors to poverty, and ending poverty will ultimately become a political issue and part of a larger peacekeeping mission.

9. Give people cash

Cambodia’s transition from wartime to peace included the repatriation of over 300,000 refugees. This could have been a disaster, placing a strain on resources and creating financial dire straits. One of the reasons the transition was so smooth, however (and one of the reasons that Concern worked itself out of a job in Cambodia) was cash and credit.

Concern worked with many Cambodian returnees and local governments to establish a microfinancing model in the country, including village savings and loans and cash transfer services. People were able to get the tools and resources they needed to rebuild their lives and homes, without falling into further debt due to high interest rates. Between 1998 and 2018, Cambodia’s economy grew by an average of 8% each year, and its middle class began to flourish. This is an example of how Concern was able to hand over its programming entirely to local partners to continue the work to end poverty.

Programme participant Aboubacar Magagi presents his received cash and his distribution card during the cash distribution activity funded by ECHO as part of the lean season response project, Tahoua. (Photo: Concern Worldwide)

While the traditional image of humanitarian aid may be crates of supplies like food, water, and tents, distributing cash has become more common. It’s cheaper and faster to get into a country, gives its recipients the autonomy to make their own purchasing decisions, and supports local and national economies. Sometimes, a small startup grant (even as small as $100) is all it takes to help a family living below the poverty line to launch a new business, while keeping on top of their bills and keeping their children fed and in school.

Ultimately, this is the theory that underscores all of our solutions to poverty: Help people get the resources they need to offset risks and work with communities to reduce the inequalities and vulnerabilities that many of their members face, so that when emergencies strike, they aren’t left further behind.

Concern’s work to end poverty

At Concern, we work to sustainably end poverty by addressing inequality and risk, tailoring solutions that support the specific forms of inequality and vulnerabilities faced within each community.

Equality, particularly gender equality, is a pivotal part of all of our programs, and we work with community members and leaders to question and challenge the underlying assumptions that perpetuate equality gaps while designing solutions that accommodate people of all genders, levels of ability, ages, races, social status, and more. We aim for equality of outcomes, not equality of inputs.

From there, we look at the specific risks and conditions that cause poverty in a specific country, region, or community. Often our solutions to poverty work with families to build livelihoods that include more than one source of income. We mentor program participants and train them on business management, marketing, bookkeeping, and other essential skills. We also provide cash grants and help to establish local Village Savings and Loans Associations (and other similar committees) to help create community safety nets.

What we have found through more than 55 years of work is that the communities and individuals we work with already know what they want to do, they just need a few resources to make it happen. We provide those resources, along with some sustainable means of keeping them up long after we’re needed.

What are the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)?

Karuna Owens — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:19:10 -0500

History

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN, including the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

In June 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, more than 178 countries adopted Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action to build a global partnership for sustainable development to improve human lives and protect the environment.
Member States unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 at UN Headquarters in New York. The Summit led to the elaboration of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.
The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development and the Plan of Implementation, adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa in 2002, reaffirmed the global community's commitments to poverty eradication and the environment, and built on Agenda 21 and the Millennium Declaration by including more emphasis on multilateral partnerships.
At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012, Member States adopted the outcome document "The Future We Want" in which they decided, inter alia, to launch a process to develop a set of SDGs to build upon the MDGs and to establish the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. The Rio +20 outcome also contained other measures for implementing sustainable development, including mandates for future programmes of work in development financing, small island developing states and more.
In 2013, the General Assembly set up a 30-member Open Working Group to develop a proposal on the SDGs.
In January 2015, the General Assembly began the negotiation process on the post-2015 development agenda. The process culminated in the subsequent adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 SDGs at its core, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015.
2015 was a landmark year for multilateralism and international policy shaping, with the adoption of several major agreements:
- Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (March 2015)
- Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development (July 2015)
- Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 SDGs was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York in September 2015.
- Paris Agreement on Climate Change (December 2015)
Now, the annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development serves as the central UN platform for the follow-up and review of the SDGs.

Today, the Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) provides substantive support and capacity-building for the SDGs and their related thematic issues, including water, energy, climate, oceans, urbanization, transport, science and technology, the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), partnerships and Small Island Developing States. DSDG plays a key role in the evaluation of UN systemwide implementation of the 2030 Agenda and on advocacy and outreach activities relating to the SDGs. In order to make the 2030 Agenda a reality, broad ownership of the SDGs must translate into a strong commitment by all stakeholders to implement the global goals. DSDG aims to help facilitate this engagement.