The results were published on Wednesday at the COP27 climate conference taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
Some 243,512 young people from 163 countries participated in the UNICEF U-Report poll, over July and August of this year.
Gauging the temperature
U-Report is a UNICEF digital platform that supports youth engagement on programme priorities, emergency response and advocacy action.
Through the poll, young people were asked questions relating to their attitudes about climate change, which were sent via SMS and instant messaging technology.
Globally, two in five said climate impacts have made them reconsider their desire to have children.
Concern was highest in African regions, where nearly half of respondents said they were now on the fence. The Middle East and North Africa accounted for 44 per cent, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, it was 43 per cent.
Listen and act!
Young people in these two regions reported having experienced a range of climate shocks and, more than other respondents globally, said these shocks had impacted their access to food and water, and depleted family income overall.
“The impacts of climate change are with us now, but they are far more than floods, droughts and heatwaves. They extend to our very sense of hope,” said Paloma Escudero, head of UNICEF’s COP27 delegation.
“Especially in Africa, young people are seeing the impact these shocks are having on themselves and those they love, and it is changing their plans for the future. But it doesn’t have to. At COP27, world leaders must listen to this anxiety from young people and take immediate action to protect them.”
Suffering climate impacts
Last year, the medical journal The Lancet published a global survey which found that nearly 40 per cent of the 10,000 respondents were hesitant to have children.
This is a similar rate to the UNICEF poll, which is believed to be the first study to demonstrate the prevalence of the current sentiment in Africa.
Other findings from the U-Report poll include over half of respondents said they have experienced either drought or extreme heat, while a quarter have experienced flooding.
Two in five mentioned that they had less food to eat due to climate change, most of whom, 52 per cent, were in Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by the Middle East and North Africa at 31 per cent.
Ready to run
One in five “U-Reporters” revealed that it was becoming more difficult to get clean water, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and the East Asia and Pacific region.
Three in five have even considered moving to another city or country because of climate change, something expressed by a staggering 70 per cent of respondents in the Middle East and North Africa, and 66 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean.
UNICEF urged world leaders to take immediate action to protect children from the climate emergency, not only through rapidly reducing the emissions that cause global warming, but also by adapting the critical social services their young citizens rely on.
The agency stressed that adaptation measures, such as creating water systems that stand up to flooding and drought, will save lives.
Adaptation and delivery
At COP26 in Scotland last year, developed countries agreed to double support for adaptation to $40 billion a year by 2025.
This year, they must present a credible roadmap for this pledge, as a step to delivering at least $300 billion annually for adaptation by the end of the decade.
UNICEF also urges governments to find solutions to support those facing climate losses and damages, beyond the limits of what communities can adapt to, and to close the “finance gap” for addressing these irreversible changes.
Future at stake
While there is much talk at COP27 about policy decisions, “that is not what is at stake here,” Ms. Escudero remarked.
“This survey makes it clear young people’s futures are up in the air – whether they have children, whether they leave their countries, how well they survive the dangers they face,” she said.
“For their sake, success at COP27 must be measured by the delivery of long-promised financing to help communities adapt and the development of solutions to respond to loss and damage.”
The 7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Opinion by Azza Karam (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Nov 09 (IPS) – In this year’s COP 27 two-weeklong summit in Egypt, which concludes November 18, a rough count indicates there will be 40 different sessions organised by, for, and about, religious engagements in/on climate change and related issues. This is likely the highest number of events by and around religious actors, organised at a COP event.
The reason? Religions, religious engagement, interfaith, etc., are the flavour of our geopolitical times. For better or worse.
His Holiness Pope Francis and His Eminence the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar were just addressing a major conference in Bahrain on East-West relations, with the King of Bahrain. After also putting in a similar appearance and speaking together with the President of Kazakhstan, in September. Both countries were hosting major international meetings of religious leaders, in the fanciest of hotels, convened from many corners of the world, replete with lavish food banquets and generous hospitality and care for their every need.
I should know, as I am a most grateful recipient, albeit not a religious leader, but an aspiring servant to religious multilateralism. But I run ahead of myself here.
In convening, countries appear to be competing with Saudi Arabia, which hosted such a seminal gathering (in May 2022, bringing together Buddhist and Hindu faith leaders, for the first time, as equals with their Muslim, Christian and Jewish brethren), as well as with the UAE, Qatar, and Oman, who are also hosting international gatherings of religious leaders this very month.
This year alone, there have been over 50 meetings of religious actors, that is more than 2 per month, and this is not a comprehensive tally.
Each of these major and rather expensive conferences, provides a platform not unlike the UN General Assembly, where each leader gets his (for invariably they are mostly men) time to speak, often eloquently, about their own faith tradition.
Each of these speeches regales with how diligent the efforts of faith/community/organisations are, to secure peace and human dignity for all people. As they remind of the spiritual wisdom each faith upholds, they also speak of past and upcoming initiatives, meant to safeguard dignity for all. Sometimes they also remember to speak about the planet and our responsibility to save it.
As someone who spent decades serving at the United Nations and in diverse international academic and development organisations, and now listening to the religious actors speaking, I find myself asking the same question: if each of these governments, and now these religious bodies, are working so hard and serving so amazingly, why is our world the way it is?
Why are so many governments and peoples and communities at war with one another inside and outside nation-state boundaries? Why are we listening to hate speech from every type of mouth and all types of platforms given ample media attention? Why are arms and drugs the biggest industries?
Why are the rich getting richer and the poor poorer while our planet becomes more bare and parched in one part, and flooded to death, in another? Why is violence of all kinds, inside families and within all communities, a pandemic? Why are medicines, and now even values, a commodity to trade power and privilege with?
Why is nuclear war back on the agenda of consciousness and politics? In short, why do we hate/fear one another one another so much, and so deeply?
Because what ails our multilateral system, in spite of the speeches (and efforts) of political leaders (in and out of electoral times for those fortunate enough to have genuine elections of their national leaders), and now also in spite of the speeches and works of religious actors, is fundamentally the same: each to his own. Multilateral – as an adjective defined by the Oxford Dictionary, where “three or more groups, nations, etc. take part”, is an endangered species.
The United Nations, the premier multilateral entity of 193 governments, is struggling to strengthen multilateralism, yet not necessarily by looking internally at its own behemoth infrastructures, or culture. Ever seen an organogramme of the United Nations system? One should. It is a universe of wonder where every human and non-human thought and action appears to have a dedicated office or structure of some sort.
But before we point fingers at the political multilaterals (who are remarkably good at either ignoring faith communities, or using them to the hilt, or both), we need to ask ourselves, how often do we see or hear of “three or more” religious institutions (not of the same faith) working together to actually deliver needs to diverse peoples around the world?
The answer is, that beyond the speeches, the lavish meetings and innumerable projects, multilateral religious collaboration (where money and efforts from many and diverse are pooled to serve, together, the needs of all, regardless of gender, national, ethnic, racial or religious affiliation) remains rare.
Please do not misunderstand: religious institutions are working to serve hundreds of millions of people on every area of need, humanitarian and development – and now also political. Just as Indigenous Peoples are the original carers of all nature, religious leaders and institutions are the original carers for myriad human needs.
There is plenty of evidence about this. HIV and AIDS, Ebola and the Covid pandemic highlighted how critical religiously managed health infrastructure is to communities – rich and poor. A glance at the education sectors, psycho-social care, migrants and displaced peoples, and other humanitarian areas of need, will show clearly that religious institutions still serve many, widely, and in the remotest areas.
So, it is not a dearth of service to humanity that diverse faith actors need to come to terms with. It is the famine of multireligious collaborative services – as in giving and doing together. At Religions for Peace, for over half a century of supporting interreligious platforms serve the common good in over 95 countries, we live the challenges of multi religious collaboration, on peace mediation, food and human security, migration and displacement, education, gender and women’s empowerment, and trying to save together, the world’s remaining rainforests, through, among other efforts, the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative.
We know that even within the realms of religion, the manner of dealing with these challenges tends to mirror prevailing colonial mindsets, with tendencies to give prominence to one religion, insistence on singular branding, and jockeying for more political influence and financial resourcing.
More and more faith leaders – young and older – are (rightfully) expecting financial remuneration for their time and energies spent in international work, thus slowly but surely reversing a trend of volunteerism that used to uniquely characterise religious service and giving.
Just as governments are failing to systematically work together as inhabitants and leaders of one planet, and just as too many civil society groups and corporations compete for branding and ‘market share’, so too, do religious organisations.
Some religious entities are replicating a secular catastrophic practice of seeking to build other/new/different/more ‘specialised’ entities and initiatives, rather than shoulder the heavy cross of seeking to work together in spite of the damning challenges (both puns intended). In so doing, many of these religious actors are effectively dispersing efforts.
One of the many lessons of failed multilateralism is that more, or different, or new and/or specialised, may well be the well-intentioned road to hell.
When it comes to actually investing in one another’s work so that they are speaking as one and serving together, many religious leaders and leaders of religious organisations will smile, say some nice words, and move on to the next sermon/meeting/international conference, or nevertheless doggedly pursue their own special/unique initiative(s).
Such that we have now so many religious initiatives, dominated by one or a bilateral religious partnership, or two and a half (relatively tokenistic representation of another faith), working on the same challenges, facing all of humanity.
What ails multilateralism is not the absence of resources, tools, values, the clarity of the crisis, or even the will and creativity to serve. Multilateralism fails when some want only their values, truths, communities, nations, cultures, security needs, and/or specific institutions, to prevail.
And with the failure of multilateralism is a failure of common humanity, and planetary survival.
Prof. Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace
In Africa only 60% of the estimated TB cases have been diagnosed. All the other infections are hidden by poverty—and so the disease continues to spread. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.
Opinion by Morounfolu Olugbosi (johannesburg)
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 08 (IPS) – The news in many parts of the world is that tuberculosis (TB) is reclaiming the title of the world’s most deadly infection, even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to kill an estimated 1,450 people daily around the world. But this is not news to African countries, which are home to one third of the people globally who die from TB, even though they have less than one fifth of the world’s population.
And on our continent, the real burden might be worse: only 60% of the estimated cases have been diagnosed. All the other infections are hidden by poverty—and so the disease continues to spread.
Consider Zanyiwe’s story, who is recovering from TB a fifth time. Her son-in-law died from the disease, and her 18-month old granddaughter has it currently. TB has hammered her family and her community in Cape Town, South Africa—but this story could be set in Nigeria, Kenya, or just about anywhere, as TB has never been contained in Africa.
Four years ago, there was hope that TB might be receiving the attention it deserves. The United Nations held a High-Level Meeting with heads of state in September 2018 where more than half of the world’s nations convened to rally support to tackle TB. Many pledges were made; fulfillment of these pledges got off to a slow start and then the COVID-19 pandemic derailed things completely.
The first commitment was to find and treat 40 million people with TB between 2018 and 2022, including 3.5 million children and 1.5 million people with drug-resistant TB. We’re 19% behind that overall goal, but 32% behind with children and 46% behind with drug-resistant TB. We now have new and shorter treatment regimens for TB and drug-resistant TB; using these new technologies could make next year, when another UN high level meeting on TB will convene, a different story.
The second commitment was to provide preventive treatment for 30 million people at risk for TB infections. We’re 48% behind here; while we already exceeded the sub-target of reaching 6 million people with HIV with preventive treatment, from 2018-2021 we’ve only provided preventive treatment to 2.2 million household contacts of people with TB, 11.5% of the goal. Once again, we now have new, more effective and shorter preventive regimens to deploy—but we need the outreach capacity and willingness of countries to get the treatment into the hands of the people who need it.
The third and fourth commitments are about funding. Leaders pledged to spend a total of US$13 billion annually on prevention, diagnosis and treatment by 2022; in 2021 only 42% of that yearly goal was spent. For TB research, US$2 billion annually was pledged by 2022 but in 2021 research spending reached less than half that amount (46%). Rolling out the new treatments and developing even better ones will require a stronger embrace of these commitments; the status quo simply will not get us there.
While we have yet to finish 2022, it is obvious that we will not meet these goals. With that being said, there have been signs of progress worth drawing attention to.
First, Gabon, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Uganda all made progress in finding more cases of TB last year. And Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia have all made progress throughout the pandemic—showing the political will needed to keep their people healthier. Overall, Africa found 4% more TB in 2021 than in 2020. It’s a start—and we can do better.
New TB medicines are being supported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Six-month therapy for drug-resistant TB has been approved in more than 20 countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. And Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe are working to roll out a new TB prevention treatment.
In Africa, we will not mistake these initial signs of progress for anything more significant. Yet, at the same time, it is still progress to be respected and built upon. Next year, the world will consider their long-ignored pledges. We need to show the world that it is time to move forward; all that’s been missing is the same thing that’s been missing for far too many years: political will.
Morounfolu (Folu) Olugbosi, M.D. is the Senior Director, Clinical Development, TB Alliance. He works with the clinical development of products in the TB Alliance portfolio and helps to oversee clinical trials in TB endemic countries and heads the South Africa office.
Miss World Brazil Letícia Frota and Pragnya Ayyagari, Miss Supranational India agreed that zero leprosy and campaigns to destigmatize the disease should not be sidelined because of COVID-19. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
Nairobi, Nov 08 (IPS) – Deep-rooted discrimination against persons affected by leprosy or Hansen’s disease has marginalized individuals and communities. As social pariahs, opportunities to pursue their dreams are limited because, at best, they live at the periphery of society and, more often than not, are ostracized.
Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, said that because of discrimination and shame, “We had a long period when all people affected by leprosy had to live silently. Today, we have the Don’t Forget Leprosy Campaign, and we all have a role to play in this endeavor.”
Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, says everybody has a role to play in destigmatizing leprosy. Credit: Sasakawa Foundation
He was speaking during the third and final day of the 2nd Global Forum of People’s Organizations on Hansen’s Disease held by the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative in Hyderabad, India, from November 6 to 8, 2022, where participation was both in person and virtual.
During the Forum, discussions centered on the challenges persons affected by leprosy face and the vision of the future they wish to create moving into the post-COVID era. The primary objective was to strengthen and maximize the roles and capacities of people’s organizations to promote the dignity of persons affected by Hansen’s Disease.
Speakers and participants at the 2nd Forum highlighted how persons affected by leprosy are increasingly speaking out and seeking participation in implementing leprosy programs and formulating related policies. There are at least 41 People’s Organizations on Hansen’s disease in 25 countries across the globe.
Good practices of how people’s organizations are building capacities and expanding roles to enhance the dignity of those affected by the ancient disease from countries such as Ethiopia, India, Nepal, and Indonesia were extensively shared on days one and two of the Global Forum.
This gave way to the third and final day for speakers and attending participants to host side events on a theme of their choice in line with the Forum’s overall objective.
Miss World Brazil Letícia Frota and Pragnya Ayyagari, Miss Supranational India held a special session to raise visibility about persons affected by leprosy within the context of the Don’t Forget Leprosy Campaign. They reminded the world that leprosy should not be sidelined amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The beauty queens spoke passionately about the need for a united vision toward a future without leprosy. They participated in a panel discussion that included Sasakawa and representatives of the Movement of Reintegration of Persons Afflicted by Hansen’s Disease (MORHAN) in Brazil and the Association of People Affected by Leprosy-India (APAL).
Discussions were firmly centered on the need to raise awareness and increase visibility around Hansen’s disease and the people affected, to work towards their inclusion and integration, and to particularly reach out to the younger generation as their role is critical towards zero leprosy.
“I am very empathetically connected to this cause, and I will use my influence to connect with young people in raising awareness about Hansen’s disease. I am very encouraged about ongoing efforts by MORHAN to educate school-going children about Hansen’s disease,” Ayyagari explained.
Frota stressed the need to spread awareness, especially to the younger generation who remain in the dark regarding leprosy. To change the future, she said, “We need to change the landscape of the disease by actively engaging young people. I will continue to engage and raise funds towards a future without leprosy.”
Miss World Brazil further spoke about the rights of people affected by leprosy to live and enjoy opportunities without discrimination. She highlighted the need for early detection and treatment of leprosy as critical to reaching zero leprosy.
Participants were pleased with the involvement of the beauty queens because, as celebrities, they can use their massive following to draw attention to the disease.
Representatives of MORHAN and APAL said that as people affected by leprosy, there is an urgent need to take the message to the world that leprosy is curable and that the community must not be forgotten even as COVID-19 continues to take center stage.
They all lauded ongoing efforts to bring the global community together to bring attention to the ancient disease and to forge a way forward toward its elimination.
Sasakawa encouraged those at the forefront of fighting stigma and discrimination against leprosy and those taking active steps towards its elimination always to remember that they are not alone.
“So many like-minded people support you and are comrades in this fight. You might face certain challenges going forward but remember that so many people are backing you,” he said.
During the panel discussion, persons affected by leprosy from different countries had an opportunity to speak about how they are still grappling with the pain of stigma and discrimination even after being healed from leprosy.
They stressed that even though they cannot transmit leprosy to others, they are still treated with fear, and many are silenced by the stigma, unable to live life to their full potential. They vowed to use this pain to fuel and boost the Don’t Forget Leprosy campaign towards a future free from all forms of discrimination against those affected by the ancient disease.
In all, representatives of persons affected by leprosy urged participants to use the little they have to do whatever they can. By and by, they said, the global campaign to eliminate leprosy will grow wings to fly to every corner of the world, to reach people with the message that leprosy is curable, and to give hope to every person affected by leprosy.
Moreover, that fancied collapse of world population is neither the biggest problem facing the world nor is that false notion a much bigger risk to civilization than climate change, which is certainly humanity’s greatest challenge.
According to recent projections, the world’s population is expected to continue increasing over the coming decades. Hundreds of millions of more people are projected to be added to the planet, but at a slower pace than during the recent past.
The expected slowdown in the growth of world population does not constitute a problem. The global demographic slowdown clearly signals social, economic, environmental and climatic successes and benefits for human life on planet Earth.
Many of those calling for increased rates of population growth through higher birth rates and more immigration are simply promoting Ponzi demography. The underlying strategy of Ponzi demography is to privatize the profits and socialize the costs incurred from increased population growth.
World population reached the 1 billion milestone in 1804. World population doubled to 2 billion in 1927, doubled again to 4 billion in 1974, and then doubled a third time to 8 billion in 2022 (Figure 1).
Source: United Nations.
Throughout the many centuries of human history, the 20th century was an exceptional record-breaking period demographically.
World population nearly quadrupled from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion by the close of the century. In addition, the world’s population annual growth rate peaked at 2.3 percent in 1963 and the annual increase reached a record high of 93 million in 1990.
Since the start of the 21st century, the world’s population has increased by nearly 2 billion people, from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 8 billion in 2022. Over that time period, the world’s annual rate of population growth declined from 1.3 percent to 0.8 percent, with the world’s annual demographic increase going from 82 million to 67 million today.
While mortality continues to play an important role in the growth of the world’s population, as witnessed recently with the COVID-19 pandemic, fertility is expected to be the major determinant of the future size of world population.
The world’s average fertility rate of approximately 2.3 births per woman in 2020 is less than half the average fertility rates during the 1950s and 1960s.
The United Nations medium variant population projection assumes fertility rates will continue to decline. By the century’s close the total fertility rate is expected to decline to a global average of 1.8 births per woman, which is one-third the rate of the early 1960s and well below the fertility replacement level.
The medium variant projection results in an increasing world population that reaches 9 billion by 2037, 10 billion by 2058 and 10.3 billion by 2100.
Alternative population projections include the high and low variants, which assume approximately a half child above and below the medium variant, respectively. Accordingly, world population by 2100 ends up being substantially larger in the high variant at 14.8 billion and substantially smaller in the low variant at 7.0 billion (Figure 2).
Source: United Nations.
Another alternative population projection, which is unlikely but instructive, is the constant variant. That projection variant assumes the current fertility rates of countries remain unchanged or constant at their current levels throughout the remainder of the 21st century. The constant variant results in a projected world population at the close of the century that is more than double its current size, 19.2 versus 8.0 billion.
Although world population is projected to continue increasing over the coming decades, considerable diversity exists in the future population growth of countries.
The populations of some 50 countries, including China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Spain, are expected to decline in size by midcentury due to low fertility rates. At the same time, the populations of about two dozen other countries, including Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Niger, Somalia and Sudan, are expected to increase substantially due to their comparatively high fertility rates.
A comparison of the growth of the populations according to the medium variant for the four projected largest countries by midcentury, i.e., China, India, Nigeria, and the United States, highlights the diversity of population growth expected during the 21st century.
China’s current population size is estimated to be near its peak at approximately 1.4 billion. Due to its fertility rate of 1.16 births per woman, which is close to half the replacement level and is assumed to remain relatively low over the coming decades, the Chinese population is expected to decline to 1.3 billion by 2050 and decline further to 0.8 billion by 2100.
In contrast, India’s population, which has an estimated fertility rate of 2.0 births per woman that is expected to decline further, is continuing to increase in size. As a result of that demographic growth, India’s population will likely overtake China’s population by 2023. By 2060 India’s population is projected to peak at 1.7 billion and decline to 1.5 billion by 2100 (Figure 3).
Source: United Nations.
The population of the United States, currently the third world’s largest population after China and India, is expected to continue increasing in size largely due to immigration. By 2050 the U.S. population is projected to reach 375 million and be close to 400 million by the century’s close.
Nigeria’s rapidly growing population, which more than doubled over the past 30 years from 100 million in 1992 to 219 million in 2022, is expected to continue its rapid demographic growth for the remainder of the century. The population of Nigeria is expected to be larger than the U.S. population by 2050, when it reaches 377 million, and then increase to 500 mil1ion in 2077 and 546 million by the century’s close.
Admittedly, the future size of the world’s population remains uncertain. Demographic conditions, especially mortality levels as recently witnessed with the COVID-19 pandemic, could change markedly and future fertility rates may also follow different patterns from those being assumed in the most recent population projections.
Nevertheless, it appears that the world’s current population of 8 billion will continue increasing over the coming decades, likely gaining an additional 2 billion people by around midcentury.
The expected demographic growth of the world’s population of 8 billion during the 21st century poses daunting challenges. Prominent among those challenges are dire concerns about food, water and energy supplies, natural resources, biodiversity, pollution, the environment, and of course climate change, considered by most, including the world’s scientists, to be humanity’s greatest challenge.
Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Hezri A Adnan (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 08 (IPS) – Ahead of the first United Nations environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972, a group of scientists prepared The Limits to Growth report for the Club of Rome. It showed planet Earth’s finite natural resources cannot support ever-growing human consumption.
Limits used integrated computer modelling to investigate twelve planetary scenarios of economic growth and their long-term consequences for the environment and natural resources.
Hezri A Adnan
Emphasizing material limits to growth, it triggered a major debate. Authored by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, Limits is arguably even more influential today.
Within limits
Limits considered population, food production, industrialization, pollution and non-renewable resource use trends from 1900 to 2100.
It conceded, “Any human activity that does not require a large flow of irreplaceable resources or produce severe environmental degradation might continue to grow indefinitely”.
Most projected scenarios saw growth ending this century. Ominously, Limits warned of likely ecological and societal collapses if anthropocene challenges are not adequately addressed soon enough.
Failure would mean less food and energy supplies, more pollution, and lower living standards, even triggering population collapses.
But Limits was never meant to be a definitive forecast, and should not be judged as such. Instead, it sought to highlight major resource threats due to growing human consumption.
Off-limits?
Gaya Herrington showed three of Limits’ four major scenarios anticipated subsequent trends. Two lead to major collapses by mid-century. She concluded, “humanity is on a path to having limits to growth imposed on itself rather than consciously choosing its own.”
Limits stressed the urgent need for radical transformation to achieve ‘sustainable development’. The ‘international community’ embraced this, in principle, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, two decades after Stockholm.
With accelerating resource depletion – as current demographic, industrial, pollution and food trends continue – the planet’s growth limits will be reached within the next half-century. The Earth’s ‘carrying capacity’ is unavoidably shrinking.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
For Limits, only a “transition from growth to…a desirable, sustainable state of global equilibrium” can save the environment and humanity.
The report maintained it was still possible to create conditions for a much more sustainable future while meeting everyone’s basic material needs. As Gandhi said, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
No other environmental work then, or since, has so directly challenged mainstream growth beliefs. Unsurprisingly, it attracted strong opposition.
The 1972 study was long dismissed by many as neo-Malthusian prophecy of doom, underestimating the potential for human adaptation through technological progress.
Many other criticisms have been made. Limits was faulted for focusing too much on resource limits, but not enough on environmental damage. Economists have criticized it for not explicitly incorporating either prices or socioeconomic dynamics.
Beyond limits
In Beyond the Limits (1993), the two Meadows and Randers argued that resource use had exceeded the world environment’s carrying capacity.
Using climate change data, they highlighted the likelihood of collapse, going well beyond the earlier focus on the rapid carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere.
In another sequel, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2004), they elaborated their original argument with new data, calling for stronger actions to avoid unsustainable excess.
Dennis Meadows stresses other studies confirm and elaborate Limits’ concerns. Various growth trends peak around 2020, suggesting likely slowdowns thereafter, culminating in environmental and economic collapse by mid-century.
Limits’ early 1970s’ computer modelling has been overtaken by enhanced simulation capabilities. Many earlier recommendations need revision, but the main fears have been reaffirmed.
Limitless?
Two key Limits’ arguments deserve reiteration. First, its critique of technological hubris, which has deterred more serious concern about the threats, thus undermining environmental, economic and other mitigation efforts.
As Limits argued, environmental crisis and collapse are due to socioeconomic, technological and environmental transformations for wealth accumulation, now threatening Earth’s resources and ecology.
Conventional profit-prioritizing systems and technologies have changed, e.g., with resource efficiency innovation. Such efforts help postpone the inevitable, but cannot extend the planet’s natural limits.
Of course, innovative new technologies are needed to address old and new problems. But these have to be deployed to enhance sustainability, rather than profit.
The Limits’ critique is ultimately of ‘growth’ in contemporary society. It goes much further than recent debates over measuring growth, recognizing greater output typically involves more resource use.
While not necessarily increasing exponentially, growth cannot be unlimited, due to its inherent resource and ecological requirements, even with materials-saving innovations.
This Earth for all
Thankfully, Limits’ fourth scenario – involving significant, but realistic transformations – allows widespread increases in human wellbeing within the planet’s resource boundaries.
This scenario has inspired Earth for All – the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission’s 2022 report – which more than updates Limits after half a century. Its subtitle – A Survival Guide for Humanity – emphasizes the threat’s urgency, scale and scope.
It argues that ensuring the wellbeing of all is still possible, but requires urgent fundamental changes. Major efforts are needed to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality, empower women, and transform food and energy systems.
The comprehensive report proposes specific strategies. All five need significant investments, including much public spending. This requires more progressive taxation, especially of wealth. Curbing wasteful consumption is also necessary.
More liquidity – e.g., via ‘monetary financing’ and International Monetary Fund issue of more special drawing rights – and addressing government debt burdens can ensure more policy and fiscal space for developing country governments.
Many food systems are broken. They currently involve unhealthy and unsustainable production and consumption, generating much waste. All this must be reformed accordingly.
Market regulation for the public good is crucial. Better regulation – of markets for goods (especially food) and services, even technology, finance, labour and land – is necessary to better conserve the environment.
Limited choice
The report includes a modeling exercise for two scenarios. ‘Too Little Too Late’ is the current trajectory, offering too few needed changes.
With growing inequalities, social trust erodes, as people and countries compete more intensely for resources. Without sufficient ‘collective action’, planetary boundaries will be crossed. For the most vulnerable, prospects are grim.
In the second ‘Giant Leap’ scenario, the five needed shifts are achieved, improving wellbeing all around. Everybody can live with dignity, health and security. Ecological deterioration is sufficiently reversed, as institutions serve the common good and ensure justice for all.
Broad-based sustainable gains in wellbeing need pro-active governance reshaping societies and markets. This needs sufficient political will and popular pressure for needed reforms.
But as the world moves ever closer to many limits, the scenario looming is terrifying: ecosystem destruction, gross inequalities and vulnerabilities, social and political tensions.
While regimes tend to bend to public pressure, if only to survive, existing discourses and mobilization are not conducive to generating the popular political demands needed for the changes.
Adnan A Hezri is an environmental policy analyst and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. He is author of The Sustainability Shift: Reshaping Malaysia’s Future.
Young climate activists take part in demonstrations at the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland last year. Credit: UN News/Laura Quiñones
by Thalif Deen (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 08 (IPS) – The COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh has triggered a negative fallout for Egypt’s authoritarian regime which stands accused of human rights abuses — and has been widely condemned for its longstanding repressive campaign against dissidents and civil society organizations (CSOs).
In a statement released last month a group of UN independent human rights experts said authorities in Egypt must ensure civil society can safely and fully participate in the COP27 UN climate change conference, expressing alarm over restrictions ahead of the summit.
Writing in the current issue of Time magazine, Sahar Aziz, a professor at Rutgers University in the US, says “the Egyptian government has given summit access only to local governmental NGOs that support the regime”.
The Egyptian regime, he points out, has treated civil society as “enemies of the state”.
COP27 should be an opportunity for Egypt to lead by example. Instead, hosting the event seems like a political cover for its self-defeating repression of civil society, writes Aziz, author of ‘The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom’.
In a hard-hitting statement released last week, Amnesty International (AI) said the arrest of hundreds of people in the past two weeks alone, in connection to calls for protests during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), is a reminder of the grim reality of Egypt’s policy of mass arbitrary detention to crush dissent.
At least 151 detainees are currently being investigated by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, while hundreds more have faced shorter arrests and questioning.
“The arrest of hundreds of people merely because they were suspected of supporting the call for peaceful protests raises serious concerns over how the authorities will respond to people wishing to protest during COP27 – an essential feature of any UN climate conference”.
“The Egyptian authorities must allow peaceful demonstrators to gather freely and refrain from using unlawful force or arbitrary arrests to deter protests,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director.
“World leaders arriving in Sharm El-Sheikh for COP27 must not be fooled by Egypt’s public relations (PR) campaign. Away from the dazzling resort hotels, thousands of individuals including human rights defenders, journalists, peaceful protesters and members of the political opposition continue to be detained unjustly,”
“They must urge President Abdelfattah al-Sisi to release all those arbitrarily held for exercising their human rights. As a matter of urgency, this should include imprisoned activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who today escalated his hunger strike to stop drinking water.”
Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, told IPS that hosting a global conference such as COP 27 places a special obligation on Egypt’s government to respect and enable the exercise of fundamental freedoms as per international law.
“The right to protest peacefully and the right against arbitrary detention are essential elements of international law. In the present instance, Egypt’s government can easily order the release of arbitrarily imprisoned prisoners of conscience and allow protests to take place without impediments as a sign of good faith,” he declared.
In a joint op-ed piece last week, Gadir Lavadenz, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice and Lidy Nacpil, Executive Director, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, write: climate conferences are increasingly becoming spaces for greenwashing of not just the big polluters’ crimes, but also of the regimes and presidencies hosting COP.
“COP27 is taking place in the Southern Sinai city of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and as all eyes turn to Egypt, the campaigns to Free Alaa and other political prisoners, as well as for civic space to open up in Egypt, is gaining momentum”.
At a UN press briefing November 7, several questions were raised about reports that the official COP app apparently requires access to the user’s location, their email, and their photos.
“This is in Egypt, but it’s a UN run conference. What is the UN’s view on the fact that this seems to be trolling for sensitive data and could be tracking people?”
And secondly, the wi fi at COP, which is a UN conference, is apparently restricting access to human rights organizations and some news organizations. What’s your reaction to those?”
In her response, Stéphanie Tremblay, Associate Spokesperson, said: “We have seen these reports. Let me start with the app. First of all, this app does not belong to the UN, so I will not have more comments on that.”
“But one thing that is important to note is that the UN itself through the UNFCCC has an app, and everyone at the UN has been encouraging everyone to download and use this app”.
And then, as a general rule, “we advocate freedom of information, freedom of the press. That applies to everywhere around the world. For us, access is important, and we want to make sure that everyone that has to work is able to do the work they are there to do to the best”, said Tremblay.
Meanwhile, in its World Report 2022, Human Rights Watch said Egyptian authorities escalated the use of abusive Emergency State Security Courts to prosecute peaceful activists and critics who joined thousands of dissidents already in the country’s congested prisons.
And Courts issued death sentences in mass trials, adding to the sharply escalating number of executions.
“The government in January issued implementing regulations for the 2019 NGO law that codified draconian restrictions on independent organizations. The authorities failed to appropriately investigate a high-profile gang-rape, and key witnesses remain under extrajudicial travel bans after being jailed for months in apparent retaliation for coming forward.”
HRW also said the army continues to impose severe restrictions on movement and demolished hundreds of buildings in north Sinai in the name of fighting Wilayat Sinai, a local affiliate of the Islamic State (ISIS).
“These demolitions likely amount to war crimes,” HRW said.
In the run up to the climate summit (6 November-18 November), Egyptian authorities released 766 prisoners following a decision by President al-Sisi to reactivate a Presidential Pardons Committee (PPC) in April, said Amnesty International.
Yet over the same period, Amnesty International has documented the arrest of double that number; 1,540 people who were questioned over the exercising of free speech and association.
In the past six months, Amnesty International has gathered data from dozens of lawyers who regularly attend interrogations and detention renewal hearings, reviewed court decisions and other official documents, and interviewed former prisoners as well as relatives of detainees.
In recent weeks, security forces have arrested and detained hundreds of people in downtown Cairo and town squares across Egyptian cities over content on their phones — a tactic often employed by police ahead of expected protests.
While most were released within hours or days, some were taken to prosecutors, while others remain subject to enforced disappearance according to 11 lawyers in Cairo, Alexandria, Sharqiya and Dakahliya.
In September, Abdelsalam Abdelghani, 55, was arrested at his home on the outskirts of Cairo. Prosecutors questioned him about a Facebook group called “Our right”, including posts calling for protests on 11 November.
The prosecutor questioned him on accusations of spreading “false news” and being “a member of a terrorist group” before ordering his detention pending an investigation, according to Amnesty International.
According to the website of the Egyptian presidency for COP27, anyone wishing to organize protests in Sharm El-Sheikh must inform the authorities 36 hours in advance and show the organizers a COP27 badge.
Protests will only be allowed between 10:00-17:00 in an area far from the conference and monitored by cameras. The authorities have also limited the content of protests to climate related issues.
Amnesty International finds these measures to be unnecessary and disproportionate, aimed at restricting the ability of individuals to protest safely in a way that allows them to be seen and heard.
Since June, the UN team in Sri Lanka and NGOs have used the HNP to respond to the Government’s request for more support to alleviate the impact of the country’s debt and food crisis, and shortages of medicines.
Governments and donor agencies have helped the humanitarian community reach over one million of the country’s most vulnerable with cash, food, school meals, medicine, protection, and livelihood support.
“We are immensely appreciative of the solidarity the international community has shown with the people of Sri Lanka, including through their generous contributions to the HNP”, said UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Hanaa Singer-Hamdy, adding that it must be sustained “if we are to insulate the most at-risk people from the impacts of the ongoing crisis”.
Plan to help
Aligned with appeals from other UN agencies, the HNP has raised $79 million for Sri Lanka through various countries and organizations (click here for the full list).
The HNP revision, which extends the plan through 2022, requires $70 million in additional funds to reach a total of $149.7 million.
In response to the humanitarian community’s updated estimates on the number of people in need across all 25 of Sri Lanka’s districts, the extended appeal will improve nutrition for children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers; secure safe drinking water; and protect vulnerable farming and fishing households.
Meanwhile, two consecutive seasons of poor harvests, foreign exchange shortages, and reduced household purchasing power have triggered a dramatic increase in food insecurity.
Between food inflation of 85.6 per cent in October and another meagre crop season forecast for 2023, many Sri Lankans are struggling.
Twenty-eight per cent of the population – or 6.3 million people – face moderate-to-severe acute food insecurity.
The UN official underscored the importance of strengthening local food production and delivery, saying that “at this point, safeguarding livelihoods is safeguarding lives in Sri Lanka”.
Appealing for aid
According to the World Bank’s 2022 Development Update, between 2021 and 2022, the national poverty rate rose from 13.1 per cent to 25.6 per cent.
The revised HNP complements existing emergency operations being carried out by the UN and partners.
The appeal targets immediate food assistance for 2.4 million vulnerable and food-insecure people as well as support, including fertilizers, for 1.5 million farmers.
The plan also seeks to provide nutrition support for 2.1 million people, including pregnant women and schoolchildren; safe drinking water for over 900,000 people; and essential medicines and healthcare, including sexual and reproductive healthcare, for 867,000 people.
The assistance will enable protection services to continue for vulnerable women and children at risk of violence.
During a high-level event, the COP27 Presidency launched the Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda to rally global action around 30 outcomes that are needed to address what the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has described as the climate ‘adaptation gap’.
The agenda would enhance resilience for four billion people living in the most climate vulnerable communities by 2030. It has been dubbed the first comprehensive global adaptation-focused plan to rally both governments and non-State actors behind a shared set of actions.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), nearly half the world’s population will be at severe risk of climate change impacts by 2030, even with global warming of just 1.5-degrees.
The plans cover points of action on issues related to food security and agriculture, water and nature, human settlements, oceans, and cities, among others.
COP27 President Sameh Shoukry invited governmental and non-State actors to join the agenda during the Conference and beyond.
“This agenda brings together all parts of society.” UN climate change chief Simon Stiell said during the event, reminding delegates that COP27 is all about turning ambitions into results.
“Human needs must be at heart of what we do… The mantra is implementation, implementation, implementation,” he added.
New commitments on adaptation and loss and damage
Later during a press encounter, Mr. Shoukry thanked some countries that during their national statements announced new commitments for adaptation.
“Specific pledges can help take us forward. I commend Rishi Sunak’s announcement that the United Kingdom will triple its adaptation finance by 2025, going even beyond the promised last year in Glasgow,” he said.
Meanwhile, Germany announced $170 million for loss and damage, and Belgium € 2.5 million, specifically to Mozambique, which suffered terrible losses last year due to extreme rains.
Austria also announced $50 million for loss and damage, and Scotland, which had previously pledged £2 million, announced an additional £5 million.
So far only five European countries – Austria, Scotland, Belgium, Denmark and Germany – have committed to address loss and damage.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, told leaders on Tuesday to follow her region’s example of committing to climate financing to the developing world.
“Those most in need in the developing world must be supported in adapting to a harsher climate. We urge our partners in the global north to stand by their climate finance commitments to the global south. Team Europe is stepping up … despite COVID, despite the Russian war”, she said.
Meanwhile, small island developing states continued denouncing developed countries for not delivering their finance promises.
“We will fight unrelentingly for climate justice, including in the international courts,” warned Gaston Brown, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda.
Farming communities in the Pacific Ocean archipelago, Vanuatu, are adapting to drier weather patterns.
Adaptation in Africa
At a COP27 leaders’ event on accelerating adaptation in Africa, Secretary-General António Guterres also made a call for more adaptation finance.
“We need to invest massively in adaptation if we want to be able not to spend much more money in addressing the consequences of the disaster,” adding that “it is very clear, we need to be able to share adaptation and mitigation in climate finance”.
Mr. Guterres reiterated that multilateral development banks have a huge capacity to mobilize and to leverage private finance that is not being used.
Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana, also at the event, said that while Africa has done the least to cause climate change, the continent’s people, especially the youth, are suffering the worst impacts.
“Support and join in the fight against climate change,” he urged world leaders.
Meanwhile, in his national statement, Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, argued that during the COVID-19 pandemic, external financing hadn’t worked for vulnerable nations.
“The most valuable contribution that developed countries can make is to reduce their emissions faster while investing in Africa to build sustainable, green power. Questioning whether Africa is ready to make use of climate finance should not be used as an excuse to justify inaction,” he stated.
UNDP Thailand
Mangroves are planted on a beach on the Gulf of Thailand.
Other highlights
More initiatives were launched today, including the Africa Carbon Markets initiative, which aims to expand Africa’s participation in voluntary carbon markets by setting goals for the continent and developing a roadmap of action programmes that will be implemented over the next few years to meet those goals.
In other highlights, one small island nation demanded at COP27 an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, to phase out the use of coal, oil and gas.
“The warming seas are starting to swallow our lands – inch by inch. But the world’s addiction to oil, gas and coal can’t sink our dreams under the waves,” Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano said.
Last September, at the UN General Assembly, Vanuatu had called for the establishment of this treaty as well.
Leaders from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also made a call today for supporting developing countries.
“Climate disasters leave a long shadow … for decades, years or even generations, and there is a growing recognition that we cannot leave vulnerable communities who have done little for this crisis to deal with these global crises on their own,” said Theresa Anderson, Climate Policy Coordinator from NGO Action Aid during a press conference.
She highlighted that developing countries represent six out of seven people in the planet, and they are all insisting that COP27 establish a funding facility to address loss and damage.
“Wealthy polluting countries need to look beyond their own noses, recognize the importance of a new financing facility that can help devasted countries to pick up the pieces and recover in the aftermath of climate disasters”, the activist underscored.
“We have documented many cases where counter-terrorism legislation and other criminal provisions have been used to harass, arrest, detain and convict civil society actors in Türkiye, including Dr. Fincancı, on spurious grounds”, the experts said in a statement.
Blurred charges
On 26 October, Ms. Fincancı, who helped develop UN reference standards on the investigation and documentation of torture cases, known as the Istanbul Protocol, was arrested at her home on unclear grounds.
Her detainment is believed to be in retaliation for her publicly calling for investigations into the alleged use of chemical weapons and associated deaths involving the Turkish military.
“Dr. Fincancı’s arrest appears part of a deliberate pattern of applying counter-terrorism legislation to discredit human rights defenders and organizations and interrupt their vital human rights and medical work”, they added.
Undermining freedoms
These types of attacks aim to shrink safe civic space, undermine the rule of law, and encroach upon fundamental freedoms and democratic values, according to the Human Rights Council-appointed Special Rapporteurs.
“Human rights defenders and medical practitioners’ ability to speak truth to power must be protected”, underscored the independent experts, stressing that exposing human rights violations is “one of the cornerstones of democratic societies”, and that exercising rights of freedom of expression and association, are “protected rights under international human rights law”.
“Detention pending investigation beyond an initial period of interview is an exceptional measure and must be subject to judicial authorization as to its continuing lawfulness and proportionality”, they reminded.
Call to Türkiye
The Special Rapporteurs urged the Turkish authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release Ms. Fincancı as well as other civil society actors detained for politically motivated purposes.
They also advocated for access to fundamental safeguards and the protection of defenders mental and physical integrity – both in and outside of detention.
After ratifying, States parties are obliged take all measures to prevent torture and similar ill-treatment or punishment, and to investigate and prosecute related crimes.
Threats of arrest and imprisonment and judicial intimidation cause high levels of distress and anxiety, which could amount to psychological inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, in violation of international law.
The UN experts have expressed their views on this case with the Government of Türkiye and requested the authorities to immediately take interim measures to protect the mental and physical integrity of Dr. Fincancı and to end the judicial harassment of those who defend the rights of others.
Special Rapporteurs are mandated to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not paid for their work.
Click here for the names of the Special Rapporteurs who have signed the statement.
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