Tag: UN News

UN chief António Guterres convened an Advisory Panel of top UN agency officials which met for the first time to inject more “political, technical and financial clout to ensure that Early Warnings for All becomes a reality for everyone, everywhere”, said WMO in a press release.

Tuesday’s panel included development banks, humanitarian organisations, civil society representatives, insurance and information technology companies.

The record-breaking Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which has caused severe disruption to critical services in southeast Africa, and fuelled a dangerous cholera outbreak, once again shows the importance of early warning systems that can save lives and livelihoods from increasingly extreme weather, the agency said.

Stepping it up

The months ahead will see stepped up coordinated action, initially in 30 particularly at-risk countries, including Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries. Additional countries are expected to be added, as this vital work with partners gathers pace.

At the same time, the UN’s existing life-saving actions and initiatives will continue and be reinforced, “ensuring the Early Warnings for All campaign turns its pledges into life-saving reality on the ground for millions of the most vulnerable people”, said WMO, harnessing the power of modern mass communications.

Results time: Guterres

“Now it is time for us to deliver results. Millions of lives are hanging in the balance”, said Mr. Guterres.

“It is unacceptable that the countries and peoples that have contributed the least to creating the crisis are paying the heaviest prices,” he added.

Need for improvement

“People in Africa, South Asia, South and Central America, and small island states are 15 times more likely to die from climate disasters. These deaths are preventable. The evidence is clear: early warning systems are one of the most effective risk reduction and climate adaptation measures to reduce disaster mortality and economic losses,” said Mr Guterres.

• In the past 50 years, the number of recorded disasters has increased by a factor of five, driven in part by human-induced climate change which is super-charging our weather.
• If no action is taken, the number of medium or large-scale disaster events is projected to reach 560 a year – or 1.5 each day – by 2030.
• The occurrence of severe weather and the effects of climate change will increase the difficulty, uncertainty, and complexity of emergency response efforts worldwide.

Preventable deaths

Half of all the world’s countries currently do not have adequate early warning systems and even fewer have regulatory frameworks where warning systems are linked to emergency plans.
 
“The unprecedented flooding in Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar from Tropical Cyclone Freddy highlights once again that our weather and precipitation is becoming more extreme and that water-related hazards are on the rise,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.

“The worst affected areas have received months’ worth of rainfall in a matter of days and the socio-economic impacts are catastrophic.”

“Accurate early warnings combined with coordinated disaster management on the ground prevented the casualty toll from rising even higher. But we can do even better and that is why the Early Warnings for All initiative is the top priority for WMO”, he said.

Beneficial all round

He added that improved hydrological and weather services will also be “economically beneficial for agriculture, air, marine and ground transportation, energy, health, tourism”.

WMO and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) are spearheading the Early Warnings for All initiative, along with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“The operationalization of this initiative is a clear example of how the UN System and partners can work together to save lives and protect livelihoods from disasters”, said Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR.

‘Moral imperative’

“Inclusive and multi-hazard early warning systems that close the ‘last mile’, are among the best risk reduction methods in the face of climate-related hazards and geophysical hazards such as tsunamis.

“Achieving this is not only a clear target in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction but a moral imperative as well”.
 

Covering 31 per cent of Earth’s land and providing a home to 80 per cent of all land-based species, forests are crucial to human health and well-being, but their loss across the planet is threatening people everywhere.

Here are five things you need to know about the age-old and ever-growing interlinked relationship between forests and human health.

1. Carbon sinks combat climate change

Forest ecosystems keep the planet healthy by regulating the climate, rainfall patterns, and watersheds and crucially provide the oxygen which is essential to human existence.

Healthy forests help to keep climate change in check by acting as “carbon sinks”, which annually absorb about two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the gas which is contributing to climate change and the increase of temperatures globally.

The rapidly changing climate is threatening the very existence of people in many different ways: through death and illness due to extreme weather events, the disruption of food systems, and the increase in diseases. Simply put, without healthy forests, people around the world, especially in the world’s most vulnerable countries, will struggle to lead healthy lives and maybe even to survive.

2. Nature’s pharmacies: from masks to medicine cabinets

From masks to medicines, forest products are used around the world every day. As many as 80 per cent of developing nations and one quarter of developed countries depend on plant-based medicinal drugs.

Forests contain about 50,000 plant species used for medicinal purposes by both local communities and multinational pharmaceutical companies. For millennia, forest dwellers have treated a range of ailments using products they have harvested. At the same time, many common pharmaceutical medicines are rooted in forest plants, including cancer-treating drugs from the Madagascar periwinkle and malaria medication, quinine, from cinchona trees.

The One Health approach, launched as part of the UN response to the COVID-19 pandemic, recognizes that the health of humans, animals, plants, and the wider environment, including forests, are closely linked and interdependent.

3. Dinner for 1 billion people

Nearly one billion people globally depend on harvesting wild food such as herbs, fruits, nuts, meat, and insects for nutritious diets. In some remote tropical areas, the consumption of wild animals is estimated to cover between 60 and 80 per cent of daily protein needs.

A study from 43,000 households across 27 countries in Africa found that the dietary diversity of children exposed to forests was at least 25 per cent higher than those who were not.

In 22 countries in Asia and Africa, including both industrialized and developing countries, researchers found that indigenous communities use an average of 120 wild foods per community, and in India, an estimated 50 million households supplement their diets with fruits gathered from wildland forests and surrounding bushland.

4. Forests are crucial for sustainable development

Forests provide goods and services, employment, and income to perhaps 2.5 billion people worldwide; that’s around one third of the global population.

Keeping forests – and humans – healthy is also at the heart of sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda. Woodlands play a key role in advancing progress across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including:

SDG 3 Well-being: Woodlands feel good. Studies show that spending time in forests can boost immune systems while elevating positive emotions and lowering stress, blood pressure, depression, fatigue, anxiety, and tension. Human health and well-being depend on the natural environment, which provides such essential benefits as clean air, water, healthy soils, and food.

SDG 6 Water: Forests play a filtering role in providing freshwater. About 75 per cent of the world’s accessible freshwater comes from forested watersheds. By feeding rivers, forests supply drinking water for nearly half of the world’s largest cities. Threats to forests could trigger water shortages and put global freshwater resources at risk for people across the world, which are among urgent issues addressed at the forthcoming UN 2023 Water Conference.

SDG 13 Climate action: The woods buffer the impacts of storms and floods, protecting human health and safety during extreme weather events. For centuries, forests have acted as nature’s socio-economic safety nets in times of crisis. Sustainably managed and protected forests mean enhanced health and safety for all.

5. Forests need protecting

The wide-ranging benefits of forests are well known, but that doesn’t mean they are offered the protection that they perhaps deserve. Fire, insect-damage and deforestation have accounted for up to 150 million hectares of forest loss in certain years over the last decade, that’s more than the landmass of a country like Chad or Peru. The production of agricultural commodities alone, including palm oil, beef, soy, timber, and pulp and paper, drives around 70 per cent of tropical deforestation.

Many governments have adopted forest-friendly policies, and others have increased investment in woodlands and trees. Local communities and actors are making their own strides, sometimes one tree at a time. The UN established the Decade for Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2023) and its agencies are harnessing partnerships with local to global stakeholders to better protect forests, from planting three million trees in Peru to empowering young women to work as community forest rangers to protect illegal fauna trafficking in Indonesia.

Established in 2008, UN-REDD is the flagship UN knowledge and advisory partnership on forests and climate, supporting 65 partner countries. Building on the expertise of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Development Programme, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the initiative has, among other things, seen member countries reduce forest emissions at levels equivalent to taking 150 million cars off the road for a year, ushering in a lot of more fresh air.

For guidance on creating an enabling environment in which people can benefit from all woodlands have to offer, FAO offers recommendations alongside a closer look at many key interlinkage between forest and human health in its report, Forests for human health and well-being.

The study, “Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report”, released on Monday following a week-long IPCC session in Interlaken, brings into sharp focus the losses and damages experienced now, and expected to continue into the future, which are hitting the most vulnerable people and ecosystems especially hard.

Temperatures have already risen to 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a consequence of more than a century of burning fossil fuels, as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use. This has resulted in more frequent and intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world.

Climate-driven food and water insecurity is expected to grow with increased warming: when the risks combine with other adverse events, such as pandemics or conflicts, they become even more difficult to manage.

Time is short, but there is a clear path forward

If temperatures are to be kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, deep, rapid, and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions will be needed in all sectors this decade, the reports states. Emissions need to go down now, and be cut by almost half by 2030, if this goal has any chance of being achieved.

The solution proposed by the IPCC is “climate resilient development,” which involves integrating measures to adapt to climate change with actions to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in ways that provide wider benefits.

Examples include access to clean energy, low-carbon electrification, the promotion of zero and low carbon transport, and improved air quality: the economic benefits for people’s health from air quality improvements alone would be roughly the same, or possibly even larger, than the costs of reducing or avoiding emissions

“The greatest gains in wellbeing could come from prioritizing climate risk reduction for low-income and marginalized communities, including people living in informal settlements,” said Christopher Trisos, one of the report’s authors. “Accelerated climate action will only come about if there is a many-fold increase in finance. Insufficient and misaligned finance is holding back progress.”

Governments are key

The power of governments to reduce barriers to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, through public funding and clear signals to investors, and scaling up tried and tested policy measures, is emphasized in the report.

Changes in the food sector, electricity, transport, industry, buildings, and land-use are highlighted as important ways to cut emissions, as well as moves to low-carbon lifestyles, which would improve health and wellbeing.

“Transformational changes are more likely to succeed where there is trust, where everyone works together to prioritize risk reduction, and where benefits and burdens are shared equitably,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee.

“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”

UN chief announces plan to speed up progress

In a video message released on Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb.”

Climate action is needed on all fronts: “everything, everywhere, all at once,” he declared, in a reference to this year’s Best Film Academy Award winner.

The UN chief has proposed to the G20 group of highly developed economies a “Climate Solidarity Pact,” in which all big emitters would make extra efforts to cut emissions, and wealthier countries would mobilize financial and technical resources to support emerging economies in a common effort to ensure that global temperatures do not rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Mr. Guterres announced that he is presenting a plan to boost efforts to achieve the Pact through an Acceleration Agenda, which involves leaders of developed countries committing to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040, and developing countries as close as possible to 2050.

The Agenda calls for an end to coal, net-zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world, and a stop to all licensing or funding of new oil and gas, and any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves.

These measures, continued Mr. Guterres, must accompany safeguards for the most vulnerable communities, scaling up finance and capacities for adaptation and loss and damage, and promoting reforms to ensure Multilateral Development Banks provide more grants and loans, and fully mobilize private finance.

Looking ahead to the upcoming UN climate conference, due to be held in Dubai from 30 November to 12 December, Mr. Guterres said that he expects all G20 leaders to have committed to ambitious new economy-wide nationally determined contributions encompassing all greenhouse gases, and indicating their absolute emissions cuts targets for 2035 and 2040.

Journey to net-zero ‘picks up pace’

Achim Steiner, Administrator, of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) pointed to signs that the journey to net-zero is picking up pace as the world looks to the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference or COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.

“That includes the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., described ‘the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis’ and the European Union’s latest Green Deal Industrial Plan, a strategy to make the bloc the home of clean technology and green jobs,” he said.

“Now is the time for an era of co-investment in bold solutions. As the narrow window of opportunity to stop climate change rapidly closes, the choices that governments, the private sector, and communities now make — or do not make – will go down in history.”