One in three children, an estimated 774 million children, across the world are living with the dual impacts of poverty and high climate risk, according to a new report by Save the Children. In addition, across the globe, 183 million children face the triple threat of high climate risk, poverty and conflict.

‘Generation Hope: 2.4 billion reasons to end the global climate and inequality crisis’, found that while 80% of children are estimated to be affected by at least one extreme climate event a year, some are at particular risk because they also face poverty and so have less capacity to protect themselves and recover.

India has the highest total number of children both living in poverty and bearing the brunt of the climate crisis — up to 223 million children in total. It is followed by Nigeria and Ethiopia, with 58 million and 36 million children, respectively, living with this double burden.

The country with the highest percentage of children impacted by this double burden is South Sudan (87%), followed by the Central African Republic (85%) and Mozambique (80%).

A significant number of children – 121 million – experiencing the double threat of high climate risk and poverty live in higher-income countries, with 28 million of them in the world’s most affluent countries. More than two out of five of these children (12.3 million) live in the US or the UK.

The report also shows how these multiple, overlapping risks are linked to and exacerbate the current global food, nutrition and cost of living crisis that is causing 345 million people in 82 countries to face a severe lack of food.

Families across the world battle the worst global hunger crisis this century, fuelled by a deadly mix of poverty, conflict, climate change, and economic shocks, with the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine further driving up food prices and the cost of living. 

One million people are facing famine across five countries, with estimates that one person is dying every four seconds of hunger.

Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International, said, “Across the world, inequalities are deepening the climate emergency and its impacts, most notably for children and low-income households…”

Generation Hope: 2.4 billion reasons to end the global climate and inequality crisis [EN/AR] – World | ReliefWeb

“The climate crisis is killing us,” said the UN secretary general, António Guterres, responding to the report. “It is undermining not just the health of our planet, but the health of people everywhere – through toxic air pollution, diminishing food security, higher risks of infectious disease outbreaks, record extreme heat, drought, floods and more.” He added, “The science is clear: massive, commonsense investments in renewable energy and climate resilience will secure a healthier, safer life for people in every country.”

A report, by the Lancet Countdown group on health and climate change, is titled Health at the Mercy of Fossil Fuels, produced by almost 100 experts from 51 institutions spanning every continent says urgent, health-centred action to tackle global heating could save millions of lives a year and enable people to thrive rather than just survive, with cleaner air and better diets. The health of the world’s people is at the mercy of a global addiction to fossil fuels, according to a study. The report tracks 43 health and climate indicators, including exposure to extreme heat. It found that heat-related deaths in the most vulnerable populations – babies under a year old and adults over 65 – increased by 68% over the past four years compared with 2000-04.

The analysis reports an increase in heat deaths, hunger and infectious disease as the climate crisis intensifies, while governments continue to give more in subsidies to fossil fuels than to the poorer countries experiencing the impacts of global heating. The Lancet report also found that 80% of the 86 governments assessed were subsidising fossil fuels, providing a collective $400bn in 2019. These subsidies were bigger than national health spending in five countries, including Iran and Egypt, and more than 20% of health spending in another 16 countries.

The climate emergency is compounding the food, energy and cost of living crises, the report says. For example, almost half a trillion hours of work were lost in 2021 due to extreme heat. This mostly affected agricultural workers in poorer countries, cutting food supplies and incomes.

Dr Marina Romanello, the head of the Lancet Countdown and at University College London (UCL), said: “We are seeing a persistent addiction to fossil fuels. Governments and companies continue to favour the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of people’s health. Heatwaves are not only very uncomfortable, they are lethal for people that have increased vulnerabilities.”

Extreme heat also led to people being unable to work, with 470bn labour hours lost globally in 2021. 

“This is about a 40% increase from the 1990s and we estimate the associated income and economic losses at about $700bn,” she said. About 30% more land is now affected by extreme drought events, compared with the 1950s.

These impacts are leading to growing hunger, the report says. Hot periods in 2020 were associated with 98 million more people unable to get the food they needed, compared with the average from 1981-2010, and the proportion of the global population enduring food insecurity is also rising. 

“​The largest driver of this is the changing climate,” Romanello said.

Prof Elizabeth Robinson at the London School of Economics said: “This is particularly concerning given that global food supply chains have this year once again been revealed to be highly vulnerable to shocks [such as the war in Ukraine], manifesting in rapidly increasing food prices.”

The report also recorded the impact of the climate crisis on infectious diseases, finding that the periods when malaria could be transmitted became 32% longer in upland areas of the Americas and 15% longer in Africa over the past decade, compared with the 1950s. The likelihood of dengue transmission rose by 12% over the same period.

The report says the strategies of the 15 biggest oil and gas companies remain sharply at odds with ending the climate emergency, “regardless of their climate claims and commitments”.

Prof Paul Ekins at UCL said: “Current strategies from many governments and companies will lock the world into a fatally warmer future, tying us to the use of fossil fuels that are rapidly closing off prospects for a liveable world.”

Rapidly cutting fossil fuel burning would not only reduce global heating but deliver immediate health benefits, Romanello said, such as preventing a million or more early deaths caused by air pollution a year.

A move to more plant-rich diets in developed countries will halve emissions from red meat and milk production and prevent up to 11.5 million diet-related deaths a year, the report says.

“…We must change, otherwise our children face a future of accelerated climate change, threatening their very survival,” said Prof Anthony Costello, the co-chair of the Lancet Countdown. 

Global health at mercy of fossil fuel addiction, warn scientists | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 State laws will prevent 4.6 million Americans from voting in 2022 midterms election.

 The Sentencing Project released a new report which found that 4.6 million people, or one in every 50 adults, will be barred from voting in the 2022 midterms due to a felony conviction. 

The report, “Locked Out 2022: Estimates of People Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction,” updates and expands on research The Sentencing Project released in 2020 analyzing the scope of felony disenfranchisement, as well as the state-level distribution of laws that ban people with previous felony convictions from voting.

Three out of four of the people disenfranchised are living in their communities, having fully completed their sentences or remaining supervised while on probation or parole.

 “…this report makes it clear that millions of our citizens will remain voiceless in the upcoming midterms,” said Amy Fettig, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. “Felony disenfranchisement is just the latest in a long line of attempts to restrict ballot access, just like poll taxes, literacy tests and property requirements were used in the past. It is time for our country to guarantee the right to vote for people with felony convictions.”

One in 19 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.5 times greater than that of non-African Americans.More than one in 10 African American adults is disenfranchised in eight states – Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia.Although data on ethnicity in correctional populations are still unevenly reported, the report conservatively estimates that at least 506,000 Latinx Americans or – or 1.7 percent of the voting eligible population – are disenfranchised.Approximately 1,000,000 women are disenfranchised, comprising over one-fifth of the total disenfranchised population. 

 At least 559 million children worldwide are already exposed to frequent heatwaves—a number that could hit 2.02 billion by 2050, according to a UNICEF report—The Coldest Year of The Rest of Their Lives: Protecting Children From the Escalating Impacts of Heatwaves. 

 The report calls on world leaders to reduce the threat of heatwaves—or any period of at least three consecutive days when the maximum temperature is in the top 10% of the local 15-day average—by ambitiously increasing action to limit global temperature rise.

In addition to high frequency—an average of 4.5 or more heatwaves per year—the report warns of the rising threat of extreme high temperatures, or at least 83.54 days that top 35°C (95°F), as well as events that are high in duration, meaning they last 4.7 days or longer, and severity, which is when the temperatures are 2°C (3.6°F) or more above the local 15-day average.

624 million children are currently exposed to one of the other three high heat measures—a scenario that UNICEF says will worsen over the next three decades.

“The mercury is rising and so are the impacts on children,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director, in a statement. “Already, 1 in 3 children live in countries that face extreme high temperatures and almost 1 in 4 children are exposed to high heatwave frequency, and it is only going to get worse. More children will be impacted by longer, hotter, and more frequent heatwaves over the next 30 years, threatening their health and well-being.” 

“Children in northern regions will face the most dramatic increases in high heatwave severity while by 2050, nearly half of all children in Africa and Asia will face sustained exposure to extreme high temperatures,” the document states, highlighting that “almost every country is experiencing changing heatwaves.”

Vanessa Nakate, a young Ugandan climate activist, explained, “The climate shocks of 2022 provided a strong wake-up call about the increasing danger hurtling towards us. Heatwaves are a clear example. As hot as this year has been in almost every corner of the world, it will likely be the coldest year of the rest of our lives.”

She continued, “The dial is being turned up on our planet and yet our world leaders haven’t begun to sweat. The only option is for us to continue to turn up the heat—on them—to correct the course we are on,” She went on to warn, “Unless they take action, and soon this report makes it clear that heatwaves will become even harsher than they are already destined to be.”

2 Billion Kids to Face Extreme Heatwave Threat by 2050, Warns UNICEF (commondreams.org)

 “Malaysia has become the preferred destination for a number of threatened minority groups from Myanmar, including the Rohingya, the Chin, and the Kachin,” says Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch. “Those communities and their networks in Malaysia help to protect new arrivals, and support efforts to get refugee status and protection from UNHCR.”

Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Convention and Protocol on Refugees. It also does not recognise the refugee status given to asylum seekers assessed by the UN Refugee Agency as being at risk if returned to their own country.

 Globally, 26,000 square miles of forest—an area roughly equivalent to the Republic of Ireland—were destroyed in 2021. This deforestation decimated biodiverse ecosystems and released 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, about as much as the European Union.

According to the annual Forest Declaration Assessment, “not a single global indicator is on track to meet these 2030 goals of stopping forest loss and degradation and restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscape.” 

 “It will cost up to $460 billion per year to protect, restore, and enhance forests on a global scale. Currently, domestic and international mitigation finance for forests averages $2.3 billion per year—less than 1% of the necessary total. Funding for forests will need to increase by up to 200 times to meet 2030 goals.”

Experts have long warned that it will be virtually impossible to maintain a habitable planet unless the world stops felling trees to make space for cattle ranching, monocropping, and other harmful practices. Although halting and reversing deforestation by 2030 is key to averting the worst consequences of the climate and biodiversity crises, the world is off course to achieve these critical targets. At COP26 climate summit last November, 145 nations signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration “to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” by the end of the decade.

“To be on course to halt deforestation completely by 2030, a 10% annual reduction is needed,” the report notes. “However, deforestation rates around the world declined only modestly, in 2021, by 6.3% compared to the 2018-20 baseline. In the humid tropics, loss of irreplaceable primary forest decreased by only 3.1%.”

“Tropical Asia is the only region currently on track to halt deforestation by 2030,” thanks to the “exceptional progress” made by Indonesia and Malaysia, which reduced clear-cutting by 25% in 2021, states the report. “While deforestation rates in tropical Latin America and Africa decreased in 2021 relative to the 2018-20 baseline, those reductions are still insufficient to meet the 2030 goal.”

The authors emphasize. “Achieving the 2030 forest goals is essential for ensuring a livable world in line with the Paris agreement.”

They point out that “most financial institutions still fail to have any deforestation safeguards for their investments,” the assessment points out. “Almost two-thirds of the 150 major financial players most exposed to deforestation do not yet have a single deforestation policy covering their forest-risk investments, leaving $2.6 trillion in investments in high deforestation-risk commodities without appropriate safeguards.”

Fran Price, global forest practice lead at World Wildlife Fund explained, “There is no pathway to meeting the 1.5°C target set out in the Paris agreement or reversing biodiversity loss without halting deforestation and conversion.”

‘Not a Single Global Indicator Is on Track’ to Reverse Deforestation by 2030: Analysis (commondreams.org)

A new Greenpeace USA report,  Circular Claims Fall Flat Again, finds that U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, only 2.4 million tons of which was recycled. 

Plastic recycling was estimated to have declined to about 5–6% in 2021, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014 and 8.7% in 2018. At that time, the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled even though much of it was burned or dumped. 

The report also finds that no type of plastic packaging in the U.S. meets the definition of recyclable used by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastic Economy (EMF NPE) Initiative. By EMF NPE standards, an item must have a 30% recycling rate to receive the “recyclable” classification. Two of the most common plastics in the U.S. that are often considered recyclable – PET #1 and HDPE #2, typically bottles and jugs – fall well below the EMF NPE threshold, only achieving reprocessing rates of 20.9% and 10.3%, respectively. For every other type of plastic, the reprocessing rate is less than 5%.  While PET #1 and HDPE #2 were previously thought of as recyclable, this report finds that being accepted by a recycling processing plant does not necessarily result in them being recycled – effectively negating the recyclability claim.

Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace USA Senior Plastics Campaigner, said, ” The data is clear: practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable. The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill.” She explained, “It’s simply not possible to collect the vast quantity of these small pieces of plastic sold to U.S. consumers annually. More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller percentage of it is being recycled. The crisis just gets worse and worse, and, without drastic change, will continue to worsen as the industry plans to triple plastic production by 2050.” She added, “It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap. Instead of continuing to greenwash and mislead the American public, industry should stand on the right side of history this November and support an ambitious Global Plastics Treaty that will finally end the age of plastic by significantly decreasing production and increasing refill and reuse.”

Mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste fails because plastic waste is extremely difficult to collect, virtually impossible to sort for recycling, environmentally harmful to reprocess, often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and not economical to recycle.

 99 percent of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and as big brands continue their addiction to this harmful material, they are fueling climate impacts and jeopardizing communities in the name of profits. All over the world, communities face health impacts from the plastics industry, whether through incinerators, landfills, petrochemical facilities, polluted waterways, or the harmful plastic packaging pushed on communities. 

New Greenpeace Report: Plastic Recycling Is A Dead-End Street—Year After Year, Plastic Recycling Declines Even as Plastic Waste Increases | Common Dreams

189 million people per year have been affected by extreme weather-related events in developing countries since 1991.  Since 1991, developing countries experienced 79 per cent of recorded deaths and 97 per cent of the total recorded number of people affected by the impacts of weather extremes. The number of extreme weather and climate-related events that developing countries experience has more than doubled over that period with over 676,000 people killed.

Lower-income countries are paying the highest price as emissions and fossil fuel profits rocket. 55 of the most climate-vulnerable countries have suffered climate-induced economic losses totalling over half a trillion dollars during the first two decades of this century as fossil fuel profits rocket leaving people in some of the poorest places on earth to foot the bill.

According to a new report published, The Cost of Delay, by the Loss and Damage Collaboration – a group of more than 100 researchers, activists, and policymakers from around the globe – highlights how rich countries have repeatedly stalled efforts to provide dedicated finance to developing countries bearing the costs of a climate crisis they did little to cause.  ‘Loss and damage’ broadly refers to the consequences of climate impacts which cannot be or have not been avoided through mitigation or adaptation. ‘Loss’ can refer to loss of lives, livelihoods or culture and ‘damage’ can be to infrastructure or ecosystems, among other things.

In the first half of 2022, six fossil fuel companies combined made enough money to cover the cost of major extreme weather and climate-related events in developing countries and still have nearly $70 billion profit remaining.  The fossil fuel industry made enough super-profit between 2000 and 2019 to cover the costs of climate-induced economic losses in 55 of the most climate-vulnerable countries almost sixty times over.

The entire continent of Africa produces less than four per cent of global emissions and the African Development Bank reported recently the continent was losing between five and 15 per cent of its GDP per capita growth because of climate change.

The catastrophic flooding in Pakistan this year, directly affected at least 33 million people and costs were estimated at over $30 billion. Yet the UN humanitarian appeal for the floods is set at only $472.3 million (just over one per cent of what is needed), and only 19 per cent funded. The flood response is not considered to be anywhere near enough to help the millions of people who have lost their livelihoods and homes and face hunger, disease and psychological impacts.

Lyndsay Walsh, Oxfam’s Climate policy adviser and co-author of the report said: “It is an injustice that polluters who are disproportionately responsible for the escalating greenhouse gas emissions continue to reap these enormous profits while climate-vulnerable countries are left to foot the bill for the climate impacts destroying people’s lives, homes and jobs. This is not a future reality, it is happening now, as we are seeing with the devastating floods in Pakistan and unprecedented drought in East Africa.”

Professor Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, said: “As one of the few people who has attended every single COP over the last three decades, I have personally witnessed the resistance from the developed countries to every attempt by the vulnerable developing countries to discuss loss and damage from human-induced climate change.”

Every fraction of a degree of further warming means more climate impacts with losses from climate change in developing countries estimated to be between $290 billion and $580 billion by 2030. These estimates do not include non-economic losses and damages, such as psychological impacts and biodiversity loss, which are profound but cannot be translated fully into monetary terms, meaning the true cost is far higher than what is accounted for.

189 million people per year affected by extreme weather in developing countries as rich countries stall on paying climate impact costs – World | ReliefWeb

 Climate change contributed greatly to the drought situation, he said, and was causing the poorer populations in Africa to suffer the most.

 “I think it is a call for the globe as a whole to address the issue of climate change, because it affects a lot of people not only in Africa, but on other continents as well,” explained Kenya’s Turkana region’s county secretary for disaster management and drought, Jeremiah Namuya.

Somalia’s Minister for Agriculture Ahmed Madobe Nunow warned, “Some pockets of the country are on the brink of famine, unless we do something about it immediately.”  According to Madobe Nunow, Somalia is on the verge of a second famine, after the 2010-2012 crisis which according to the UN claimed more than a quarter of a million lives, half of them children.

Workneh Gebeyehu, the executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an organization for regional development, recently said that more than 50 million IGAD citizens in member states Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan are food insecure.

East Africa’s drought threatens millions with starvation – DW – 10/24/2022

 The International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization got together jointly to estimate the number of deaths caused by occupational diseases and injuries at world level for 2016. 

The two international agencies found that as many as 1.90 million people died from occupational diseases and injuries this year. 

Out of this 360,000 deaths were caused by occupational injuries. This implies that the remaining 1.54 million were caused by occupational disease.

Occupational accidents generally become news while occupational diseases seldom do so, in fact among all deaths caused by occupational diseases and injuries, occupational diseases cause as many as 82% of total deaths (1.54 million out of 1.90 million) while occupational accidents cause 18% deaths. 

 The ILO/WHO estimate attributes the highest number—750,000—to long working hours. This is a very significant number for all those struggling against imposition of unduly long working hours, particularly in situations of working conditions which even otherwise are unhealthy and/or stressful. 

Workplace air pollution, in the form of exposure to particulate matter, gases and fumes, has been estimated by the ILO/WHO study to be responsible for 450,000 deaths in 2016.

Occupational deaths can be called a silent killer. Due to poverty, economic compulsions and lack of compensatory payments, most of them have to continue working in these conditions, increasing their distress and health risks. When they cannot work any more, many of them are discarded all too easily by non-caring employers, forced to live out the rest of their life in extremely difficult conditions, as can be seen in the context of many victims of occupational diseases.

A review of the existing data on occupational diseases by the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention appears to be marked more by what is missing than by what is available. Thus this review states that 66,000 cases of occupational skin diseases were reported in a year, then hastens to add that this is a case of severe under-reporting. Why severe under-reporting should persist on such an important issue is not stated.

In the context of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it is stated that 20 million workers in the USA are potentially exposed. But what is more important is to find out how many actually suffer. 

n the case of occupational threat in the form of hearing loss to various extents this review is more firm in stating that this is the most widespread occupational health problem in the USA , with more than 30 million exposed to hazardous noise, 

And an additional 9 million at risk from other orthopaedic -traumatic agents.

Also, 30% of American workers are employed in jobs that routinely require them to perform activities that may increase risk of developing lower back disorders. In a single year 332,000 musculoskeletal injuries were reported in US workplaces.

In his book, The Picture of Health, Erik Eckholm stated that as many as 100,000 people die from occupational diseases while 390,000 new cases of occupational disease appear in a year in the USA. Nearly 10 million workers are estimated to be exposed in this country to 11 high-volume carcinogens. Big increase in cancer rates have been reported in some lines of work. In fact occupational risks are increasing the most in those lines of work in which new and serious hazards are appearing but in most cases the seriousness of these hazards is sought to be denied or underplayed by very powerful industrial interests, delaying remedial action, if not altogether denying it.

Another disturbing trend is that with changes in farm technology, very serious hazards in the form of poisonous chemicals and other inputs are appearing in farm work too.

Occupational Diseases Pose Very Serious Threat To Health And Welfare Of Workers| Countercurrents