Biodiversity expert John Mwangi Gicheha says the decline in species population abundance has now been validated by the newly-released Living Planet Report 2022.

“The health of planet earth is well and truly on a sharp decline, and we are not only seeing a decrease in the global population of species but a decline in their genetic diversity and a loss of species climatically determined habitats.”

This is the first ever most comprehensive report on the state of global vertebrate wildlife populations, and it makes a startling revelation: the world’s wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970.

As a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity among population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, the 2022 Living Planet Index analyzed approximately 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world.

By tracking trends in the abundance of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, and amphibians worldwide since 1970, a disturbing image emerged: one million plants and animals are threatened with extinction.

Worse still, 1-2.5 percent of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have gone extinct.

Key findings include revelations that monitored freshwater populations are hardest hit as there is an alarming decline of 83 percent in the last 50 years, more than any other species groups.

The decline in freshwater population is mainly caused by habitat loss and barriers to migration routes which account for an estimated half the threat to these populations. Further, only 37 percent of rivers over 1,000 kilometres remain free-flowing in their natural state.

Against this backdrop, the report stresses that the global community is living the consequences of double crises and shows how “interlinked emergencies of human-induced climate change and the loss of biodiversity are threatening the well-being of current and future generations.”

The greatest regional decline in wildlife population is in Latin America and the Caribbean region, whose average population abundance decline is 94 percent.

Africa comes second with a 66 percent fall in its wildlife populations over the past 52 years, and across the board, the poor and marginalized remain highly vulnerable and most affected by the decline.

There was an 18 percent decline in Europe and Central Asia and a 55 percent decline in wildlife populations in the Asia Pacific.

More findings show despite mangroves being unique forests of the sea; they remain at great risk as they continue to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at current rates of 0.13 percent per year.

Mangrove loss is not only a loss of habitat for biodiversity, the report emphasizes, but the loss of ecosystem services for coastal communities.

Further, approximately 50 percent of warm water corals have already been lost. Even worse, a warming of 5 degrees Celsius will lead to a loss of 70 to 90 percent of warm water corals.

Overall, the global abundance of 18 of 31 oceanic sharks and rays declined by 71 percent since 1970. By 2020, three-quarters of sharks and rays were threatened with an elevated risk of extinction. 

Judy Ouya, a government official in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry said that said consequences could no longer be ignored as they are too severe and frequent. They include loss of lives and economic assets from extreme weather conditions, deepening poverty and, severe food and water insecurity from droughts.

WWF: Global Vertebrate Wildlife Population Has Plummeted | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

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

 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)

 “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.

 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)

 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

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

 The United Nations has accused Australia of a “clear breach” of its obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (Opcat).

The New South Wales government has refused inspectors entry into any facilities in the state and Queensland has blocked access to mental health wards.

Opcat was ratified by the federal government in 2017. This is the first time inspectors have visited Australia.

Under its mandate, the subcommittee on the prevention of torture (SPT) is able to make unannounced visits to all detention facilities and conduct private interviews with people deprived of their liberty without witnesses.

“State parties have an obligation to both receive the SPT in their territory and allow it to exercise its mandate in full,” delegation head, Aisha Shujune Muhammad, said. Muhammad added it was “concerning that four years after it ratified” it appeared Australia has “done little to ensure consistent implementation of Opcat obligations”.

UN accuses Australia of ‘clear breach’ of human rights obligations as it suspends tour of detention facilities | Prisons | The Guardian

 Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, the country’s most senior public health expert, said there was a common misconception that a warmer climate would bring net health benefits due to milder winters. But the climate emergency would bring far wider-reaching health impacts, she said, with food security, flooding and mosquito-borne diseases posing threats.

“The heatwave this summer really brought home to people the direct impact,” said Harries. “But it’s the breadth of the impact. It’s not just the heat.” 

This summer, the UK experienced record temperatures of 40.3C and six separate heatwave periods associated with more than 2,800 excess deaths. “If several aeroplanes all exploded and we’d lost that many people it would be front-page news in health protection terms,” Harries said. It is projected that numbers of heat-related deaths will triple by 2050, with the hottest summers on record that we have observed in recent years becoming simply “normal” summers. 

The climate crisis poses a “significant and growing threat” to health in the UK. Harries said the UK needed to build resilience to protect the population from the health impacts of extreme weather events. The aim is not to paint a “doom and gloom scenario”, she added, but to identify threats for which the UK could prepare.

Viewed purely in terms of annual excess deaths, the climate crisis was likely to have an interim benefit in the UK due to warmer winters, Harries said. But other factors could soon reverse this trend. As temperatures rise, Europe is becoming vulnerable to infectious diseases historically seen in the tropics. The Asian tiger mosquito, which carries dengue fever and chikungunya, is now established in southern Europe and this year France experienced its most severe outbreak yet of dengue, which mosquitos can transmit efficiently only when average temperatures rise above 28C.

“In France, they have had cases of infectious disease that you would normally see in tropical climates and the vector has come right up to Paris,” said Harries. “We’re starting to witness the progression of this impact in European countries. In the UK, Asian Tiger mosquito eggs have been detected in the south-east and the Culex modestus mosquito, which can transmit West Nile virus, is present in parts of Kent and Essex. 

“We’ve already beefed up our surveillance programme, but it’s one of those areas where we need to raise the flag and build out capacity in advance,” she said.

Climate crisis poses ‘growing threat’ to health in UK, says expert | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 Early data from the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)– results of a survey of its members are due later this month – shows that 50% of heads say their school will be in deficit this year, with almost all expecting to be in the red by next September, when their reserve run out.

Nine out of 10 schools will have run out of money by the next school year as the enormous burden of increased energy and salary bills takes its toll.

Headteachers and academy leaders are warning that further spending cuts will push many schools and academy trusts over the cliff, and result in most schools having to lose essential teaching and support staff. “There are no easy fixes left,” said Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT. “Schools are cut to the bone. This will mean cutting teaching hours, teaching assistants and teachers.”

The Rev Steve Chalke, whose Oasis foundation runs 52 academies in England, said: “At this burn rate, in under three years we will be bankrupt. No one is in a position to keep going for very long eating their reserves.” Chalke said electricity and gas costs for schools in his chain had rocketed from £26,000 a year to £89,000, even with the six-month energy price cap. The foundation is also having to find an extra £4.5m for the teachers’ pay rise, which was announced this summer after school budgets had been set. The rise – which at 5% for most teachers remains significantly below inflation – is seen as crucial but has left schools floundering because it came with no new funding.

Chalke said,  “Any government that neglects the welfare and education of its children had better be saving up for its future mental health and benefits bills, and investing in the justice system.”

Exclusive: 90% of UK schools will run out of money next year, heads warn | Education | The Guardian