from Sunday Herald, 02 August 2009
The world is facing a series of interlinked crises which threaten billions of people and could cause the collapse of civilisation, according to an authoritative international report to be unveiled this week.
Climate pollution, food shortages, diseases, wars, disasters, crime and the recession are all conspiring to ravage the globe and threaten the future of humanity, experts are warning. Democracy, human rights and press freedom are also suffering.
“Half the world appears vulnerable to social instability and violence,” the report says. This is due to rising unemployment and decreasing food, water and energy supplies, coupled with the disruptions caused by global warming and mass migrations.
The report, called ‘2009 State of the Future’, has been compiled by the Millennium Project, a major international think-tank based in Washington DC. It has involved 2,700 experts from 30 countries, and runs to more than 6,700 pages.
The project has been backed by a diverse range of organisations, including United Nations agencies, the Rockefeller Foundation, private companies and governments. It provides “invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society,” according to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
The report’s bleakest warning is on the dangers of the escalating climate chaos being caused by pollution. The environmental crisis is deepening every year, it says, so that human consumption is now 30% larger than nature’s capacity to regenerate.
By 2015 the number of people suffering climate-related disasters could mushroom to more than 375 million a year. By 2030 as many as 660 million people could be affected, with economic losses rising to $340 billion a year.
The report calls for a global programme like the campaign to put a man on the moon to tackle climate pollution. It holds out some hope that the world climate summit in Copenhagen in December might make some breakthroughs.
“Climate change is devastating the lives of poor people,” said Oxfam Scotland’s campaigns manager, Malcolm Fleming. “It is plunging them further into poverty, disease and hunger and threatens to undermine the progress made in reducing poverty in recent years.”
The report also highlights the 15 conflicts in the world, each causing more than 1,000 deaths a year. It predicts that there could be three billion people without access to adequate supplies of water by 2025.
“About half the people in the world are at risk of several endemic diseases”, it says. These include HIV/AIDS, swine flu, drug-resistant superbugs and a rash of new infections.
The global income of international crime is reckoned to be around $3 trillion, which is twice all the world’s military budgets. “Democracy and freedom have declined for the third year in a row, and press freedoms declined for the seventh year in a row,” the report says.
The global recession was caused by “too many greedy and deceitful decisions", it argues. But there were now some signs that humanity was growing out of its “selfish, self-centred adolescence”.
Environment
The most serious danger is that posed by the pollution that is disrupting the global climate, the report says. Every day the oceans absorb 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, increasing their acidity.
The number of dead zones - areas with too little oxygen to support life - has doubled every decade since the 1960s. And the oceans are warming about 50% faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007.
The amount of ice flowing out of Greenland last summer was nearly three times more than the previous year. Summer ice in the Arctic could disappear by 2030, the report warns, as could many of the major glaciers in Europe, the Himalaya and the Andes.
“Over 36 million hectares of primary forest are lost every year,” the report says. “Human consumption is 30% larger than nature’s capacity to regenerate, and demand on the planet has more than doubled over the past 45 years.”
The strains that these changes will put on the world are many and varied, including floods, droughts and storms. “This important report puts climate change up there with the major economic, social and political challenges that the human race faces,” said Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland.
“Whether you are worried about food security, the threat of war or mass migration, climate change is going to make things worse.”
The Millennium Project report argues that combating climate change requires a ten-year programme by the US and China equivalent to the Apollo mission to the moon launched by US President Kennedy in 1961. “This is not only important for the environment; it is also a strategy to increase the likelihood of international peace,” it says.
A raft of other environmental problems are highlighted, including toxic waste dumping. About 70% of the world’s 50 million tonnes of annual electronic waste is dumped in developing countries in Asia and Africa, much of it illegally.
A quarter of all fish stocks are over-harvested, the report says, and 80% cannot withstand increased fishing. Customs administrations have reported more that 9,800 seizures of illegally-traded endangered species in the last few years.
Food and water
A global food crisis may be “inevitable”, the report warns, because of an obscure fungus called Ug99 which cause stem rust. It is threatening to wipe out more than 80% of the world’s wheat crops, and it could take up to 12 years to develop resistant strains of wheat.
Food prices rose by 52% between 2007 and 2008, while the prices of fertiliser have nearly doubled over the past year. At the same time, between 30 and 40% of food production is lost in many poor countries because of a lack of adequate storage facilities.
Nearly a billion people are undernourished and hungry, the report says, while 700 million face water scarcity. Water tables are falling on every continent, and one in ten of the world’s major rivers fail to reach the sea for part of each year.
“Without substantial policy and technological changes, there could be three billion people by 2025 without adequate water due to climate change, population growth, and increasing demand,” the report forecasts.
The world’s population is expected to grow from the current 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050. If fertility rates do not continue to fall, it could reach 11 billion.
Water shortages are also being worsened by the growing global consumption of meat. The report predicts that demand for meat may increase 50% by 2025 and double by 2050.
“Christian Aid’s partners in developing countries are already reporting that water is hard to find,” said Claire Aston, the acting head of Christian Aid Scotland.
“The idea that three billion people will be in this position as a result of climate change by 2030 is a frightening prospect.”
Disease
About 17 million people a year - nine million of them young children - are killed by infectious diseases every year, according to the report from the Millennium Project.
Half of the world’s population is at risk from endemic diseases, it says. Tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS together cause over 300 million illnesses and more than five million deaths every year.
The number of people living with HIV/AIDS is estimated at between 30 and 36 million, two thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Some evidence suggests that the rate at which the disease is spreading may peak at over two million a year by 2012.
The dangers from other diseases seem to be getting worse, too. Over the past 40 years 39 new infectious diseases have been discovered, and in the last five years more than 1,100 epidemics have been verified.
There are up to 20 new strains of “superbugs”, like the deadly skin infection MRSA, that are difficult to counter. Three quarters of emerging pathogens have the ability to jump species.
A whole series of old diseases are also re-emerging such as cholera, yellow fever, plague, dengue fever, meningitis, haemorrhagic fever, and diphtheria. Not to mention new strains, like the H1N1 swine flu virus.
“Massive urbanisation, increased encroachment on animal territory, and concentrated livestock production could trigger new pandemics,” the report cautions.
“Climate change is altering insect and disease patterns. Other problems may come from synthetic biology laboratories.”
Wars and disasters
Over two billion people have been impacted by the world’s 35 wars and 2,500 natural disasters over the last nine years, the report says.
By the middle of 2009, there were 15 conflicts raging around the globe each causing more than 1,000 deaths a year. That is one more war than in 2008.
Four wars were taking place in Africa, four in Asia, four in the Middle East, two in the Americas and one - against terror - internationally. “A pending unknown is whether Iran and North Korea will trigger a nuclear arms race,” the report says.
“Another more distant spectre, but possibly even a greater threat, is that of single individuals acting alone to create and deploy weapons of mass destruction.”
The Iraq war has left an environmental catastrophe in its wake, with 25 million land mines, hazardous waste, polluted water and depleted uranium contamination. “It will take centuries to restore the natural environment of Iraq,” said the country’s environment minister, Nermeen Othman.
The number and intensity of natural disasters is increasing, the report says. In 2008 there were a total of 354 disasters with an estimated 214 million victims, 80% of them in Asia.
But increasing climate chaos could see the number of people suffering grow to 375 million a year by 2015 and 660 million by 2030. Economic losses could reach $340 billion a year.
“The world has moved from a global threat once called the Cold War, to what now should be considered the Warming War,” said Afelee Pita, the UN ambassador from Tuvalu, a small, low-lying island in the Pacific Ocean vulnerable to flooding from rising seas levels.
The planet also recently had a narrow escape from catastrophe. “In March 2009 an asteroid missed earth by 77,000 kilometres,” discloses the report.
This is 80% closer than the moon, it points out. “If it had hit earth, it would have wiped out all life on 800 square kilometres. No one knew it was coming.”
Organised crime
Organised crime is very big business, according to the Millennium Project report, with an income amounting to a staggering $3 trillion a year. This is twice as much as all the world’s military budgets combined.
This includes over $1 trillion paid in bribes to corrupt officials, and maybe another $1 trillion from cybercrime thefts. Counterfeiting and piracy could bring in at least $300 billion, the global drug trade $321 billion, human trafficking $44 billion and illegal weapons sales $10 billion.
“Governments can be understood as a series of decision points, with some people in those points vulnerable to very large bribes,” the report says. “Decisions could be bought and sold like heroin, making democracy an illusion.”
Shockingly, there are reckoned to be between 14 and 27 million people still being held in slavery, the vast majority of them in Asia. This is more than at the peak of the African slave trade.
The report argues that the world is beginning to wake up to the “enormity of the threat of transnational organised crime”. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has called on states to develop a coherent strategy, but efforts are still piecemeal.
The 2009 G8 meeting of justice and home affairs ministers explored anti-crime strategies, and in June the US launched the International Organised Crime Intelligence and Operations Centre.
“Meanwhile, transnational organised crime continues to expand in the absence of a comprehensive, integrated global counter-strategy,” observes the report.
Human rights
Freedom and democracy are waning, the report reveals. They have declined for the third year in a row, with press freedoms worsening for the seventh year in a row.
In 2008 democracy declined in 34 countries, and only improved in 14. Just 17% of the world’s population lives in 70 countries with a free press, while 42% lives in 64 countries with no free press.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 14.4% of humanity enjoys full democracy, while 35% live under authoritarian regimes. “Democratic forces will have to work harder to make sure that the short-term reversals do not stop the longer-term trend of democratisation,” the report says.
Women account for over 40% of the world’s workforce but earn less than 25% of the wages and own only 1% of the assets. “Many countries still have laws and cultures that deny women basic human rights,” the report states.
“Gender equity is essential for the development of a healthy society and is one of the most effective ways to address all the other global challenges”.
The human rights organisation, Amnesty International, warns that the recession is having a “devastating impact” on the human rights of the world’s poor. It is driving more and more people into poverty, unemployment and homelessness.
“The recession is also leading to repression of people who are desperate,” said Amnesty’s Scottish programme director, John Watson. “It is creating new tensions between governments and vulnerable people.”
Science and technology
Advances in science and technology are coming ever faster and more frequent, according to the Millennium Project report. This increases the chances of major breakthroughs in medicine, computing and biotechnology.
Some experts speculate that civilisation is heading for a “singularity”, the report says. This would mean that “technological change is so fast and significant that we today are incapable of conceiving what life might be like beyond the year 2025.”
It cautions that politicians and the public need a “global collective intelligence system” to track the effects of rapid technological changes. Antidotes need to be prepared in case there are “highly negative impacts”.
The electronics company, IBM, has promised a computer capable of performing 20,000 trillion calculations per second by 2011. That is thought to be roughly equivalent to the speed of the human brain.
The boom in power generated by wind turbines and other renewable sources has been unprecedented. For the first time in 2008 the majority of the increase in electricity production in the US and the European Union came from renewable sources.
Technological progress could give the world vital opportunities, the report suggests. “This is a unique time in human history,” it says.
“Mobile phones, the internet, international trade, language translation, and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve the prospects for humanity.”
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