United Nations – Page 8 – Desdemona Despair

A satellite image shows fields peppered with artillery craters near Slovyansk, Ukraine, on 6 June 2022. From a dramatic loss of export revenue to mine-riddled fields and exploding machinery, Russia’s invasion has taken a massive toll on Ukraine’s agriculture sector. Photo: Maxar Technologies

June 26, 2022

UN chief warns of “unprecedented hunger crisis” from global food shortage – “No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of such a catastrophe”

BERLIN, 24 June 2022 (AP) – The head of the United Nations warned Friday that the world faces “catastrophe” because of the growing shortage of food around the globe. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war in Ukraine has added to the disruptions caused by climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and inequality to produce an “unprecedented global […]

UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa speaks to delegates at the Bonn annual UN Climate Change Conference, 6 June 2022. Photo: Kiara Worth / ENB

June 6, 2022

Climate talks start in Bonn as Ukraine war overshadows threat of global warming – “There is this disconnect between the scientific evidence of global crisis in the making, versus the lack of action”

6 June 2022 (AFP) – Negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet in Bonn Monday for climate talks tasked with reigniting momentum on tackling global warming, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine overshadows the threat from rising emissions. The conference will set the stage for a fresh round of major United Nations talks later this year […]

World cereal production, utilization, stocks, 2012-2022 and projected to 2023. Based on world cereal production and utilization estimates, cereal stocks at the end of seasons in 2022 are seen rising above their opening levels but remaining below the record levels reached in 2018/19. Global trade in cereals in 2021/22 is estimated below the 2020/21 record level, mostly owing to an expected fall in global maize trade and reflecting the impact of disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine. Looking forward to the 2022/23 season, early prospects for cereal production in 2022 point to a likely decrease, which would mark the first decline in four years. Graphic: FAO

June 3, 2022

World cereal production, utilization, stocks, and trade all likely to contract in 2022/23 – U.N. forecast shows first decline in world cereal utilization in twenty years

3 June 2022 (FAO) – FAO’s latest estimates indicate a year-on-year 0.9 percent increase in global cereal production in 2021, largely attributed to a higher maize output. Cereal utilization is also estimated to increase in 2021/22, by 1.1 percent, driven by (in order of magnitude) expansions in food consumption (especially of wheat and rice), other […]

Global map showing the highest marine heatwave (MHW) category experienced at each pixel in 2021 (reference period 1982–2011). Light grey indicates that no MHW occurred in a pixel over the entire year. (b) Stacked bar plot showing the percentage of the surface of the ocean experiencing an MHW on any given day of the year. (c) Stacked bar plot showing the cumulative percentage of the surface of the ocean that experienced an MHW over the year. Note: These values are based on when in the year a pixel first experienced its highest MHW category, so no pixel is counted twice. Horizontal lines in this figure show the final percentages for each category of MHW. (d) Stacked bar plot showing the cumulative number of MHW days averaged over the surface of the ocean. Note: This average is calculated by dividing the cumulative sum of MHW days per pixel weighted by the surface area of those pixels. Data: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (NOAA OISST). Graphic: Robert Schlegel

May 22, 2022

WMO: Four key climate change indicators broke records in 2021 – Past seven years have been the warmest seven years on record – “A dismal litany of humanity’s failure to tackle climate disruption”

GENEVA, 18 May 2022 (WMO) – Four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. This is yet another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean, and in the atmosphere, with harmful and […]

A protester in Sri Lanka hurls a tear-gas canister back at the police officers who fired it, 19 May 2022. Photo: Atul Loke / The New York Times

May 22, 2022

Sri Lanka is the first domino to fall in the face of a global debt crisis – Will Bangladesh be next? – “I’m deeply concerned about developing countries”

By Larry Elliott 9 May 2022 (The Guardian) – The departure of Sri Lanka’s prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, follows weeks of protest and a deepening crisis. There is no bankruptcy system for states but if there was then the south Asian country – down to its last $50m (£40m) of reserves – would be first in […]

SDG Indicator 16.1.1 Detected victims of intentional homicide, by sex (women) vs. SDG Indicator 1.5.1 Number of people affected by disaster. Research shows that violence against women and girls increases in the aftermath of disasters. At the extreme end of the scale, this takes the form of intentional homicides. Data: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs analysis based on Global Sustainable Development Goal Indicators Database (UN DESA, 2021). Graphic: UNDRR

May 8, 2022

Humanity entering “spiral of self-destruction”, UN warns – “By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction”

26 April 2022 (France 24) – Humanity is suffering from a “broken perception of risk”, spurring us into activities and behaviours that cause climate change and a surging number of disasters around the globe, the UN warned Tuesday. In a fresh report, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, or UNDRR, found that between 350 and […]

Estonian cargo vessel the Helt sinks off Odessa, Ukraine, 3 March 2022. Reports claimed the Helt was captured by Russian forces on 2 March 2022 and scuttled. Photo: Andrii Klymenko

April 30, 2022

Russia’s war destroys Ukraine’s economy, spurs global food and economic crisis – “The war in Ukraine can throw more than 1/5 of humanity into poverty, destitution, and hunger on a scale not seen in decades”

25 April 2022 (Euromaidan Press) – February 23 was an ordinary workday for the thousands of employees on two very different facilities: Chornobayivka chicken farm near Kherson and Azovstal, a giant steel mill in Mariupol. Now, after two months of the war, they are equally jobless due to the destruction of both enterprises: either by […]

The bodies of cattle killed by devastating drought in Ethiopia, South Omo, 23 Feburary 2022. In the vast lowland part of the country in South Omo, communities have suffered high death rates among their cattle as a result of the severe drought. Photo: Michael Tewelde / WFP

April 21, 2022

Drought pushes up to 20 million people across horn of Africa closer to catastrophe each day – WFP has warned since 2021 that this drought will be disastrous without immediate action

NAIROBI, 19 April 2022 (WFP) – Desperately needed rains across the Horn of Africa have so far failed to materialise, almost a month into the current rainy season, and if these conditions continue, along with stagnant and even decreasing humanitarian aid, the number of hungry people due to drought could spiral from the currently estimated […]

Concurrent shocks affecting the food security of households in the Horn of Africa in 2022. Graphic: FAO

April 17, 2022

New data show how drought in the Horn of Africa is driving up acute hunger – “The scale of the devastation in terms of hunger and lost livelihoods will be appalling”

ROME, 12 April 2022 (FAO) – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today warned that dire new hunger data out of Somalia sheds additional light on extended drought’s crippling impacts on the Horn of Africa region and underscores the criticality of large-scale agricultural aid to keep rural families self-reliant, fed, and […]

A haze caused by dust covers the capital Nicosia, in the southeast Mediterranean island of Cyprus, on Monday, 4 April 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. health agency, says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn't meet its standards for air quality. WHO is calling for more action reduce fossil-use use that generate pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. Photo: Petros Karadjias / AP Photo

April 10, 2022

Millions dying across the world due to poor-quality air that 99 percent of world’s population breathes – “After surviving a pandemic, it is unacceptable to still have 7 million preventable deaths and countless preventable lost years of good health due to air pollution”

By Jamey Keaten 4 April 2022 GENEVA (AP) – The U.N. health agency says nearly everybody in the world breathes air that doesn’t meet its standards for air quality, calling for more action to reduce fossil-fuel use, which generates pollutants that cause respiratory and blood-flow problems and lead to millions of preventable deaths each year. The […]