After steadily declining for over a decade, global hunger is on the rise again, affecting 815 million people in 2016, or 11 per cent of the global population, says a new edition of the annual United Nations report on world food security and nutrition released today. At the same time, multiple forms of malnutrition are threatening the health of millions worldwide.

The increase – 38 million more people than the previous year – is largely due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017.

Some 155 million children aged under five are stunted (too short for their age), the report says, while 52 million suffer from wasting, meaning their weight is too low for their height. An estimated 41 million children are now overweight. Anaemia among women and adult obesity are also cause for concern. These trends are a consequence not only of conflict and climate change but also of sweeping changes in dietary habits as well as economic slowdowns.

The report is the first UN global assessment on food security and nutrition to be released following the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 as a top international policy priority.

It singles out conflict – increasingly compounded by climate change – as one of the key drivers behind the resurgence of hunger and many forms of malnutrition.

“Over the past decade, conflicts have risen dramatically in number and become more complex and intractable in nature,” the heads of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in their joint foreword to the report. They stressed that some of the highest proportions of food-insecure and malnourished children in the world are now concentrated in conflict zones.

“This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition. Securing peaceful and inclusive societies is a necessary condition to that end,” they said.

Famine struck in parts of South Sudan for several months in early 2017, and there is a high risk that it could reoccur there as well as appear in other conflict-affected places, namely northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, they noted.

But even in regions that are more peaceful droughts or floods linked in part to the El Niño weather phenomenon, as well as the global economic slowdown, have also seen food security and nutrition deteriorate, they added.

Key numbers

Hunger and food security

• Overall number of hungry people in the world: 815 million, including:

1. In Asia: 520 million
2. In Africa: 243 million
3. In Latin America and the Caribbean: 42 million

• Share of the global population who are hungry: 11%

1. Asia: 11.7%
2. Africa: 20% (in eastern Africa, 33.9%)
3. Latin America and the Caribbean: 6.6%

Malnutrition in all its forms

• Number of children under 5 years of age who suffer from stunted growth (height too low for their age): 155 million
• Number of those living in countries affected by varying levels of conflict: 122 million
• Children under 5 affected by wasting (weight too low given their height): 52 million
• Number of adults who are obese: 641 million (13% of all adults on the planet)
• Children under 5 who are overweight: 41 million
• Number of women of reproductive age affected by anaemia: 613 million (around 33% of the total)

The impact of conflict

• Number of the 815 million hungry people on the planet who live in countries affected by conflict: 489 million
• The prevalence of hunger in countries affected by conflict is 1.4 – 4.4 percentage points higher than in other countries
• In conflict settings compounded by conditions of institutional and environmental fragility, the prevalence is 11 and 18 percentage points higher
• People living in countries affected by protracted crises are nearly 2.5 times more likely to be undernourished than people elsewhere

A third of the world’s land is degraded. By the end of the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP13) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) that ended on Saturday, September 16, 2017 in Ordos, China, 113 countries agreed to specify concrete targets, with clear indicators, to reverse degradation and rehabilitate more land.

Countries also agreed at COP13 on a new global roadmap to address land degradation.

The new UNCCD 2018-2030 Strategic Framework is said to be the most comprehensive global commitment to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) in order to restore the productivity of vast swathes of degraded land, improve the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people, and to reduce the impacts of drought on vulnerable populations.

“Some battles took place, but you took bold measures for our Convention. We have a new strategic framework and a new reporting cycle. We have a Drought Initiative. We have taken fundamental decisions on gender, capacity-building, migration and sand and dust storms,” said Ms Monique Barbut, UNCCD Executive Secretary.

The Conference also witnessed the birth of the first global private sector fund dedicated to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. Known as the Land Degradation Neutrality Fund (LDN Fund), it will be a source of transformative capital bringing together public and private investors to fund projects to restore degraded lands, which come with environment, economic and social benefits.

With an initial target size of $300 million fund capital, the LDN Fund is co-promoted by Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Global Asset Management that is dedicated to socially responsible investment, and the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD. A separately-operated Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) will advise the Fund on the development of promising sustainable land use activities in order to build a strong portfolio of projects.

The Global Land Outlook, a new landmark publication unveiled at the Conference, spotlighted the urgency for swift action. It reported that 20 percent of the world’s land has become degraded in just the last two decades.

“This is the most comprehensive study of its type, mapping the interlinked impacts of land on a range of thematic areas including urbanisation, climate change, erosion and forest loss,” Ms. Barbut said of the publication at its launch.

To reaffirm the progress made at the summit, more than 80 Ministers from around the world issued the Ordos Declaration urging countries to step up efforts on all fronts to tackle desertification – one of the planet’s most pressing global challenges.

“The Ordos Declaration reaffirms the contribution of ecological services to food security, private sector, civil society and youth…. It also recognises the importance of addressing climate change, protecting biodiversity and addressing food security,” said Zhang Jianlong, Minister of State Forestry Administration, China, when he closed the Conference.

He said the Convention will pay attention to regional hotspots and intensify cooperation, and underlined the Belt and Road Cooperation Mechanism that will support capacity building along the Silk Road in the region.

The Conference also took action to address three new and emerging issues linked to increasing land degradation – drought, sand and dust storms and migration.

Sand and dust storms threaten the health of millions of people across the globe, and is a major concern in China where the Conference took place.

“Equally, drought mitigation,” Ms Barbut asserted, “would for the first time be an area of focus under the New Strategy.”

“National drought policies with effective early warning systems would be crucial in promoting vulnerability assessment and risk mitigation measures, particularly in light of the devastating droughts witnessed in Africa this year that have left more than 20 million people on the verge of starvation,”  she added.

The Conference took place from September 6 to 16 in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China.

In the modern world – where technology enables us to achieve more at a faster pace and social media boasting makes it easy to feel inadequate at the achievements of others – 30 could be considered the new 40.

We no longer need to stare horrified at the first grey hair wrapped around a comb or grimly pinch a thickening waistline to receive the impetus to stop and ask ourselves what we have done, and what we are going to do now to add meaning to our lives and value to the world.

As for people, so it goes for companies, organisations and initiatives: 30 years under the belt provides the opportunity to reflect and redirect.

Many such bodies will be casting an envious eye at the Montreal Protocol as it reaches this milestone, both in terms of its amazing achievement to date – setting the ozone layer on the road to recovery – and its new vision to help avoid up to 0.5° Celsius in global warming by the end of the century.

“The ozone story continues to inspire,” said Tina Birmpili, head of UN Environment’s Ozone Secretariat, under which the protocol falls. “It shows what can be achieved if we listen to the science, put aside our differences and act on behalf of our planet. This must not just be a one-off.”

On September 16, 1987, nations agreed on the protocol – The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, to give its full name. The goal was to slash the production and use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and other ozone-depleting substances, used in aerosols, refrigeration systems and many other items.

While such inventions brought comfort and convenience to billions, the substances they ran on were rather inconveniently ripping a hole in the ozone layer, allowing harmful ultraviolet radiation to stream through and threaten human lives, the environment and economies.

Fast forward to today, and the nations of the world – all of whom signed up to the protocol – have phased out nearly 99 per cent of ozone-depleting substances. In September 2014, a report from the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol confirmed that the ozone layer is healing and will return to 1980 levels by mid-century. As a result, up to 2 million cases of skin cancer may be prevented each year by 2030.

Climate change in the crosshairs

With this success in the trophy cabinet, the Montreal Protocol is now helping to address the climate change challenge.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) became widely used substitutes for ozone-depleting substances, but these are climate-warming gases with significant global-warming potential.

In October 2016, after long and sometimes-fraught negotiations, parties to the Montreal Protocol put aside their differences and signed the Kigali Amendment to phase down these greenhouse gases.

Then-UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the amendment “a major boost to limiting global temperature rise”.

The Paris Agreement calls for the world to limit global warming this century to under 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, with a more-ambitious 1.5°C set as an aspirational target.

Everybody onboard

Countries that ratify the Kigali Amendment – and there have been six so far – are committing to cutting the production and consumption of HFCs by more than 80 per cent over the next 30 years.

The new deal includes targets and timetables to replace HFCs with more planet-friendly alternatives, and an agreement by rich countries to help finance the transition of developing countries to safer products.

Top officials from the chemical industry, including producers of chemicals and manufacturers of equipment that use HFCs, were also in Kigali, demonstrating support from the private sector.

Developed countries will start reducing HFCs as early as 2019. Developing countries will start later, provided 20 nations have ratified the amendment to allow it to enter into force. However, some African nations have expressed the desire to phase down the chemicals faster than required. They have good reason to do so.

According to UN Environment’s 2015 Africa Adaptation Gap Report, even limiting global warming to under 2°C will cut agricultural yields by 40 per cent, putting 50 per cent of the continent’s population at the risk of undernourishment.

There is still a long way to go, but the success on the ozone layer proves that when the world acts as one, as they are doing again with the Kigali Amendment, results will come.

To keep the energy up, and inspire the next generation of supporters for the coming challenge, the Ozone Secretariat, in partnership with Marvel Comics, is launching an Ozone Heroes campaign – reminding people that our human qualities are what equip us to solve the world’s most pressing problems and that we are all #OzoneHeroes.

“The Montreal Protocol is as necessary today as it was in the 1980s, not just for the ozone layer but also as part of global efforts to halt climate change,” said Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment. “Our continued success depends on the emergence of a new generation of heroes.”

Two more potential tropical storms were brewing in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, September 14, 2017, even as Hurricane Jose approaches the US.

According to the National Hurricane Centre, Hurricanes Lee and Marie could materialise as, according to the body, a wave off the African coast has a 70 percent likelihood becoming one in the next five days, as does a wave to the west of it.

But, weakened to a tropical storm on Thursday morning, Hurricane Jose, coming on the heals of Irma, reportedly made very little movement during the past two days, as it continues spinning around in the open waters of the Atlantic. That leaves forecasters in a frustrating waiting game as they analyse the atmospheric conditions that will determine the long-term track of the storm – which is expected to regain strength this weekend.

During the next four days, forecasters are confident that Jose will remain far from any land as it slowly makes it way west and north on a path that will take it about halfway between Bermuda and the eastern Carolina coast by Monday night.

As of 11 a.m. Thursday, Jose weakened slightly from a minimal Category 1 hurricane, with peak winds of 75 mph, to a tropical storm, with peak winds of 70 mph. Category 1 hurricanes pack maximum sustained winds of 74 to 95 mph, while tropical storms pack maximum winds of 39 to 73 mph.

The centre of Tropical Storm Jose was about 435 miles east-northeast of the southeastern Bahamas and 520 miles south-southwest of Bermuda, the National Hurircane Centre reported. The storm was moving north-northwest at a pace of 7 mph, still slow but slightly faster than its early morning pace of 3 mph.

“Some restrengthening is forecast to begin on Friday, and Jose will likely become a hurricane again by the weekend,” the National Hurricane Centre said in its 11 a.m. advisory. As of now, tropical-storm-force winds extend up to 115 miles from Jose’s centre.

With Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall records and now Irma’s stunning combination of extreme strength and longevity, the hurricane-global warming debate is back in full swing. And it has evolved a good bit since 2005, when the United States was severely damaged by superstrong hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, Wilma).

Scientists are more confident now in their messages, more willing to link factors like worsened storm surge flooding and hurricane rainfall to climate change (even while stating the remaining uncertainties and caveats). Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, in contrast, has called it “very insensitive” to raise climate policy while storms barrel toward coasts.

Actually, there’s a case to be made that the climate change-hurricane discussion should be broadened – a move that will give a sense both of how consequential and how uncertain the issue actually is.

The public debate over hurricanes and global warming generally gets confined to a few issues: Will hurricanes be increasingly intense, like Irma was? Will they rain more, like Harvey did? Will they drive worse inland storm surges because of sea-level rise? Will they be more or less numerous?

That’s understandable: These questions have been more heavily studied – and in some cases, especially when it comes to sea-level rise (which is clearly happening), are more easily answered.

But once you take a step back and think about how hurricanes nestle into the broader climate system – as researchers like MIT’s hurricane and climate expert Kerry Emanuel, a number of whose papers are cited below, tend to do – you realise there is a broader picture, although it’s also a less certain one.

Hurricanes, Emanuel and others have shown, are massive thermodynamic systems that withdraw energy from the oceans and expel it into the atmosphere. That means many of their patterns and traits could change with warmer seas – even if some of those traits are harder to talk about because the research remains less definitive.

So let’s consider some less-discussed storm attributes that could plausibly change in a warming world. We don’t know definitively that these things are happening – again, the research here is thinner – but they’re well worth wondering about.

Season length

Hurricanes follow seasonal patterns. They occur in the summer and fall, and this, too, reflects the temperature of the oceans (among other factors). But as the climate warms, could hurricanes be more likely to occur out of season – either in the late spring or late fall/early winter?

Basically, that would amount to a thickening of the ends of this famous NOAA chart on the seasonal occurrence of Atlantic hurricanes (which demonstrates that we are at peak season right now and probably have a long way to go).

There’s at least some suggestive evidence of season lengthening. In a 2008 study on the Atlantic hurricane season, for instance, James Kossin of NOAA and the University of Wisconsin at Madison found “an apparent tendency toward more common early- and late-season storms that correlates with warming (sea surface temperature), but the uncertainty in these relationships is high.”

However, the question of season length is complex, and other research has yielded more ambiguous results. “Ultimately, there is not yet a consensus on how the length of the (tropical cyclone) season will change as a result of anthropogenic effects,” a 2015 computer modeling study by Columbia University’s John Dwyer and co-authors concluded.

Meanwhile, though the science remains unresolved, it’s hard not to miss real-world storms that appear to fit the pattern. This very year, the first named storm in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Arlene, formed in April, far outside the bounds of the traditional hurricane season.

Regions of formation and intensification

If the globe’s oceans are warming in general, that could also mean that the regions in which hurricanes (or typhoons or tropical cyclones) can form – currently, seven major “basins” across the globe – could shift. Or, it could mean that these storms – generally creatures of the tropics – will be able to maintain their strength in new places, farther from the equator.

Any general shift in hurricane formation or arrival regions could have large implications because it could subject coastlines that aren’t accustomed to storms to their punishment.

Once again, there is at least some evidence this is happening or could happen. Kossin and two colleagues (MIT’s Emanuel and Princeton and NOAA’s Gabriel Vecchi) published a 2014 study in Nature finding “a pronounced poleward migration in the average latitude at which tropical cyclones have achieved their lifetime-maximum intensity over the past 30 years.”

Hurricanes were moving out of the tropics “a rate of about one degree of latitude per decade,” the researchers added. The study linked the change to a broader “tropical expansion” that, in turn, appears tied to human alteration of the planet’s atmosphere.

Rapid intensification

Hurricane Harvey epitomised a number of dangerous storm traits, one of which was increasing in strength very quickly as it approached the Texas coast. This is a nightmare scenario for forecasters and emergency planners because it gives little time for people to evacuate.

In general, rapid intensification is something that we have seen a lot of lately, including in super-intense storms Wilma (2005) and Patricia (2015). Wilma’s maximum sustained winds increased by 110 mph in just 24 hours, and Patricia’s beat that record, increasing by 120 mph in the same time frame.

So will storms be more likely to rapidly intensify as the climate warms? Emanuel, at least, thinks the answer is yes.

He just published a study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society finding that the “incidence of storms that intensify rapidly just before landfall increases substantially as a result of global warming.” He reached this result by creating thousands of synthetic hurricanes in a computer simulation and then comparing how they behaved with and without a changing climate.

This area remains little researched, so this one computer modeling study shouldn’t be taken as a final answer. But it’s still worth pondering.

Storm size

And then we come to one of the most uncertain changes of all.

Separate from the matter of their wind speeds, overall hurricane sizes also vary greatly, from the relatively small Andrew up to the massive Katrina and beyond. So would a changing climate have any effect on this?

It’s very unclear. But a trend toward bigger storms, like Katrina and Sandy, could be just as much of a problem as a trend toward stronger storms when measured by wind speeds.

In Emanuel’s work you find a hint of this idea. A 2014 paper that he wrote with MIT’s Daniel Chavas wondered “how the distribution of storm size may differ in other climate states.” But the study made clear that before answering that question, it would first be necessary for scientists to achieve a better understanding of what controls hurricane size in the first place.

That hasn’t stopped some top hurricane gurus from speculating, though. Contemplating the massive size of Hurricane Sandy, the Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters wrote, “We have pushed our climate system to a fundamentally new, higher-energy state where more heat and moisture is available to power stronger storms, and we should be concerned about the possibility that Hurricane Sandy’s freak size and power were partially due to human-caused climate change.”

Still, this should be considered a frontier – while it’s not absurd to think that storm sizes could change in some way as the climate does, we don’t know what’s going to actually happen. And it’s possible that here, and elsewhere, there could be a trade-off – larger storms but fewer of them, perhaps. (We shouldn’t assume every change is an unmitigated negative.)

So, in sum, there is much more to be said about changing hurricane traits than the usual mantra that they will probably be more intense, will rain more, will ride atop higher seas, but could be less numerous overall.

As scientists dig into these other questions, we will probably continue to see large storms, rapidly intensifying storms, out-of-season storms and suspiciously placed storms. Those should be regarded as anecdotes – not proof of anything. But we should remember that as the climate changes, all of the different ways that hurricanes extract energy from the tropical oceans could change, too.

Courtesy: Washington Post