Ecological Threat Report 2021:
The Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP), an international think tank released the Ecological Threat Report (ETR) 2021: Understanding ecological threats, resilience and peace.
- This is the second edition of the ETR, which covers 178 independent states and territories.
- The ETR includes the most recent and respected scientific research on population growth, water stress, food insecurity, droughts, floods, cyclones, and rising temperature.
Conflict and Ecological Threats:
- Around 1.26 billion people across 30 countries are suffering from both extreme ecological risk and low levels of resilience.
- These countries are least likely to be able to mitigate and adapt to new ecological threats, leading to mass displacement.
- As many as 13 countries faced extremely high and 34 others faced high ecological threats.
- The most vulnerable countries are clustered in the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
- Ecological degradation and conflict work in a vicious circle, whereby one degradation of resources leads to conflict and vice versa.
- Climate change will have an amplifying effect, causing further ecological degradation and pushing some countries through violent tipping points
Food Risk:
- Global food insecurity has increased by 44% since 2014, affecting 30.4 % of the world’s population in 2020, and is likely to rise further.
- As a region, south Asia is the worst-placed, with water and food risks driving the average ETR score in the region.
- Covid-19 has amplified food insecurity further and will likely have a long-lasting negative impact on world hunger due to stagnant economic growth.
Water Risk:
- By 2040 over 5.4 billion people will live in countries facing extreme water stress.
- Lebanon and Jordan are the countries most at risk.
- Sub-Saharan Africa has the most countries with the lowest levels of social resilience combined with the highest population growth.
- 70% of its population suffer from inadequate access to safely managed water, which will be compounded by high population growth.
Rapid Population Growth:
- Eleven countries are projected to double their population between 2021 and 2050. They are all in sub-Saharan Africa.
- The three countries with the largest projected increases in population are Niger, Angola and Somalia, where the populations will increase by 161, 128 and 113% respectively.
Temperature Anomalies and Natural Disasters:
- From 1990 to 2020, a total of 10,320 natural disasters occurred globally. Flooding has been the most common natural disaster, accounting for 42% of the total disaster count.
- In 2020, 177 countries and territories recorded a warmer average temperature compared to their historical average temperatures.
