Humans face multiple challenges beyond climate change, from resource scarcity to rising armed conflict and mass forced displacement.
The UN Environment Programme’s new report Navigating New Horizons, produced in partnership with the International Science Council, is not easy reading.
But first, what of the future challenges? Unsurprisingly, given it is a report from the UN’s environment agency, there is a strong focus on the environmental challenges we face. Pollution is a particular concern, with “350,000 chemicals and substances listed for production and use.” A second and related challenge is scarcity of and competition for critical resources. While oil, gas and, more recently, rare earth minerals have gotten a lot of attention, more worrying is scarcity of such fundamental determinants of wellbeing, indeed survival, as food, water and land.
Moreover, “armed conflicts consistently result in environmental degradation and destruction … triggering food and water insecurity, loss of livelihoods and biodiversity depletion.” These impacts are exacerbated by “the weaponization of access to water, food, energy and critical infrastructure.”“Whether due to conflict, climate change or other external pressures,” the result is that home becomes uninhabitable, so people have “little choice other than to move.
But we have also all seen the downsides of some of this technology, and the ability to manage the technology in the face of rapid change driven by private sector initiatives “looks increasingly difficult.”
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