UNITED NATIONS: Hunger is growing and the world is not on track to end extreme poverty by 2030 and meet other UN goals, mainly because progress is being undermined by the impact of climate change and increasing inequality, a UN report said Tuesday.
The report on progress toward achieving the 17 UN goals notes achievements in some areas, including a 49% fall in child mortality between 2000 and 2017 as well as electricity now reaching nearly 90% of the world’s population.
But Liu Zhenmin, the UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, said that despite some advances, “monumental challenges remain.”
He said at a news conference the most urgent area for action is climate change, which “may impact the progress made over the last several decades” in reducing poverty and improving life for millions of people around the world.
According to the report, biodiversity loss is happening at an accelerated rate, and “the risk of species extinction has worsened by almost 10 percent over the last 25 years.” Global temperatures have risen, ocean acidity has increased 26% since pre-industrial times and “investment in fossil fuels continues to be higher than investment in climate activities,” it said.
Liu said the report also shows “inequality is rising and too many people are left behind.” He said that “is another big challenge for the world.”
The first of the 17 goals adopted by world leaders in 2015 is to eliminate extreme poverty — people living on less than $1.90 a day — and the second goal is to end hunger, achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture. According to the report, neither goal is likely to be achieved by 2030.
While the number of people living in extreme poverty declined to 8.6% of the world’s population in 2018, the report said the pace is slowing and projections suggest that 6% of people will still be living in extreme poverty by 2030 if current trends continue.
Francesca Perucci, chief statistician in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said an estimated 736 million people still living in extreme poverty globally, including 413 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Extreme poverty today is concentrated and overwhelmingly affects rural populations,” the report said. “Increasingly, it is exacerbated by violent conflicts and climate change.”
While Liu said there has been “good progress” on 16 of the UN goals, he said that “there’s been no good progress” on ending hunger, which he called “a tragedy for the international community.” He said the most direct impact of climate change is on agricultural production, a key factor in increasing hunger.
According to the report, the number of people going hungry has increased since 2014. “An estimated 821 million people were undernourished in 2017,” up from 784 million in 2015 and the same number as in 2010, it said.
The worst hit region is sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of undernourished people increased from 195 million in 2014 to 237 million in 2017, the report said.
On education, it warned that proficiency in reading and mathematics is “shockingly” low. “Globally, an estimated 617 million children and adolescents of primary and lower secondary school age — more than 55 percent of the global total — lacked minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics in 2015.”
The report said women represent 39% of the workforce but hold only 27% of managerial positions. It said 785 million people had no access to clean drinking water in 2017 while 673 million lacked good sanitation systems, the majority of them in southern Asia.
Perucci said 80% of people worldwide are online, but only 45% of those living in developing countries and just 20% in the least developed countries have access to the Internet.
“It is abundantly clear that a much deeper, faster and more ambitious response in needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the report’s forward.
UN: Climate change undercutting work to end poverty, hunger
UN: Climate change undercutting work to end poverty, hunger
- The most urgent area for action is climate change, which “may impact the progress made over the last several decades” in reducing poverty
- Global temperatures have risen, ocean acidity has increased 26% since pre-industrial times and investment in fossil fuels continues to be high
Mystery of CIA’s lost nuclear device haunts Himalayan villagers 60 years on
- Plutonium-fueled spy system was meant to monitor China’s nuclear activity after 1964 atomic tests
- Porter who took part in Nanda Devi mission warned family of ‘danger buried in snow’
NEW DELHI: Porters who helped American intelligence officers carry a nuclear spy system up the precarious slopes of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, returned home with stories that sent shockwaves through nearby villages, leaving many in fear that still holds six decades later.
A CIA team, working with India’s Intelligence Bureau, planned to install the device in the remote part of the Himalayas to monitor China, but a blizzard forced them to abandon the system before reaching the summit.
When they returned, the device was gone.
The spy system contained a large quantity of highly radioactive plutonium-238 — roughly a third of the amount used in the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the Second World War.
“The workers and porters who went with the CIA team in 1965 would tell the story of the nuclear device, and the villagers have been living in fear ever since,” said Narendra Rana from the Lata village near Nanda Devi’s peak.
His father, Dhan Singh Rana, was one of the porters who carried the device during the CIA’s mission in 1965.
“He told me there was a danger buried in the snow,” Rana said. “The villagers fear that as long as the device is buried in the snow, they are safe, but if it bursts, it will contaminate the air and water, and no one will be safe after that.”
During the Sino-Indian tensions in the 1960s, India cooperated with the US in surveillance after China conducted its first nuclear tests in 1964. The Nanda Devi mission was part of this cooperation and was classified for years. It only came under public scrutiny in 1978, when the story was broken by Outsider magazine.
The article caused an uproar in India, with lawmakers demanding the location of the nuclear device be revealed and calling for political accountability. The same year, then Prime Minister Morarji Desai set up a committee to assess whether nuclear material in the area near Nanda Devi could pollute the Ganges River, which originates there.
The Ganges is one of the world’s most crucial freshwater sources, with about 655 million people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh depending on it for their essential needs.
The committee, chaired by prominent scientists, submitted its report a few months later, dismissing any cause for concerns, and establishing that even in the worst-case scenario of the device’s rupture, the river’s water would not be contaminated.
But for the villagers, the fear that the shell containing radioactive plutonium could break apart never goes away, and peace may only come once it is found.
Many believe the device, trapped within the glacier’s shifting ice, may have moved downhill over time.
Rana’s father told him that the device felt hot when it was carried, and he believed it might have melted its way into the glacier, remaining buried deep inside.
An imposing mass of rock and ice, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m is the second-highest mountain in India after Kangchenjunga.
When a glacier near the mountain burst in 2021, claiming over 200 lives, scientists explained that the disaster was due to global warming, but in nearby villages the incident was initially blamed on a nuclear explosion.
“They feared the device had burst. Those rescuing people were afraid they might die from radiation,” Rana said. “If any noise is heard, if any smoke appears in the sky, we start fearing a leak from the nuclear device.”
The latent fear surfaces whenever natural disasters strike or media coverage puts the missing device back in the spotlight. Most recently, a New York Times article on the CIA mission’s 60th anniversary reignited the unease.
“The apprehensions are genuine. After 1965, Americans came twice to search for the device. The villagers accompanied them, but it could not be found, which remains a concern for the local community,” said Atul Soti, an environmentalist in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, about 50 km from Nanda Devi.
“People are worried. They have repeatedly sought answers from the government, but no clear response has been provided so far. Periodically, the villagers voice their concerns, and they need a definitive government statement on this issue.”
Despite repeated queries whenever media attention arises, Indian officials have not released detailed updates since the Desai-appointed committee submitted its findings.
“The government should issue a white paper to address people’s concerns. The white paper will make it clear about the status of the device, and whether leakage from the device could pollute the Ganges River,” Soti told Arab News.
“The government should be clear. If the government is not reacting, then it further reinforces the fear.”
