Category: Global

− Around 90% of diarrhea cases, which kill some 2.2 million people every year, are caused by unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene.  − Over 50% of malnutrition cases globally are associated with diarrhea or intestinal worm infections.  − Over half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from illnesses linked to contaminated water.  − Almost 900 million people lack access to safe drinking water, and an estimated 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. South Asia (around 221 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (330 million) have the highest proportion of people living without basic sanitation.  − Ninety percent of wastewater discharged daily in developing countries is untreated. Eighty percent of all marine pollution originates on land – most of it wastewater – damaging coral reefs and fishing grounds.  − People in developed countries generate five times more wastewater per person than those in developing countries, but treat over 90% of their wastewater, compared to only a few percent in developing countries.  − Agriculture accounts for 70 to 90% of all water consumed, mainly for irrigation, but large amounts return to rivers as run-off; nearly half of all organic matter in wastewater comes from agriculture.  − Industrial wastes, pesticides from agriculture, and tailings from mining also create serious health risks and threats to water resources, costing billions of dollars to monitor, much more to clean.  − Use of bottled water is increasing, but it takes three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water. In the USA alone, an additional 17 million barrels of oil per year are used to make plastic containers. Worldwide, 200 billion liters of bottled water are produced every year, creating an enormous problem of how used plastic bottles could be disposed of.  − Wastewater generates methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2). It also generates nitrous oxide, which is 310 times more powerful than CO2.  − It is estimated that, in just a decade, wastewater-linked emissions of methane will rise by 25% and that of nitrous oxide, by 50%.  − Increased flooding, as a result of climate change, can overwhelm ageing sewage infrastructure in cities and towns.   

“What is also very alarming is the amount of phosphate and nitrogen that is lost as agricultural refuse; projections show that we can run out of phosphate very soon,” he warned. Nearly half the agricultural phosphate applied each season is washed away and ends up in rivers and oceans, where it contributes to triggering algae blooms that could damage ecosystems and fish stocks, Nelleman said. Wastewater treatment plants should be sophisticated enough to harvest the phosphates.  The report urged countries to draw up national and local strategies to cope with the wastewater production and invest in infrastructure to manage it. 

African countries at extreme risk are Ethiopia, Sudan and Mozambique, with 95% of casualties due to drought. Since 1980, drought has caused 9,800 deaths in Ethiopia, 5,300 in Sudan (ranked fifth) and over 3,400 in Mozambique (ninth). According to experts, unlike earthquakes and storms, drought damage is more difficult to detect, both in terms of human lives and economic loss because it is a slow onset disaster. Whereas France and Italy, ranked 17 and 18, respectively, are the most vulnerable countries in Europe because of the 40,000 people who died in heat waves in 2003 and 2006, the US, with more than 8,000 lives lost over 30 years, is highly susceptible to hurricanes and storms and ranked 37th.  Haiti and China are, respectively, at numbers 8 and 12 among the countries at highest risk. The earthquake in Qinghai Province on April 13, 2010, of almost the same magnitude of that that hit Haiti on January 12, cost the lives of 2,187 people – against 230,000 who died in Haiti. The countries least at risk are Andorra, Bahrain, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Qatar, San Marino and the United Arab Emirates.  In line with the data produced by Maplecroft, a study by the UN Development Program says that 85% of the people exposed to earthquakes, tropical cyclones, floods and droughts in the past 10 years live in countries having either medium or low human development. Pedro Dabase, head of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR) Regional Office for Africa, underlined: “In these types of rankings, the variables to look at are the time period of analyzed data, types of hazards and vulnerabilities to natural disasters. This is because countries that face similar patterns of natural hazards often experience widely differing impacts when disasters occur, depending, in large part, on the kind of development choices they have made.”  The expert added: “If one looks at the frequency of earthquakes and cyclones in Haiti in the past 100 years, the situation of the country would not be considered as worrisome, unlike the past 10 years, with great human losses caused by flooding almost every year and hurricanes in 2004, 2005 and 2008. In terms of impacts for example, the recent earthquake in Chile, of the same magnitude of that in Haiti, recorded about 100,000 deaths but, in terms of economic losses, it registered US$22 billion, versus the $8 billion estimated for Haiti. Therefore, the vulnerability of Chile in terms of economic loss is higher than Haiti which, instead, caused more losses in terms of human lives.”  Figures produced by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the beginning of 2010 highlighted that, in the past 10 years, 3,852 disasters killed more than 780,000 people, affecting more than two billion and causing an economic loss of $960 billion. According to ISDR, earthquakes, followed by storms (22%) and extreme temperatures (11%) are the deadliest natural hazards of the past 10 years and remain a serious threat to millions of

The general picture shows a dramatic situation: in developing countries, one in four children are malnourished; more than 72 million do not attend school; and each year, worldwide, 9 million children under 5 years of age die from preventable or curable causes, almost 2 million of them on the day of their birth, while everyday over 4 thousand children under 5 die from lack of drinking water. Worldwide, there are more than 15 million orphaned by AIDS. The majority of malaria deaths are in sub-Saharan children under 5 years of age. Two million children are involved in child prostitution rings and over 215 million spend their childhood working. 

Sönke Kreft, climate policy advisor at Germanwatch, said: “Developing countries top the list of 10 countries identified as the most vulnerable to climate risks – the findings underline the need to provide funds for near-term finance in the next three years – 2010 to 2012 – [when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires].”  Small, medium-sized and large climate events causing damage, injury or loss of life have all been occurring more frequently, but Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam are among the nations most vulnerable to extreme climate events, costing them millions of dollars every year, according to the index.  The 10 countries most affected by extreme climate events fall into two groups: those that rank high because of exceptional catastrophes, such as Myanmar; and countries continuously hit by extreme events, such as Bangladesh and the Philippines. The losses resulting from climate events could be much higher. The study did not factor the “affected people,” because the impact of slow-onset disasters, such as droughts which affected predominantly African countries, could not be verified. “That is the weakness in our study,” Kreft commented.    

Andrew Mitchell of the French NGO Action contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger), a member of the UN Committee, pointed out that links between climate change and nutrition were not restricted to getting enough food. “Malnutrition could potentially be the output of climate change’s impact on sectors such as health and water.”  Over 19 million children face hunger-related death at any given moment but only 3% of them receive treatment, the UNSCN said in a statement as the two-week climate change conference began on 7 December. According to climate change projections, food production could shrink by as much as 50% by 2020 in some African countries, and by 30% in Central and South Asia, creating a very high risk of hunger.  The UNSCN noted that undernutrition was caused by inadequate nutrition and disease, which stemmed from insufficient food, poor maternal and child care practices, and poor access to clean drinking water, unsafe sanitation and ill health – all of which were directly affected by climate change.  A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US-based think-tank, called for “aggressive” investment – ranging from US$7.1 to $7.3 billion a year – to raise calorie consumption enough to offset the negative impacts of climate change on the health and well-being of children.  The UNSCN has called for the development of a knowledge base to inform future programming on climate change and nutrition, the establishment of a comprehensive nutrition surveillance system, and identification, validation and costing of the interventions required to protect nutrition from climate change and related hazards. It urged governments and aid agencies to scale up interventions that successfully reduced the impacts of climate change on nutrition, and increased community resilience to climate change.  

As partners with Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Church’s umbrella humanitarian and development agency, both organizations pushed the G-8 leaders to boost their commitment to women’s and children’s health concerns under the Muskoka Initiative. The development groups also urged the related Group of 20 Economic Summit in Toronto to step up efforts to reduce extreme poverty worldwide by 2015 as outlined in the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations. But representatives of the world’s leading economies at both summits were focused on other concerns as the worldwide recession continues. “We’ve entered a world where the only language that matters is economics,” Redemptorist Father Paul Hansen, Director of his Order’s Biblical Justice Consultancy, said after the motorcades disappeared and the dignitaries left town. The leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies agreed to cut their governments’ deficits in half by 2013 and stop growth of public debt relative to gross domestic product by 2016. Voluntary financial constraints on government borrowing will allow poorer countries to participate in a healthier world economy, the final G-20 statement argued. “Increasing global growth on a sustainable basis is the most important step we can take in improving the lives of all of our citizens, including those in the poorest countries,” the world leaders said. But Father Hansen was disappointed that G-20 leaders chose to ignore the opportunity to clamp down on speculation in financial markets. “What we have developed is no longer an economy based on goods and services, but an economy based on paper, transfer of hot money, currency speculation, derivatives, hedge funds that have zero basis in goods and services,” he said. The money pledged for women’s and children’s health concerns for the first time included funds from private foundations. Non G-8 countries, including Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland, also pledged funds to the effort. The United Nations estimates that between $15 billion and $33 billion is needed by 2015 to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health enough to satisfy the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations pegs the G-8 share of the total at about $20 billion. About 9 million children per year die of diseases that are easily treatable with inexpensive immunizations, proper nutrition and better health care for pregnant women. Hemorrhages, infection, obstructed labor and very high blood pressure leading to seizures cause more than 350,000 preventable deaths annually among pregnant women. A group of Canadian aid agencies lobbied for a $24 billion fund over five years. Ikem Opara, Program Coordinator for Canadian Jesuits International, was pleased that the G-8 did not entirely walk away from the Muskoka Initiative. “That gave me some hope,” Opara said. “From my own experience growing up in Nigeria, those were the two things that seemed to affect everybody’s day-to-day life the most, child mortality and what maternal health meant.” To make significant progress toward the development goals, food security issues also must be addressed, he said. The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace believes the G-20 took