PAKISTAN-The floods that have left a third of the country’s provinces underwater in recent weeks have brought with them a new level of human misery – and a glimpse into the apocalyptic impact of the climate emergency in one of the countries least responsible for it. “I have seen many humanitarian disasters in the world, but I have never seen climate carnage on this scale,” said the UN general secretary, António Guterres, on a visit to Pakistan this week. “I have simply no words to describe what I have seen today.” The record monsoon that began in mid-June has devastated much of the country, with some areas receiving more than eight times their usual rainfall. Torrents of water tore through villages, sweeping away thousands of houses, schools, roads and bridges and destroying 18,000 sq km of agricultural land. In Sindh, the southernmost province of Pakistan, which produces half the country’s food, 90% of crops have been ruined, and an inland lake 60 miles (100km) wide stretches to the horizon after the Indus River burst its banks. The flood is estimated to have killed at least 1,400 people. Many tens of millions more have lost their homes and livelihoods and the country has incurred huge financial costs. Damages so far have been put at $30bn (£26bn). In the flood’s immediate aftermath, aid agencies report that innumerable children have been left hungry and dependent on contaminated drinking water for survival, while pregnant women and elderly people are crowded into makeshift relief camps and unable to access life-saving medicines. Hospitals in the worst-hit areas are overwhelmed. Medics in one district say malaria cases are rising so fast that they have run out of capacity to even test for the disease, let alone treat it. As the horrors mount, a traumatised population now faces food shortages, famine and disease. Few doubt t at the crisis engulfing the country will get much worse in the coming weeks and months. “The scale of this and what is still to come for the people of Pakistan is quite chilling, to be honest,” said Farhana Yamin, a former UN lawyer who was born in Pakistan and helped to draft the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “This is not a small country, it is the fifth most populous country in the world, and it has been devastated … It will take decades to recover.”       https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/17/drought-floods-pakistan-devastation-climate-crisis    

Governments fall short in UN’s East Africa drought appeal.  Donor countries promised only a third of the $7bn the UN was appealing for to provide humanitarian aid to drought-stricken Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.   26/05/2023      A United Nations fundraiser for aid operations in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa has fallen short as donor countries pledged only a third of the $7 billion sought. The UN warned against a “catastrophe” in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, which it described as the epicentre of the world’s worst climate emergencies. Donor countries have pledged a total of $2.4 billion for 2023, but only $0.8 billion in new financial support was announced at this week’s event. The US will provide nearly two-thirds of the money, followed at some distance by the European Commission, Germany and the UK. The money raised at a pledging conference this week will help humanitarian agencies provide food, water, healthcare and protection services to over 30 million people across the three countries.  The Horn of Africa has been suffering its worst drought in 40 years since October 2020. Five consecutive seasons of rainfall below normal levels have led to crops failing and farm animals dying. A group of scientists estimated that human-driven climate change has made these events “much stronger” and “about 100 times more likely”.The World Weather Attribution group said the drought was made much more severe because of the low rainfall and increased evaporation caused by higher temperatures in the world. Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia combined now contribute less than 0.5% of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change despite having 2.5% of the world’s population.        https://climatechangenews.com/2023/05/26/governments-fall-short-in-uns-east-africa-drought-appeal/  

Global food system is broken, say world’s science academies. Radical overhaul in farming and consumption, with less meat eating, needed to avoid hunger and climate catastrophe. Four year old Article but sadly Nothing Much has Changed! The global food system is broken, leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight and driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, according to 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world. Providing a healthy, affordable, and environmentally friendly diet for all people will require a radical transformation of the system, says the report by the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). This will depend on better farming methods, wealthy nations consuming less meat and countries valuing food which is nutritious rather than cheap. The report, which was peer reviewed and took three years to compile, sets out the scale of the problems as well as evidence-driven solutions. The global food system is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all emissions from transport, heating, lighting and air conditioning combined. The global warming this is causing is now damaging food production through extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. The food system also fails to properly nourish billions of people. More than 820 million people went hungry last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, while a third of all people did not get enough vitamins. At the same time, 600 million people were classed as obese and 2 billion overweight, with serious consequences for their health. On top of this, more than 1bn tonnes of food is wasted every year, a third of the total produced. “The global food system is broken,” said Tim Benton, professor of population ecology, at the University of Leeds, who is a member of one of the expert editorial groups which produced the report. He said the cost of the damage to human health and the environment was much greater than the profits made by the farming industry. “Whether you look at it from a human health, environmental or climate perspective, our food system is currently unsustainable and given the challenges that will come from a rising global population that is a really [serious] thing to say,” Benton said. Reducing meat and dairy consumption is the single biggest way individuals can lessen their impact on the planet, according to recent research. And tackling dangerous global warming is considered impossible without massive reductions in meat consumption. Research published in the journal Climate Policy shows that at the present rate, cattle and other livestock will be responsible for half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and that to prevent this will require “substantial reductions, far beyond what are planned or realistic, from other sectors”. “It is vital [for a liveable planet] that we change our relationship with meat, especially with red meat. But no expert in this area is saying the world should be vegan or even vegetarian,” said Benton.          https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/28/global-food-system-is-broken-say-worlds-science-academies

 How a looming El Niño could fuel the spread of infectious disease. The oceanic phenomenon could lead to more pathogen-carrying mosquitoes, bacteria, and toxic algae.Forecasters are predicting that, sometime between this summer and the end of the year, La Niña’s opposite extreme, El Niño, will take over.  That seismic shift could have major implications for human health, and specifically the spread of disease. El Niño will increase temperatures and make precipitation more volatile, which in turn could fuel the spread of pathogen-carrying mosquitoes, bacteria, and toxic algae. It’s a preview ofthe ways climate change will influence the spread of infectious diseases.“The bottom line here is that there are a range of different health effects that might occur in the setting of an El Niño,” Neil Vora, a physician with the environmental nonprofit Conservation International, told Grist. “That means we have to monitor the situation closely and prepare ourselves.”  As with La Niña, the effects of an El Niño extend far beyond a patch of above-average warmth in the Pacific. Parched regions of the world — like Chile, Peru, Mexico, and the American Southwest — are often bombarded with rain and snow. Some other parts of the world, including the Northeastern U.S., the Amazon, and Southeast Asia’s tropical regions, on the other hand, don’t see much rain at all in an El Niño year. The planet couldtemporarily become 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, on average, than in preindustrial times — a threshold scientistshave long warnedmarks the difference between a tolerable environment and one that causes intense human suffering.  Regions of the world that will experience longer wet seasons because of El Niño, many of which are in the tropics, may see an increase in mosquito-borne illnesses......and much more!                  https://grist.org/health/how-a-looming-el-nino-could-fuel-the-spread-of-infectious-disease/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly