Around 1.3 billion people at high risk of conflict and displacement: Report

What is the News?

Institute of Economics and Peace(IEP), an international think tank has released a report titled “Ecological Threat Report (ETR) 2021”.

About Ecological Threat Report(ETR) 

This is the second edition of the Ecological Threat Report (ETR), which analyses 178 independent states and territories. 

The report assesses threats relating to food risk, water risk, rapid population growth, temperature anomalies and natural disasters.

What are the key findings of the Ecological Threat Report?

Relationship between ecological degradation and conflict

There is a cyclic relationship between ecological degradation and conflict. It is a vicious cycle whereby degradation of resources leads to conflict and the ensuing conflict leads to further resource degradation. 

Hence, breaking the cycle requires improving ecological resource management and socio-economic resilience.

Ecological Risk Countries: Around 1.26 billion people across 30 countries are suffering from both extreme ecological risk and low levels of resilience.

The most vulnerable countries are clustered in the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Food Insecurity: 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.

Water Stress: By 2040, over 5.4 billion people will live in countries facing extreme water stress. Lebanon and Jordan are the countries most at risk.

Rapid Population Growth: Eleven countries are projected to double their population between 2021 and 2050. They are all in sub-Saharan Africa.

Natural Disasters and Warmer Temperature: 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.

About Institute for Economics & Peace(IEP)

It is one of the world’s leading think tanks headquartered in Sydney, Australia. It also releases reports such as the Global Peace Index and Global Terrorism Index.

Source: This post is based on the article “Around 1.3 billion people at high risk of conflict and displacement: Report” published in Down To Earth on 10th October 2021.