School closures and restrictions on people’s movement have disrupted the education of millions of children worldwide, with the resulting costs to learning still to be assessed’.
By Salam Rajesh
A new generation of threats to human security is playing out in the unprecedented context of the Anthropocene, says a Special Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The ‘Anthropocene’ is a term that describes the era in which humans have become central drivers of planetary change, radically altering the earth’s biosphere and inducing sense of insecurity at many levels.
Referring to the UNDP report New threats to human security in the Anthropocene: Demanding greater solidarity (2022), UN secretary general Antonio Guterres opines that, “Multiple threats from Covid-19, digital technology, climate change, and biodiversity loss, have become more prominent or taken new forms in recent years. People have good reason to feel highly inse cure in the Anthropocene”.
The report, which builds on cumulative contributions over close to three decades that started with a seminal Human Development Report in 1994, outlines several focus areas that seeks to understand the level of causes for human insecurity in the Anthropocene.
Among some of the indicators profiled in the report, the context on rise in global hunger tops the concerns. As per the report, global hunger accounted for around 800 million people in 2020, and in the post-pandemic period about 2.4 billion people now suffer food insecurity. This result from the cumulative so cioeconomic and environmental effects that had been building before 2019, but which was boosted by the pandemic during 2020 and 2021.
Another concern is the obvious impacts of Climate Change which will continue to affect people’s vital core, the report says. Sounding ominous, the report states that ‘Even in a scenario with moderate mitigation, around 40 million people worldwide could die, mostly in developing countries, as a result of higher temperatures from now to the end of the century’.
Concurrent to the concerns on increased level of human insecurity due to Climate Change impacts, the report further details that, ‘The number of forcibly displaced people has dou bled in the past decade, reaching a record high of 82.4 million in 2020, and the forced displacement may be further accelerated as long as climate change remains unmitigated’.
As the 2020 Human Development Report ex plored, dangerous planetary changes result from human pressures on planetary processes – from the climate system to material cycles disrupted by the use and introduction of materials at an unprecedented scale and speed and to the threats to the integrity of ecosystems from tropical forests to coral reefs and to entire oceans.
The UNDP report categorically states that, ‘These changes are so unprecedented in human history and in the 4.6 billion year geological timeline of the planet that they have been described as a new geological epoch or event: the Anthropo cene, the age of humans’.
The world at large is currently deliberating on the different aspects of Climate Change impacts that have seen unprecedented weather conditions which have destroyed coastlines, homes and properties, and lives, all across the world – from the Arctic Circle to Japan to Australia and Western America, sparing none. Wildfires, cyclonic storms, tsunamis, cold waves, heat waves, droughts, floods – everything has been unleashed upon the world. Nature, evidently, is furious at humanity.
The UNDP report refers to biodiversity loss has having consequences for disaster risk in the long term. Increased diversity among species in an ecosystem generates diverse physical and biological traits and supports ecological resilience and the protective function of ecosystems, the report says while giving an example where seagrass ensures the generation of oxygen and improves water quality by capturing sand, dirt and silt particles. Seagrass roots trap and stabilize sediment, reducing erosion and buffering coastlines against storms. In the absence of the seagrass growth, massive erosion can occur along the seasides, impacting life along the coasts.
The report further cites biodiversity loss impact where sharp decline of pollinators due to pesticides and habitat loss affects food security and nutrition around the world. ‘Of the leading global food crops directly consumed by humans and traded on the global market, 85 percent rely on animal pollination, and without pollinators, production of some of the leading global crops would decrease by as much as 90 percent’.
The concern on increased human insecurity due to conflict situation of various dimensions feature significantly in the report wherein it states that, ‘The number of people affected by conflict is reach ing record highs: today, approximately 1.2 billion people live in conflict-affected areas, 560 million of them outside fragile settings, reflecting the spread of different forms of violent conflict’.
This sense of human insecurity from violent conflict is now expected to increase manifold with Russia going all out to subjugate Ukraine militarily and threatening the world community with nuclear holocaust if the West led by the United States of America intervenes in its ‘internal’ affairs. Scientists have forewarned that in the event of nuclear war, planet Earth could experience years of climate catastrophe that would destroy life on the blue planet.
Touching on the subjective matter of the current pandemic, the report says that, ‘The Covid-19 pandemic has affected nearly everyone and turned into a full-fledged human security and human development crisis. The most tragic impact has been a worldwide death toll of more than 10 mil lion (the excess mortality in 2020-2021). But impacts go well beyond this distressing record’.
Spelling out the darker side of the pandemic, the report does not shy away from pointing out that, ‘Most countries have suffered acute recessions. School closures and restrictions on people’s movement have disrupted the education of millions of children worldwide, with the resulting costs to learning still to be assessed’.
Back home, too, it has been seen that in the absence of teacher-student active interaction at school for two years during 2020 and 2021, due to the Covid-19 restrictions, mental retardation amongst the pre-primary school going children is obvious. The reading capability of primary level students had tremendously taken a back seat, with many seen to be unable to recognize letters particularly for Hindi and Manipuri languages.
The regression in education, both for primary students and those appearing for their school graduation, is likely to impact their learning ability and in their higher level of study at both the college and university standards. This, understandably, could enhance their sense of insecurity in facing life after graduation and on the verge of launching their professional careers.
Profiling inadequacies amongst nations and the increased sense of human insecurity in modern times, the report states that, ‘Low Human Development Index (HDI) countries will face the strongest negative effects of danger ous planetary change across multiple dimensions, both because of direct impact and because of limit ed adaptation capacity. And within countries many of those living in already marginal and vulnerable con texts will tend to fare worse’.
(The writer is a media professional working on environmental issues. He can be reached at [email protected])