Food security, climate change, poverty top for Africa as world’s people hit 8bn
The great divide: richer vs poorer widens India tops global demography 2023
THE UNITED NATIONS AN NEWS NOUNCED on November 15 that projections indicated that the global population has now surpassed eight billion people, just 11 years after the world attained the last billion.
Demography experts say every 12 or 13 years, the world hits the billion milestone. And the experts adduce that these milestones generate considerations for resource allocation, food security, climate change, among many others.
In particular, the great divide between richer and poorer countries has widened in “unprecedented trends” in three areas of population: fertility, mortality, and migration.
“The fact that we’re coming up on a planet of eight billion people for the first time ever gives us the opportunity to pause and take stock of who we are, and where we are,” Jennifer Sciubba, political demography expert and former policy consultant at the U.S. Secretary of Defence, talking about her new book, “8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World (March 2022), to McKinsey.
However, food security has now shot up on the front burner. Virtually everywhere, but particularly worse in Africa and other developing countries, is hard-hit.
Clarisse Magnin and Björn Timelin, senior partners at McKinsey say, already, one in nine people cannot get enough to eat every day, while 33 to 40 percent of the world’s food is lost or wasted each year.
They raise several questions: how can we (the world) support an unprecedented population while raising the quality of life for all? How would the world avoid a food crisis, as well as common misconceptions around global migration, the future of an ageing population?
Eye on Nigeria, Africa
Nigeria and, indeed, Africa, come into focus amid this blown global population; especially for a country and a continent pounded by a vast number of negatives, including disease, hunger, infla
Sunny Nwachukwu (Loyal Sigmite), PhD, Fellow (ICCON), Fellow (CSN), a pure and applied chemist with an MBA in management, is an Onitsha based industrialist, and Vice President (finance), Onitsha Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached on +234 803 318 2105 (text only) or schubltd@yahoo.com
THE GLOBAL CLIMATE action towards building a secure and sustainable energy future discussed at COP27 in Egypt has a very interesting topic that requires the attention of every person, in order to participate and actively make contributions in fighting the ills of corporate greenwashing, as the United Nations’ take on it is that it is counterproductive in the ongoing global war against climate change (its environmental impact). This demands that all hands are on deck in the fight against deceit, misleading information and making of false claims by companies over the goods and products they supply to the general public. The opinion being raised is that actions should not just stop at reprimanding, but must transcend beyond the corporate level, to smaller units where individuals are directly involved and interface as stakeholders and consumers that are directly affected by the lies and unsubstantiated claims, contained in some products’ slogans, mottos or logos to deceive consumers into believing that such products are environmentally friendly, while in truth they are dangerously affecting the planet.
For the poorer nations, the economic harm they suffer as a result of the greenhouse gas emitted by the industrialized countries can only be meaningfully reversed. Or better still, reduce the impact by decarbonization strategy, while carrying on their economic activities for targeted gains. This can be realized if the mitigation action being taken can stabilize a net-zero effect with reduction from future carbon emission, while the already promised financial help (to the poorer hurting nations) from rich nations, under “loss and damage” arrangement, is deployed to restart life or rebuild their former economic activities destroyed in the past through natural disasters (drought, flooding) that occurred as a result of climate impact on poorer countries. The economic study conducted by Christopher Callahan, a climate impacts researcher at Dartmouth, on the relationship between temperature and damage in his sampled countries, revealed that the countries that have emitted the least are the ones that are hurt and tend to be harmed by increases in global warming; which meant to him that double inequity was his major finding. This was what lifted the veil on the industrialized nations’ reluctance on accepting the “loss and damage” climate compensation demands from the poorer nations.
Africa, and Nigeria particularly, should adapt a strategy that would compel the global heavy emitters of greenhouse gas (pointing at the United States of America and China as countries that have contributed about 33 percent of the world’s climate damage), to substantially pay compensations for harm and damages suffered by these low emitter nations, as “climate reparation” for the damages their economic gain has caused the affected countries. This would also serve as a check and control from undue excesses, like in carbon tax. With such claims, those nations would deploy funds received as compensation to defray financial losses suffered from the climate change impact, and sustainably forge ahead with their economic activities of the future, as the global community tries to slow warming and repair climate impact. Taking the most recent flooding that devastated most communities in Nigeria, climate finance through loss and damage packages can significantly cushion the effect of the losses sustained. If a figure of about $74 billion, computed for Nigeria, is injected into communities in the country for the economic impact in the form of inflation resulting from food scarcity in the aftermath of farmlands destroyed along with cash crops, it will definitely drastically reduce the economic consequences on the economy.
It is, however, expected that the loss and damage compensatory issue at the COP27 would be conclusively deliberated upon for the sake of all African countries that have suffered one form of natural calamity or the other, resulting from the aftermath of global warming. Africans as well should buckle up to key into the climate action of energy transition programmes and decarbonization, while they gradually disengage the use of fossil fuels a few decades ahead.
In the case of Nigeria, for instance, the drivers of the economy and those in high positions of national command within the economy need to seriously and aggressively work out a feasible business plan that would hastily urge the custodians and the executors in the oil and gas industry, not to delay any further and take advantage in extracting, exploiting and utilizing the abundant opportunity the nation has over the natural gas reserves (an acclaimed cleaner energy capital stock, although it is not a renewable energy source), for a targeted optimal economic gain, now that fossil fuel is fast losing economic attraction in the global energy market. The economy needs to utilize every genuine opportunity that shall add to the nation’s financial wealth rather than letting it be wasted, while the global warming mitigation action-time ticks faster for the planet’s conservation. business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com