Climate change a growing problem, study says

A United Nations study found that the environment is deteriorating faster than previously thought and it is imperative for governments to act now to reverse the worst trends.

According to the Global Environmental Outlook: Regional Assessments of UN, climate change, the loss of biodiversity, land degradation and water scarcity are growing problems across the planet that need to be urgently addressed if the world is to achieve the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Global Environmental Outlook: Regional Assessments is a compilation of six separate reports providing detailed examinations of the environmental issues affecting each of the Pan-European region, North America, Asia and the Pacific, West Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa.

The reports found that there is still time to tackle many of the worst impacts of environmental change such as the damage to marine ecosystems and the rising level of air pollution, which has become one of the world’s most widespread environmental health risks.

Warming in the Arctic has increased at twice the global average since 1980. As one of the first areas of the world to experience the impacts of climate change, the Arctic region serves as a barometer for change in the rest of the world.

The largest contributions to global glacier ice loss during the early 21st century were from glaciers in Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, and the periphery of the Greenland ice sheet, as well as in the Southern Andes and Asian mountains. These areas account for more than 80 percent of the total ice loss.

Last year, the Asia-Pacific continued to be the world’s most disaster prone region. About 41 percent of all natural disasters reported over the last two decades occurred in the Asia-Pacific region, which also accounted for 91 percent of the world’s deaths attributable to natural disasters in the last century.