Climate Change Is Putting Swelling Cities at Risk

Weather events exacerbated by climate change will threaten many places in the coming years, and many of these locations are also projected to gain a lot of new inhabitants.

In the world’s largest cities, governments will have to do more to protect the millions of people in danger from a hot planet.

Growing Exposure

Countries with surging urban populations are also the most vulnerable to climate change.

Sources: Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, UN-Habitat

Note: Color indicates climate vulnerability (red = highest). Countries without ND-GAIN index scores or negative projected urban population growth not shown

• Drought has edged Mexico City close to “Day Zero,” when it would run out of water.

• Phoenix has a director of heat response and mitigation whose department runs, among other things, a tree-planting program to provide shade.

• Cairo’s $390 million Abu Rawash wastewater treatment plant is one of the world’s largest. Almost 60% of city adaptation funding goes to water and waste.

• Jakarta is the fastest-sinking megacity in the world. If managers don’t stop groundwater withdrawals, the subsidence, coupled with sea level rise, will spell doom.

• About 90% of domestic migrants to Niamey, the capital of Niger, cited climate change as their reason for moving in a 2021 United Nations survey.

• India and Bangladesh are home to three of the world’s 10 most populous cities. Yet they receive only 6% of all urban financing.

• Ten Philippine cities have a disaster insurance pool to help them cope with increasingly severe typhoons.

Source: Bloomberg

PHL among most at-risk countries to food security shocks

Food Risk Security in the Asia-Pacific region will remain elevated, as climate shocks are expected to persist in the coming years, Moody’s Investors Service said.

“Food security risk in Asia-Pacific (APAC) will remain elevated even if food prices fall. First, increasingly frequent and severe climate shocks will disrupt food production processes. This year, we expect the continuation of El Niño to impact crop yields in Asia and the Pacific,” it said in a report.

Moody’s said the region’s food security is at risk due to the rising global demand for food, geopolitical tensions and disruptions to agricultural trade and production. 

The Philippines and Laos are among Southeast Asian countries that show both “higher exposure to shocks and lower resilience to shocks,” it said.

“The proportional rise in food security risk in Asia has been smaller than other emerging markets, and this slower pace of deterioration partly reflects Asia and the Pacific being a major producer for primary crops,” it said.

“However, Asia and the Pacific is still home to some of the most populous economies, and as such still accounts for half the people facing moderate or severe food insecurity in the world,” it added.

The Philippines was the most at-risk country in the world in 2023, according to the latest World Risk Index (WRI).

Data from Moody’s showed that the Philippines scored a four out of five in its physical climate risk index. Along with Indonesia and Vietnam, it ranked the worst among its Southeast Asian neighbors. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia scored a three out of five.

“Nearly half of the region has higher exposure to physical climate risk or water management risk. A significant proportion of the region also has lower resilience to respond to shocks, as reflected by higher social and governance risk scores,” it said.

Moody’s noted that countries with high exposure but low resilience to shocks also indicate there is a large portion of the population that is unable to afford a healthy diet.

“Climate-driven shocks will continue to drive food security concerns. The increased frequency and severity of extreme weather and climate related events including floods and storm-triggered landslides, will continue to have an impact on crops,” it said.

Moody’s also expects El Niño to impact crop production in the region.

The latest bulletin from the state weather bureau showed that the El Niño is expected to persist until May.

“While food prices have generally come down from their peaks in 2022, prices for a few crops — such as rice, a staple in this region — remain elevated,” Moody’s said.

“This comes on the back of a series of lower-than-expected rice harvests and a wave of export restrictions in the second half of 2023, which have kept rice prices high and renewed concerns about food security in the region,” it added.

Headline inflation accelerated to 3.4% in February amid high food prices, particularly rice. Rice inflation surged to 23.7% in February — the fastest since the 24.6% in February 2009.

Meanwhile, Moody’s said that the current policy measures in these countries can “mitigate but not fully offset food security risk.”

“Policy responses can partially offset food security shocks. Since COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), a number of countries in the region have prepared themselves to ride out food supply disruptions and have been building up stockpiles,” it said.

“While cooperation on a multilateral basis is more limited and fragmented, negotiations still happen on a bilateral basis. Strong policy support will encourage new companies and financial institutions to enter the agri-related sectors, which is a credit positive for the sector, and will support farm productivity and crop yields,” it added.

Source: Business World

The Global Risks Report 2022

A divergent economic recovery from the crisis created by the pandemic risks deepening global divisions at a time when societies and the international community urgently need to collaborate to check COVID-19, heal its scars and address compounding global risks.

In some societies, rapid progress on vaccination, leaps forward on digitalization and a return to pre-pandemic growth rates herald better prospects for 2022 and beyond.

Others could be weighed down for years by struggles to apply even initial vaccine doses, combat digital divides and find new sources of economic growth. Widening disparities within and between countries will not only make it more difficult to control COVID-19 and its variants, but will also risk stalling, if not reversing, joint action against shared threats that the world cannot afford to overlook.

Last year’s edition of the Global Risks Report warned of potential knock-on economic risks that are now clear and present dangers. Supply chain disruptions, inflation, debt, labour market gaps, protectionism and educational disparities are moving the world economy into choppy waters that both rapidly and slowly recovering countries alike will need to navigate to restore social cohesion, boost employment and thrive.

These difficulties are impeding the visibility of emerging challenges, which include climate transition disorder, increased cyber vulnerabilities, greater barriers to international mobility, and crowding and competition in space.

Restoring trust and fostering cooperation within and between countries will be crucial to addressing these challenges and preventing the world from drifting further apart.

The 17th edition of the Global Risks Report identifies tensions that will result from diverging trajectories and approaches within and between countries and then examines the risks that could arise from such tensions. This year’s report also highlights the implications of these risks for individuals, governments and businesses.

The Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), which has underpinned the report since 2006, was refreshed this year to gather new and broader insights from nearly 1,000 global experts and leaders who responded. The 2021-2022 GRPS includes the following sections:

– COVID-19 Hindsight invites respondents to opine on the reverberations of the crisis, allowing comparability with the results from the previous year.

– Future Outlook captures respondent sentiment, informing our analysis of how individual contexts may influence global risk perceptions and affect mitigation.

– Horizon captures respondents’ perceived trajectory and sense of urgency of global risks, informing our analysis of choices and trade-offs that decisionmakers may face.

– Severity ranks potential damage while Effects asks respondents to consider cascading impacts in conjunction with the severity of the risk itself.

– International Mitigation asks respondents to assess international efforts in 15 global governance areas to identify achievements and areas of opportunity for global action and cooperation.

– Open questions on risks, trends and warning signs source expert knowledge.

This year the Global Risks Report also draws on the views of over 12,000 country-level leaders who identified critical short-term risks to their 124 countries, gathered through the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey. The areas highlighted in these responses are likely to inform national decision-making and provide a perspective on how short-term risk national priorities may compare with global risks and perspectives.

WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2022

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Source: WEF