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hunger
Actuaries and Scientists Warn Climate Shocks Risk 'Planetary Insolvency'
A new report "shows a 50% GDP contraction between 2070 and 2090 unless an alternative course is chartered," said the lead author.
Jan 16, 2025
U.K. actuaries and University of Exeter climate scientists on Thursday warned that "the risk of planetary insolvency looms unless we act decisively" and urged policymakers to "implement realistic and effective approaches to global risk management."
Actuaries have developed techniques that "underpin the functioning of the global pension market with $55 trillion of assets, and the global insurance market, collecting $8 trillion of premiums annually, to help us manage risk," Tim Lenton, University of Exeter's climate change and Earth system science chair, noted in the foreword of a report released Thursday.
Planetary Solvency—Finding Our Balance With Nature is the fourth report for which the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) has collaborated with climate scientists. In financial terms, solvency is the ability of people or companies to pay their long-term debts. Co-authors of one of the previous publications coined the phrase planetary solvency, "setting out the idea that financial risk management techniques could be adapted to help society manage climate change and other risks."
Three IFoA leaders—Kalpana Shah, Paul Sweeting, and Kartina Tahir Thomson—explained in their introduction to the latest report how "planetary solvency applies these techniques to the Earth system," writing:
The essentials that support our society and economy all flow from the Earth system, commodities such as food, water, energy, and raw materials. The Earth system regulates the climate and provides a breathable atmosphere, it is the foundation that underpins our society and economy. Planetary solvency assesses the Earth system's ability to continue supporting us, informed by planetary boundaries, tipping points in the Earth system, and other scientific discoveries to assess risks to this foundation—and thus to our society and the economy.
Our illustrative assessment of planetary solvency in this report shows a more fundamental, policy-led change of direction is required. Our current market-led approach to mitigating climate and nature risks is not delivering. There is an increasing risk of severe societal disruption (planetary insolvency), as our economic system drives further global warming and nature degradation.
"Impacts are already severe with unprecedented fires, floods, heatwaves, storms, and droughts," the document points out, emphasizing that human activity—particularly burning fossil fuels—drives climate change and biodiversity loss. "If unchecked they could become catastrophic, including loss of capacity to grow major staple crops, multimeter sea-level rise, altered climate patterns, and a further acceleration of global warming."
The report was released as wildfires ravage California and shortly after scientific bodies around the world concluded that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first in which the average global temperature exceeded a key goal of the Paris agreement: 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. In the United States, experts identified 27 disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion.
"We risk triggering tipping points such as Greenland ice sheet melt, coral reef loss, Amazon forest dieback, and major ocean current disruption," the new publication warns, adding that "tipping points can trigger each other," and if multiple are triggered, "there may be a point of no return, after which it may be impossible to stabilize the climate."
Food system shocks and more frequent and devastating disasters increase the risk of mass mortality for humanity—including due to hunger and infectious diseases—along with mass migration and conflict, the report highlights.
"Climate change risk assessment methodologies understate economic impact, as they often exclude many of the most severe risks that are expected and do not recognize there is a risk of ruin," the document stresses. "They are precisely wrong, rather than being roughly right."
Specifically, lead author and IFoA council member Sandy Trust said in a statement, "widely used but deeply flawed assessments of the economic impact of climate change show a negligible impact" on gross domestic product (GDP).
However, Trust continued, "the risk-led methodology, set out in the report, shows a 50% GDP contraction between 2070 and 2090 unless an alternative course is chartered."
To mitigate the risk of planetary insolvency, the co-authors called on policymakers around the world to implement independent, annual assessments; set limits and thresholds that respect the planet's boundaries; enhance governance structures to support planetary solvency; and "enhance policymaker understanding of ecological interdependencies, tipping points, and systemic risks so they understand why these changes are needed."
They also underscored the need to limit global warming and avoid triggering tipping points with actions such as accelerating decarbonization, removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, restoring damaged ecosystems, and building resilience.
"You can't have an economy without a society, and a society needs somewhere to live," said Trust. "Nature is our foundation... Threats to the stability of this foundation are risks to future human prosperity which we must take action to avoid."
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Nobel Laureates Join Call for Ramped Up Food Production to Avert Global Hunger Catastrophe
"Today's challenges of access to food will be exacerbated by production challenges tomorrow. We are not on track to meet future food needs. Not even close," according to a letter published Tuesday.
Jan 14, 2025
A group of some of the world's foremost thinkers is sounding the alarm on the globe's looming "hunger catastrophe" and are calling for "moonshot" efforts to stave off the crisis, according to an open letter published Tuesday that was signed by 153 winners of the Nobel Prize and World Food Prize.
The luminaries who signed the letter include the economist Joseph Stiglitz; the spiritual leader the 14th Dalai Lama; the Nigerian playwright and political activist Wole Soyinka; and Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who discovered the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors.
The letter notes that there are 700 million people worldwide who are currently food insecure and "desperately poor"—and about 50% of them don't know where they can expect their next meal. Some 60 million children under five are cognitively and physically impaired for life from nutritional deficiencies.
As hard as those numbers are to fathom, it's about to get worse, according to the letter. Due to climate change, the world is expected to experience a decrease in the productivity of most major food staples, even though the planet is projected to add another 1.5 billion people to its population by 2050. "For maize, the major staple for much of Africa, the picture is particularly dire with decreasing yields projected for virtually its entire growing area," according to the letter.
Extreme weather and weather events linked to climate change will threaten crop productions, as will additional factors like "soil erosion and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages, conflict, and policies that restrict innovation."
In sum, according to the letter, "today's challenges of access to food will be exacerbated by production challenges tomorrow. We are not on track to meet future food needs. Not even close. While much can and needs to be done to improve the flow of food to those in need, food production and accessibility must rise sharply and sustainably by mid-century, particularly where hunger and malnutrition are most severe."
The appeal was coordinated by Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food Prize Laureate, who is also the outgoing U.S. special envoy for global food security at the State Department. He is also known as the "father" of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
"We know that agricultural research and innovation can be a powerful lever, not only for food and nutrition security, but also improved health, livelihoods and economic development. We need to channel our best scientific efforts into reversing our current trajectory, or today's crisis will become tomorrow's catastrophe," Fowler said in a statement Tuesday.
The efforts the group is calling for include investment and prioritization in agricultural research and development, as well as other potential moonshot initiatives such as enhancing photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, transforming annual to perennial crops, creating nutrient-rich food from microorganisms and fungi, and more.
Mashal Hussain, the incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said in a statement: "If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely rally the funding, resources, and collaboration needed to put enough food on plates here on Earth. With the right support, the scientific community can deliver the breakthroughs to prevent catastrophic food insecurity in the next 25 years."
The letter will be discussed during a Senate Committee event in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday.
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Famine Spreading Amid 'Unprecedented' Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan: UN
"Hunger and starvation are spreading because of the decisions being made each day to continue to prosecute this war, irrespective of the civilian cost," said one U.N. expert.
Jan 06, 2025
Multiple U.N. leaders addressing the United Nations Security Council on Monday urged action to tackle the spiraling humanitarian crisis unfolding in war-torn Sudan, which has contributed to roughly half of the country facing acute food insecurity.
Sudan has been racked by violence since fighting erupted between the between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)—the nation's official military—and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023. The civil war has also led to widespread hunger in the country.
Edem Wosornu, director of operations and advocacy at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, toldthe Security Council that "Sudan remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions."
"More than 11.5 million people are now estimated to be internally displaced, of whom nearly 8.8 million people have been uprooted since April 2023," she said.
Wosornu spoke about the findings of the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report from late December, which stated that there was famine—or an IPC phase 5—in in Zamzam, Abu Shouk, and Al Salam camps, as well as in the Western Nuba Mountains, affecting both residents and internally displaced people between October and November 2024. The report noted that between December 2024 and May 2025, famine is projected to continue in the same areas and expand in the North Darfur localities of Um Kadadah, Melit, El Fasher, At Tawisha, and Al Lait.
"The main drivers of famine risk remain the armed conflict and forced displacement," according to the report.
The famine declaration for Zamzam camp, which houses hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in North Darfur, came in August.
On the eve of the IPC's December report, the Sudanese government suspended cooperation with a global hunger monitor.
Wosornu in her remarks also lamented the death of three World Food Program staff members, who were killed when the agency's field office in Yabus was hit by an "aerial bombardment," according to the United Nations.
"Hunger and starvation are spreading because of the decisions being made each day to continue to prosecute this war, irrespective of the civilian cost," she added.
Beth Bechdol, deputy director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, also provided a Monday briefing to the Security Council, saying that "the latest reports on food security are the worst in the country's history."
"Let me remind council members that over the last 15 years, only four famines have been confirmed: Somalia in 2011; South Sudan in 2017 and 2020; and now Sudan in 2024," she said.
Bechdol highlighted a number of actions that the Security Council should aid, including using "political leverage to end hostilities and to bring relief to the people of the Sudan."
She also called on the body to support "immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access" and delivery of "multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance," saying that "while scaling up food, water, and cash assistance is vital, this alone cannot address the full scope of the hunger crisis."
Wosornu added that the Security Council should help "press the [warring] parties to comply with international humanitarian law," and mobilize international funding to address the "unprecedented scale of the needs in Sudan."
This comes a week after U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and two of her colleagues pressed President Joe Biden to do more to help the people of Sudan, including requesting an increase in U.S. humanitarian aid, specifically that a portion of that funding go toward supporting Sudanese organizations and entities that are aiding civilians on the ground.
This comes a week after U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and two of her colleagues pressed President Joe Biden to do more to help the people of Sudan, including requesting an increase in U.S. humanitarian aid, specifically that a portion of that funding go toward supporting Sudanese organizations and entities that are aiding civilians on the ground.
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