2023 in review: climate action falls short

[NAIROBI] A global deal to stop fossil fuels would have been the perfect end to a tumultuous year for the global South—underpinned by severe droughts, floods and wars that impacted development.

However, the last-minute agreement reached at the UN climate summit, COP28, in Dubai in December would be no great reprieve for developing countries on the frontlines of climate change.

Despite being hailed as a “landmark pact”, it failed to address the long-running clamour for a “phase out” of oil, coal and gas, or provide the necessary finance for poorer countries to transition to green energy.

“It’s a direction towards our goal but it’s not enough,” Fatima Yamin, adviser on climate adaptation and climate disasters in Pakistan told SciDev.Net’s Hadeer Elhadary.

“Unfortunately, the critical decisions on adaptation finance and raising the bar on the loss and damage have not been achieved.”

The Loss and Damage Fund – agreed at last year’s Conference of the Parties in Egypt – was set in motion in Dubai. But the US$700 million committed to it fell wildly short of the US$100 billion or more wanted by developing countries to respond to climate disasters.

Meanwhile, less than US$200 million was paid into the UN adaptation pot to help vulnerable communities cope with climate change.

In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had produced its most comprehensive report to date on the impacts of global warming on our planet. Climate deaths ‘15 times higher’ for most vulnerable, SciDev.Net reported.

The IPCC report said rapid, deep and sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions were essential to reach global climate goals of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

However, an investigation by SciDev.Net published in May revealed how China and India, the world’s biggest burners of coal, have failed to adequately monitor emissions, raising questions about their commitments towards those targets.

Push for change

Our coverage during the year also highlighted many of the impacts of climate change, including how it is worsening HIV control in Asia and how drought is affecting almost one in four people on earth.

The UN’s Global Drought Snapshot called for “transformational change” including wide-ranging solutions from water-efficient technologies to offsetting carbon emissions with land restoration, to put land back in its natural state.

Climate change is also setting back progress on malaria eradication, warned Simon Bland, chief executive of the Global Institute for Disease Elimination, in an opinion piece for SciDev.Net.

“Enhanced monitoring of climate and disease patterns, which track variations in the incidence and distribution of malaria, will be essential moving forward,” he wrote.

Growing recognition of the effects of climate change on health led to the inaugural health and climate day at COP28, described in a SciDev.Net article written by the directors of Amref Health Africa as a potential “watershed moment”.

Food systems were in the spotlight as 138 leaders signed a first of its kind declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems and climate action, to help farmers and vulnerable groups adapt to climate change.

The UK announced in November a new science and innovation hub led by global agricultural research organisations to drive advances in climate-resilient crops and help tackle the world’s food crisis.

“It can’t be right that today in 2023, almost one billion people across the world regularly do not have enough to eat, that millions face hunger and starvation, and over 45 million children under five are suffering acute malnutrition,” UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the Global Food Security Summit in London, where the hub was launched.

Vaccine progress

In health, Gavi, the vaccine alliance pledged US$1.8 billion to support vaccine production in Africa.

Of this, US$1 billion will go to local drugs manufacturers through the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA), following approval by the Gavi board in early December.

The development will see African manufacturers deliver over 800 million doses over the next ten years.

A new malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, in October became the second to be recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

However, analysts stressed that vaccine developers must share the know-how behind the jab for it to be rolled out efficiently to poor populations in Africa.

Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Akhona Tshangela, programme coordinator for Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing, writing in an opinion piece for SciDev.Net in November, said African states must work together to reshape vaccine access and promote self-sufficiency.

Fake news

In technology, SciDev.Net uncovered the failure of big-tech to check the spread of fake news in the global South in a months-long investigation.

The SciDev.Net investigates article, Big tech ‘failing’ to curb fake news in global South, reveals how social media platforms overlook false news in non-European languages.

The investigation found that fact-checking resources were more concentrated in the global North, leaving developing countries exposed to misinformation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this meant that misinformation about health could spread on social media platforms unabated.

 Catastrophic conflicts

Hanging like a cloud over many of the year’s developments have been conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza among others.

SciDev.Net’s journalist Qais Abu Samra in Ramallah reported how the war meant Gaza was running low on food and medical supplies.

An immediate humanitarian ceasefire is needed to allow food and aid in, the WHO says, as the year nears its end and the war enters its third month.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.