• Extreme heat has gripped the northern hemisphere in recent months, and the year 2018 is on track to be among the hottest ever recorded. Higher global temperatures are expected to have detrimental effects on our natural environments and our physical health, but what will they do to our mental health? 

  • The dwindling agrarian and small farming communities around the world have certainly not had it easy during the last 50 years or so.

  • Climate scientists have understood for decades that unchecked, man-made global warming will wreak havoc on human civilization. The challenge has only grown more urgent as the scientific understanding expands and the world begins to feel the impacts.

  • Population Flood Risk

    Risk of Flooding Mapped Around the World

    Devastating floods across Pakistan this summer have resulted in more than 1,400 lives lost and one-third of the country being under water.

    This raises the question: which nations and their populations are the most vulnerable to the risk of flooding around the world?

    Using data from a recent study published in Nature, this graphic maps flood risk around the world, highlighting the 1.81 billion people directly exposed to 1-in-100 year floods. The methodology takes into account potential risks from both inland and coastal flooding.

       Sea-level rise, drought, flooding, climate refugees and resource shocks,

    Asian Countries Most at Risk from Rising Water Levels

    Not surprisingly, countries with considerable coastlines, river systems, and flatlands find themselves with high percentages of their population at risk.

    The Netherlands and Bangladesh are the only two nations in the world to have more than half of their population at risk due to flooding, at 59% and 58%, respectively. Vietnam (46%), Egypt (41%), and Myanmar (40%) round out the rest of the top five nations.

    Besides the Netherlands, only two other European nations are in the top 20 nations by percentage of population at risk, Austria (18th at 29%) and Albania (20th at 28%).

    Rank Country Flood risk, by population exposed (%) Total population exposed
    #1 ?? Netherlands 58.7% 10,100,000
    #2 ?? Bangladesh 57.5% 94,424,000
    #3 ?? Vietnam 46.0% 45,504,000
    #4 ?? Egypt 40.5% 38,871,000
    #5 ?? Myanmar 39.9% 19,104,000
    #6 ?? Laos 39.7% 2,985,000
    #7 ?? Cambodia 38.1% 7,431,000
    #8 ?? Guyana 37.9% 276,000
    #9 ?? Suriname 37.7% 233,000
    #10 ?? Iraq 36.8% 16,350,000
    #11 ?? Thailand 33.9% 25,431,000
    #12 ?? South Sudan 32.5% 5,437,000
    #13 ?? Pakistan 31.1% 71,786,000
    #14 ?? Nepal 29.4% 11,993,000
    #15 ?? Republic of the Congo 29.3% 1,170,000
    #16 ?? Philippines 29.0% 30,483,000
    #17 ?? Japan 28.7% 36,060,000
    #18 ?? Austria 27.8% 2,437,000
    #19 ?? India 27.7% 389,816,000
    #20 ?? Albania 27.6% 771,000
    #21 ?? China 27.5% 394,826,000
    #22 ?? Chad 27.4% 4,547,000
    #23 ?? Indonesia 27.0% 75,696,000
    #24 ?? Croatia 26.9% 1,094,000
    #25 ?? Slovakia 26.7% 1,401,000

    The Southeast Asia region alone makes up more than two-thirds of the global population exposed to flooding risk at 1.24 billion people.

    China and India account for 395 million and 390 million people, respectively, with both nations at the top in terms of the absolute number of people at risk of rising water levels. The rest of the top five countries by total population at risk are Bangladesh (94 million people at risk), Indonesia (76 million people at risk), and Pakistan (72 million people at risk).

    How Flooding is Already Affecting Countries Like Pakistan

    While forecasted climate and natural disasters can often take years to manifest, flooding affected more than 100 million people in 2021. Recent summer floods in Pakistan have continued the trend in 2022.

    With 31% of its population (72 million people) at risk of flooding, Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to floods.

    In 2010, floods in Pakistan were estimated to have affected more than 18 million people. The recent floods, which started in June, are estimated to have affected more than 33 million people as more than one-third of the country is submerged underwater.

    The Cost of Floods Today and in the Future

    Although the rising human toll is by far the biggest concern that floods present, they also bring with them massive economic costs. Last year, droughts, floods, and storms caused economic losses totaling $224.2 billion worldwide, nearly doubling the 2001-2020 annual average of $117.8 billion.

    A recent report forecasted that water risk (caused by droughts, floods, and storms) could eat up $5.6 trillion of global GDP by 2050, with floods projected to account for 36% of these direct losses.

    As both human and economic losses caused by floods continue to mount, nations around the world will need to focus on preventative infrastructure and restorative solutions for ecosystems and communities already affected and most at risk of flooding.

  • Scientists released a report on global climate change this October that comes with the starkest warning yet: We have just 12 years to make radical changes in nearly every sphere of society if we are going to limit the average world temperature rise to 1.5°C.

  • Climate change happens when a location’s usual weather is altered.

  • Two things became immediately clear as the crisis unfolded. The first was that, as we’ve already noted, the municipal, provincial and national authorities had absolutely no idea how to deal with the looming disaster.

  • The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

  • Later and more intense rainy seasons across parts of Africa due to climate change could have damaging consequences, a new study has found.

  •  A group of European researchers have found that current breeding programs and cultivar selection practices in Europe do not provide the needed resilience to climate change.

  • The world’s grain markets face a year of challenges and uncertainty, with weather and politics likely to drive trade flows and prices, said the keynote speaker at the Global Grain Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

  • The World Bank Group today announced a major new set of climate targets for 2021-2025, doubling its current 5-year investments to around $200 billion in support for countries to take ambitious climate action.

  • Agriculture and climate change are deeply intertwined. The effects of global warming on food supply are dire, whilst world population is increasing. It's time to change the way agriculture affects the environment, and vice versa.

  • Extreme climate conditions, prolonged drought, weather anomalies and endangered species are just a few of the aspects to consider when talking about sustainable water supplies. Could precision agriculture be the answer?

  • The impact of climate change continues to have devastating effects on countries across the globe, and Namibia has not been spared.

  • The results of a new analysis by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) demonstrated a decrease in “emissions intensity” (emissions per unit of product) of GHG emitted in the production of milk.

  • As the science weighs more heavily toward a consensus that a) climate change is a real phenomenon and b) human-generated carbon emissions are playing at least a part in causing more volatile weather patterns, it is critical that the global agricultural community combat this phenomenon, to the extent that it can.

  • Rain is the glue that holds Namibia’s agriculture-based economy, especially for subsistence farmers in the semi-arid southern African nation.

  • Climate change has been blamed for the wild swings in agricultural crop yields, but it could also result in a doomsday scenario for drinkers: Beer, the world’s top-consumed alcoholic beverage by volume, may at some point be out of reach for hundreds of millions of people around the world, according to a new study.

  • Agriculture has become a carbon-intensive endeavour. Crop, livestock and fossil fuel use in agriculture account for about 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

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