2022 has been a year of great uncertainty when it seemed the world perilously reached the brink of self-destruction – be it human-induced climate change or military conflict.
The spectre of “stagflation” threatens the world once again. This time, the risk is the direct consequence of political provocations and war.
The planet is already 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times. July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded in 142 years. Despite the pandemic slowdown, 2020 has been the hottest year so far, ending the warmest decade (2011-2020) ever.
Quickly enabling greater and more affordable production of and access to Covid-19 medical needs are urgently needed in the South.
Addressing global warming requires cutting carbon emissions by almost half by 2030! For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), emissions must fall by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, instead of the 2.7 degrees Celsius now expected.
The current climate mitigation plans will result in a catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius rise in world temperature. USD 1.6-3.8 trillion is needed annually to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“The outlook for LDCs is grim.”—the latest United Nations (UN) assessment of the prospects for the least developed countries (LDCs) notes recent setbacks without finding any silver lining on the horizon.
Vaccine costs have pushed many developing countries to the end of the Covid-19 inoculation queue, with most low-income nations not even lining up. What’s worse, less vaccinated poor nations cannot afford fiscal efforts to provide relief or stimulate recovery—let alone achieve Agenda 2030.
Economic inequality—involving both income and wealth concentration—has risen in nearly all world regions since the 1980s.
A new United Nations report warns that the potential benefits to developing countries of digital technologies are likely to be lost to a small number of successful first movers who have established digital monopolies.
The world economy remains tepid and unstable a decade after the 2008 financial crisis, while growing trade conflicts are symptoms of deeper economic malaise, according to a new United Nations publication.
George Soros, Bill Gates and other pundits have been predicting another financial crisis. In their recent book, Revolution Required: The Ticking Bombs of the G7 Model, Peter Dittus and Herve Hamoun, former senior officials of the Bank of International Settlements, warned of "ticking time bombs" in the global financial system waiting to explode, mainly due to the policies of major developed countries.
As feared, the Eleventh Ministerial Conference (MC11) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 10-13, 2017 ended in failure. It failed to even produce the customary ministerial declaration reiterating the centrality of the global trading system and the importance of trade as a driver of development.