Ahead of the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, our Road to COP 27 series offers a 360-degree view of what’s being done — and not being done — to reach the elusive net-zero target.
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Also in today’s edition: The United Kingdom’s aid budget freeze is extended to Halloween — apropos given how many jump scares Prime Minister Liz Truss has given the British economy lately — and we look at how something as quotidian as blurry vision can devastate communities.
Knock-on effects
The 10 plagues of Egypt are nothing compared to the plagues of climate change. The list is depressingly long: deadly storms and floods, drought-induced famine, mass migration, political upheaval, and the extinction of entire species — including possibly us at some point.
But mass atrocities?
It sounds strange, but really it’s just an extension of what happens when resources become scarce and people are willing to kill for them.
That’s why a U.K. Parliament report is pushing the British government to link its atrocity prevention strategy with its climate work.
“You don’t need to be an expert in mass atrocity prediction or prevention to see that as the impacts of climate change deepen, identity-based violence and mass atrocities will rise,” Kate Ferguson of the NGO Protection Approaches tells my colleague William Worley. “Left unchecked, this threat nexus will drive global instability and human suffering on a terrifying scale.”
Read more: UK Parliament report warns climate change likely to worsen atrocities
Policing COP
Will’s story is part of our Road to COP 27 series, which will unpack everything you need to know about COP 27 in Egypt next month, where we’ll have reporters on the ground.
What’s one sentiment percolating ahead of Africa’s first COP? Frustration.
Expect to see plenty of folks from low- to middle-income governments fed up with the unfulfilled promises that their wealthy counterparts made to help them adapt to climate change, which lower-income nations have borne the brunt of despite barely contributing to the problem.
Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank, isn’t subtle about what Africa needs to fight climate change: “Finance, finance, and more finance.”
“It's like when it rains, it just pours,” says the Nigerian economist who once served as his country’s agriculture minister, rattling off a “deluge of shocks,” including soaring energy and fertilizer prices coupled with skyrocketing debt.
Adesina tells my colleague Omar Mohammed that African countries need to raise an annual average of $124 billion to adapt to climate change.
How much are they getting? As of today, about $28 billion a year — more a trickle than a deluge.
Read: To tackle climate, Africa needs 'finance and more finance,' says AfDB head
Related: African nations finalizing demands ahead of COP 27 (Pro)
A scary deadline
London is a financial capital of the world, but it has its hands full at the moment with keeping the pound afloat rather than helping Africa out.
Will reports that the U.K.’s foreign aid budget freeze — enacted over the summer after the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson — has been extended until Oct. 31 amid the country’s spectacular political meltdown.
We’ll find out the government’s spending plans on Halloween. Yes, Halloween. Someone in Downing Street must have a morbid sense of humor.
Meanwhile, with many already predicting Truss’ ouster, there’s little political attention for the already-stretched aid budget.
Read more: UK extends aid freeze until Oct. 31
Check out: We have a U.K. aid page for the latest news and analysis of the sector.
Up in their business
Money may be tight around the world, but business is still business at the U.S. Agency for International Development — sort of.
In recent years, USAID has skipped its business forecast call for the last quarter of the fiscal year, and the agency confirmed to Devex there won't be one this year either.
But don’t worry, our data sleuth Miguel Antonio Tamonan has the scoop on where USAID is investing tens of billions of dollars in the coming months.
Funding insights: USAID business forecast: Q4 2022 (Pro)
+ Devex Pro members can get the most out of our USAID coverage. Not a Pro member yet? Start your 15-day free trial today.
When will we learn?
A top official at the World Health Organization once told me that if COVID-19 resembled Ebola — whose symptoms include internal bleeding that leads to vomiting or coughing up blood — there’d be no “asinine” political debate about masks and vaccines.
But with Ebola outbreaks largely confined to pockets across the African continent, the urgency for the global community to respond and create the needed health infrastructure to fight it is just not there — and that’s a dangerously shortsighted approach, says WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti.
My colleague Sara Jerving reports that Moeti attributed a recent outbreak of Ebola in rural Uganda to a shortage of health workers.
“If outbreaks can continue and spread in a corner of a country, they can easily spread to the rest of the world,” Moeti warns.
Read: Health worker shortage in Uganda fueled spread of Ebola, says WHO
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Hiding in plain sight
Meanwhile, something we rarely think of as a health problem can also be debilitating to low- and middle-income countries: blurry vision. Around the world, 1 billion people don’t have the eyeglasses they need to see clearly, affecting all aspects of their lives, from reading a classroom chalkboard to driving safely.
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott recently gave $15 million — believed to be the largest single gift the vision sector has ever received — to social enterprise VisionSpring to provide glasses to farmers and artisans in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Read: $15M MacKenzie Scott grant helps vision sector out of a blind spot
Taking the stage
The World Health Summit in Berlin, wrapping up today, revealed who’s really in charge of shaping global health, argues A. Kayum Ahmed of Columbia University’s School of Public Health.
Is it governments or world bodies such as WHO? Nope. Ahmed says the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and McKinsey Consulting held court, a reflection of their outsize power.
“This is because the global health architecture is primarily shaped by Euro-American states that reinforce the power of the profit-driven pharma industry, and nonstate actors such as Gates and McKinsey,” Ahmed writes.
Opinion: Who’s on stage at World Health Summit shows who’s in charge
In other news
Brazil's economy minister revealed plans to nominate Ilan Goldfajn, the current director of the International Monetary Fund's Western Hemisphere, as the new head of the Inter-American Development Bank. [Bloomberg]
The United States and Mexico stated on Monday that they are drafting a U.N. resolution in "direct response" to Haiti's request for international assistance in its humanitarian crisis. [AP]
The U.N. Refugee Agency criticized an incident on the Greece-Turkey border that left 92 refugees “stripped of their clothes.” [Al Jazeera]
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
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