768 Million People and their Homelands in jeopardy says Ecological Threat Report

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#Africa, October 28, 2022 – A great portion of Sub-Saharan Africa may become completely unsustainable in just 28 years. This prognosis is according to the Institute for Economics and Peace in their most recent Ecological Threat Report.

The Institute assesses major ecological threats of food risk, water risk, rapid population growth, temperature anomalies and natural disasters and rates countries on their Ecological Threat Resistance (ETR)

This year it identified 27 ‘hotspot countries’ across the globe that face ‘catastrophic ecological threat with extremely low societal resilience.’ It puts 768 million people at serious risk.

None of the countries identified are located in Europe or North America which have the highest ETR, instead the victims mainly spread across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia.

Seven of the eight of the most affected countries are in SSA., which also has the highest rate of food insecurity.

“Of the 52 Sub-Saharan African countries, 37 recorded an extremely high level of food insecurity in the ETR,” said the report which was published on October 19.

Extreme drought and extreme floods in the past year have caused record lows in food production with the Red Cross warning that casualties could become heavy if residents remain without food.

In addition mass migration and natural disasters will also put populations in sub-Saharan Africa at serious risk.

In order to slow the disastrous process, countries will have to fix the high rates of violence, air pollution and high birth rate, even as climate change ravages their shoes.

Only one Caribbean country, Haiti, was listed on the 27 most at risk countries.