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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>October 13, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[study results]<br>
<b>Fifth of countries at risk of ecosystem collapse, analysis finds</b><br>
Trillions of dollars of GDP depend on biodiversity, according to
Swiss Re report<br>
One-fifth of the world's countries are at risk of their ecosystems
collapsing because of the destruction of wildlife and their
habitats, according to an analysis by the insurance firm Swiss Re.<br>
<br>
Natural "services" such as food, clean water and air, and flood
protection have already been damaged by human activity.<br>
<br>
More than half of global GDP - $42tn ... depends on high-functioning
biodiversity, according to the report, but the risk of tipping
points is growing.<br>
<br>
Countries including Australia, Israel and South Africa rank near the
top of Swiss Re's index of risk to biodiversity and ecosystem
services, with India, Spain and Belgium also highlighted. Countries
with fragile ecosystems and large farming sectors, such as Pakistan
and Nigeria, are also flagged up.<br>
<br>
Countries including Brazil and Indonesia had large areas of intact
ecosystems but had a strong economic dependence on natural
resources, which showed the importance of protecting their wild
places, Swiss Re said.<br>
<br>
"A staggering fifth of countries globally are at risk of their
ecosystems collapsing due to a decline in biodiversity and related
beneficial services," said Swiss Re, one of the world's biggest
reinsurers and a linchpin of the global insurance industry.<br>
<br>
"If the ecosystem service decline goes on [in countries at risk],
you would see then scarcities unfolding even more strongly, up to
tipping points," said Oliver Schelske, lead author of the research.<br>
<br>
Jeffrey Bohn, Swiss Re's chief research officer, said: "This is the
first index to our knowledge that pulls together indicators of
biodiversity and ecosystems to cross-compare around the world, and
then specifically link back to the economies of those locations."<br>
<br>
The index was designed to help insurers assess ecosystem risks when
setting premiums for businesses but Bohn said it could have a wider
use as it "allows businesses and governments to factor biodiversity
and ecosystems into their economic decision-making".<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/12/fifth-of-nations-at-risk-of-ecosystem-collapse-analysis-finds">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/12/fifth-of-nations-at-risk-of-ecosystem-collapse-analysis-finds</a><br>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
[SwissRE]<br>
<b>A fifth of countries worldwide at risk from ecosystem collapse as
biodiversity declines, reveals pioneering Swiss Re index</b><br>
23 Sep 2020, Zurich<br>
39 countries have ecosystems in a fragile state on more than a third
of their land - Malta, Israel, Cyprus, Bahrain and Kazakhstan have
the lowest Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (BES) ranking<br>
55% of global GDP depends on high-functioning BES<br>
Major economies in Southeast Asia, Europe and the US exposed to BES
decline<br>
Swiss Re Institute BES Index enables businesses and governments to
factor in biodiversity and ecosystem issues into economic
decision-making<br>
Countries across the world are reliant on a range of services that
are based around their natural ecosystems. Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (BES) include such necessities as food provision,
water security and regulation of air quality that are vital to
maintaining the health and stability of communities and economies.<br>
<br>
Over half (55%) of global GDP, equal to USD 41.7 trillion 1, is
dependent on high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services.
However, a staggering fifth of countries globally (20%) are at risk
of their ecosystems collapsing due to a decline in biodiversity and
related beneficial services, reveals a new study by Swiss Re
Institute.<br>
<br>
The study, which is based on Swiss Re Institute's new Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services Index, shows that both developing and
advanced economies are at risk. The report finds developing
countries that have a heavy dependence on agricultural sectors, such
as Kenya or Nigeria, are susceptible to BES shocks from a range of
biodiversity and ecosystem issues.<br>
<br>
Among G20 economies, South Africa and Australia top the rankings of
fragile BES. The well-known impact of water scarcity is a driver for
these countries, alongside factors such as costal protection and
pollination. Brazil and Indonesia enjoy the highest percentage of
intact ecosystems within the G20, however, the countries' strong
economic dependency on natural resources highlights the importance
of sustainable development and conservation to the long-term
sustainability of their economies.<br>
<br>
An upcoming United Nations Summit on biodiversity on 30 September
2020 is set to call for "urgent action on biodiversity for
sustainable development" as global efforts to improve in this vital
area have fallen well below UN targets to halt biodiversity loss.<br>
<br>
To build understanding around this global issue, Swiss Re Institute
developed the BES Index, enabling governments and business leaders
worldwide to cross-compare and benchmark the state of local
ecosystems that underpin their economies. Insurers can also use this
data to develop relevant insurance solutions that protect
communities at risk from poor-functioning BES.<br>
<br>
Christian Mumenthaler, Swiss Re's Group Chief Executive Officer,
said: "There is a clear need to assess the state of ecosystems so
that the global community can minimise further negative impact on
economies across the world. This important piece of work provides a
data-driven foundation for understanding the economic risks of
deteriorating biodiversity and ecosystems. In turn, we can inform
governmental decision-making to help improve ecosystem restoration
and preservation. We can also support corporations and investors as
they fortify themselves against environmental shocks. Armed with
this information, we can also ensure the provision of stronger
insurance services."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.swissre.com/media-detail.html?image=jcr:b9705381-eba4-49b2-9403-a3ada84b932e&page=db58f40c-ecef-4009-9881-8bb70267c07a#MediaDetail">https://www.swissre.com/media-detail.html?image=jcr:b9705381-eba4-49b2-9403-a3ada84b932e&page=db58f40c-ecef-4009-9881-8bb70267c07a#MediaDetail</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.swissre.com/media/news-releases/nr-20200923-biodiversity-and-ecosystems-services.html">https://www.swissre.com/media/news-releases/nr-20200923-biodiversity-and-ecosystems-services.html</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[good to know]<br>
<b>Climate change spurs doubling of disasters since 2000: UN</b><br>
Report by UN body says 6,681 climate-linked events recorded since
the turn of the century, up from 3,656 during the previous 20 years.<br>
Political and business leaders worldwide are failing to stop the
planet turning into "an uninhabitable hell" for millions of people,
the United Nations warned on Monday.<br>
<br>
Climate change is largely to blame for a near doubling of natural
disasters in the past 20 years, a UN report said.<br>
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) said 7,348 major
disaster events occurred between 2000 and 2019, claiming 1.23
million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people, and costing the global
economy some $2.97 trillion.<br>
<br>
The figure far outstrips the 4,212 major natural disasters recorded
between 1980 and 1999, the UN office said in the new report, The
Human Cost of Disasters 2000-2019.<br>
<br>
The sharp increase was largely attributable to a rise in
climate-related disasters, including extreme weather events like
floods, drought and storms, the report said, adding that extreme
heat is proving especially deadly.<br>
<br>
"We are willfully destructive," UNDRR chief Mami Mizutori told
reporters in a virtual briefing. "That is the only conclusion one
can come to when reviewing disaster events over the last 20 years."<br>
'Very bleak'<br>
In a joint foreword to the UN report, Mizutori and Debarati
Guha-Sapir of Belgium's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of
Disasters noted developing nations continue to have the odds
"stacked against them, in particular by industrial nations that are
failing miserably on reducing greenhouse gas emissions".<br>
<br>
"It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the
seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that
we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions
of people," it said.<br>
<br>
Guha-Sapir warned if extreme weather events continue to grow at the
same rate over the next 20 years, "the future of mankind looks very
bleak indeed".<br>
<br>
To avoid that happening, the world must act urgently to invest in
prevention, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction,
Mizutori said.<br>
<br>
She urged governments to show leadership and deliver on promises
made in 2015 under the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, the
Sendai Framework to manage disaster risk, and the global development
goals set to be achieved by 2030.<br>
<br>
UN member states agreed to put in place national and local
strategies to reduce disaster risks by 2020, but so far just over 90
have delivered those, she noted.<br>
<br>
"It really is all about governance if we want to deliver this planet
from the scourge of poverty, further loss of species and
biodiversity, the explosion of urban risk, and the worst
consequences of global warming," she said.<br>
<br>
'Uphill battle'<br>
The report did not touch on biological hazards and disease-related
disasters such as the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more
than one million people and infected at least 37 million in the last
nine months.<br>
<br>
But Mizutori suggested coronavirus was "the latest proof that
political and business leaders are yet to tune in to the world
around them".<br>
<br>
The report said 6,681 climate-linked events were recorded since the
turn of the century, up from 3,656 during the previous 20-year
period.<br>
<br>
While major floods more than doubled to 3,254, there had been 2,034
major storms, up from 1,457 in the prior period.<br>
<br>
Mizutori said public health authorities and rescue workers were
"fighting an uphill battle against an ever-rising tide of extreme
weather events".<br>
<br>
While better preparedness and early warning systems had helped bring
down the number of deaths in many natural disaster settings, the UN
official warned "more people are being affected by the expanding
climate emergency".<br>
<br>
Data showed that Asia suffered the highest number of disasters in
the past 20 years with 3,068 such events, followed by the Americas
with 1,756 and Africa with 1,192.<br>
<br>
In terms of affected countries, China topped the list with 577
events followed by the United States with 467.<br>
<br>
The deadliest single disaster in the past 20 years was the 2004
Indian Ocean tsunami, with 226,400 deaths, followed by the Haiti
earthquake in 2010, which killed some 222,000 people<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/12/climate-change-spurs-doubling-of-disasters-since-2000-un">https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/12/climate-change-spurs-doubling-of-disasters-since-2000-un</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>[NYTimes]<br>
<b>Florida Sees Signals of a Climate-Driven Housing Crisis</b><br>
Home sales in areas most vulnerable to sea-level rise began
falling around 2013, researchers found. Now, prices are following
a similar downward path.<br>
- -<br>
The mayor of Hallandale Beach, Joy Cooper, acknowledged the
pressure that climate change is putting on property values, but
said coastal cities like hers can engineer their way out of the
problem, protecting homeowners from worsening storms and floods.
"We've been managing water for years," she said. "So we know it
can be done."<br>
<br>
The data tell a less optimistic story, Dr. Keys said: "The market
already perceives that these substantial infrastructure projects
won't be successful."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/climate/home-sales-florida.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/climate/home-sales-florida.html</a></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[from NPR]<br>
<b>Medical Residents Learn To Treat The Growing Health Hazards Of
Climate Change</b><br>
October 12, 2020<br>
It was low tide on the north shore of Boston when Steve Kearns felt
the mosquito bite that would land him in a hospital with West Nile
Virus disease for a week.<br>
<br>
"For at least six months after that, I felt like every five minutes
I was being run over by a truck," Kearns says. "I couldn't work, I
couldn't walk very well and I couldn't focus. I wondered for a bit
if I'd ever get better."<br>
<br>
Kearns, 71, recounted the experience during a check-up with his
physician, Dr. Gaurab Basu, and Dr. Charlotte Rastas, a third year
resident in primary care at a Cambridge Health Alliance clinic in
Somerville, Mass.<br>
<br>
Basu had never seen West Nile in a patient before Kearns. The first
reported case in Massachusetts was in 2002. By 2018, the year a
mosquito bit Kearns, there were 49.<br>
<br>
"When someone comes in with a fever and is confused, it's not what
my mind thinks of as the diagnosis right away," Basu says. "This
case has really taught me how much I need to be informed about the
ways in which climate change is changing the patterns of infectious
disease around the United States."<br>
As Basu learned, rising temperatures offer longer breeding seasons
for mosquitos, boost the virus replication rate, and make mosquitos
more active. Basu now teaches about these and other effects of
climate change in an elective course he offers residents. Residents
in this course get more than 100 hours of advocacy training
including how to speak and write publicly about the intersection of
health and climate change.<br>
<br>
He's part of a nascent effort to make sure climate change is part of
the curriculum in hospital residency programs across the country.
There's already a push, backed by the American Medical Association,
to teach medical students about health risks tied to a warming
planet. Now some doctors say that education should continue during
residency, when doctors tailor what they've learned to a specialty.<br>
<br>
"What a pediatrician needs to know about climate risk is not the
same as what a surgeon needs to know, or what a radiologist needs to
know," says Dr. Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for
Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard's T.H. Chan
School of Public Health.<br>
<br>
There is no designated curricula for hospitals that want to teach
emerging lung specialists about longer pollen seasons as
temperatures rise or guide new emergency room physicians to consider
water-borne diseases for patients with fever and diarrhea. But
Bernstein and co-author, Dr. Rebecca Philipsborn, have published a
framework hospitals can use as a starting point.<br>
<br>
"At its heart, this is about preparing our resident physicians to
provide the best care for patients and to safeguard health in our
changing climate," says Philipsborn, an assistant professor of
pediatrics at Emory University. "Patients want physicians to be able
to provide guidance on things that affect their individual health.
We have this accumulating body of evidence that climate change does
just that. It changes what we see and it poses harms to our
patients."<br>
<br>
The framework has three parts: explaining the link between climate
change and storms, fires, allergy seasons and other factors that
affect health, suggesting ways doctors could adapt patient care in
response to these changes, and preparing doctors for times climate
change might interfere with care.<br>
<br>
Rastas, who took Basu's elective course, says many residents seek
such guidance.<br>
<br>
"This is something that needs to be directly integrated into the
curriculum," she says. "And [it] needs to become standard of
practice because I think it's going to have such a huge impact on
human health."<br>
<br>
But some doctors worry about what will be left out of residency
training to make room for climate change. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the
former associate dean for curriculum at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says during the pandemic, for
example, hospitals need to add training in intensive care medicine
to more residency programs.<br>
<br>
Goldfarb says hospitals should focus on training doctors, not
advocates for social or political causes. He worries that discussing
climate change with patients might create mistrust.<br>
<br>
"There are concerns about getting into the political sphere," he
says. "I'm against anything that's going to represent a barrier
between patients and physicians being comfortable with each other."<br>
<br>
But as wildfires sweep across Western states and hurricanes flood
the Gulf Coast, other physicians are stepping up efforts to talk
about the intersection of health and climate change.<br>
<br>
"We want to impart this information to our residents as fast as we
can because it's so important that they gain this information sooner
rather than later," says Dr. Paul Dellaripa, one of the authors of a
new climate change course for about 50 internal medicine residents
at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.<br>
<br>
In part one, earlier this month, Dellaripa showed residents heat
island maps of Boston that he reviewed to understand why a
particular patient experienced kidney failure related to
dehydration. Dellaripa adjusted the patient's meds and other care
after realizing the patient lived in one of the city's hottest
neighborhoods.<br>
<br>
"There are tools out there that can help us identify areas of
vulnerability in the Boston area," Dellaripa says. "If we can put
those together with our patients we can better understand who's at
risk for what and make the appropriate clinical adjustments."<br>
<br>
Dr. Evan Shannon, a chief medical resident in internal medicine at
Brigham, says Dellaripa's lecture highlighted ways rising
temperatures have a greater impact on low-income, often minority
communities. Shannon says racial justice and climate change "should
be integral to medical education, it's an intersection that needs to
be explored."<br>
<br>
Dellaripa says he's talking to residency leaders in surgery and
emergency medicine at Brigham about integrating climate change into
their training programs in the coming months.<br>
<br>
Advocates say including climate change in residency training won't
stick until doctors are tested on these health effects before
they're licensed to practice medicine.<br>
<br>
In the meantime, there's growing interest in some unlikely places.<br>
<br>
"What's further than what you might link to climate change than
neurosurgery?" asks Dr. Ann-Christine Duhaime, the director of
pediatric neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. "But I've
been asked to give neurosurgery grand rounds on health and climate
change, at three institutions, in the past year."<br>
<br>
Duhaime talks about her plan to create a green children's hospital
and about broader impacts of climate change on medicine. She says
many surgeons are disturbed, for example, about the vast amounts of
plastic and other waste generated in an operating room.<br>
<br>
Duhaime says she's approached by many residents who are looking for
guidance as well as information about their role with regard to
climate change. Finding mentors and realizing there are steps they
can take to address climate change in and outside the hospital
helps, she says.<br>
<br>
"They go into medicine because they want to help people, they see
this looming threat, and the conflict between how they spend their
days," she says, "and this whole climate change disaster -- that
conflict is really distressing to many of them."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/12/918878683/medical-residents-learn-to-treat-the-growing-health-hazards-of-climate-change">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/12/918878683/medical-residents-learn-to-treat-the-growing-health-hazards-of-climate-change</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
October 13, 1988 </b></font><br>
<p>In the second presidential debate, Republican candidate and Vice
President George H. W. Bush declares himself an environmentalist
and "an outdoorsman and a sportsman all my life," while Democratic
candidate and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis states that
Bush was "[a] charter member of the environmental wrecking crew
that went to Washington in the early '80s and did a job on the
EPA."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/4256-1">http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/4256-1</a> - (65:00--69:05) </p>
<p><br>
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