Ecological Threat Report 2023

• Ecological Threat Report 2023 was recently released by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
• The report covered 221 countries and independent territories, which were divided into 3,594 sub-national areas, accounting for 99.99 percent of the world’s population.
• Of these countries and territories, 66 face at least one severe ecological threat.
• The report focuses on four categories of threat: Food insecurity, natural disasters, demographic pressure and water risk.

 MAJOR FINDINGS

• The number of people residing in countries facing severe ecological threats will go up to 2.8 billion by 2050 from 1.8 billion at present.
• Many countries and sub-national areas are most vulnerable to conflict, civil unrest and displacement as a result of environmental degradation and climate-related events.
• Of the 30 hotspot countries that face severe ecological threats and have low levels of societal resilience, 19 are in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • The most at risk countries are Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan, of which Ethiopia and Niger have recently emerged as hotspots.
• Europe and North America are the only two regions where no country currently faced a severe ecological threat.
• The report included many policy recommendations aimed at supporting local communities to improve water capture, agricultural yields and resilience.

ABOUT INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMICS AND PEACE

• The Institute for Economics and Peace is an independent think tank.
• It is involved in developing global and national indices, calculating the economic cost of violence, analysing country level risk and fragility, and understanding Positive Peace.
• The Institute is headquartered in Sydney with offices in 6 countries.

Founded by IT entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Killelea  in 2007, IEP has had a profound impact on traditional thinking on matters of security, defence, terrorism and development over the last 13 years.