Impact Almanac 2021: A Year in Review
The 2020s continues to be a quite turbulent decade. While most of the news outlets publish annual reviews, most impactful news on purpose and sustainability is quite difficult to find in one place. For the last 15 days, I’ve curated the most impactful news on sustainability in 2021. I am aware that this won’t be the complete list. So, I hope the list will be an accumulative and collaborative piece of work rather than a static article. For any news that I’ve might have missed, please share them with me on twitter. Scroll down for an initial list of 19 impactful news from 2021.
I wish you an impactful and purposeful year. I hope you accelerate your journey towards a more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive future.
1- COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc
The major headline of any news in 2020 was related to the pandemic. During the early days of the pandemic, certain experts hoped that it will cease its impact within a year. On the other hand, some expected continuous short-lived local lockdowns to continue until at least 2023. It seems the latter sounds more likely given the emergence of new variants and inequalities to vaccination. Pandemic itself is not a crisis but a metacrisis or crisis of crisis. It must be further observed with its relationship to the great resignation wave, disruptions in the global supply chain, and creator economy. However, one thing is certain, the death toll is increasing fast. January 2021 was a milestone for the 100 millionth death whereas the number is almost 300 million by the end of this year.
2- Global chip shortage to last until 2023
As the world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many factories closed with it, making the supplies needed for chip manufacturing unavailable for months. Increased demand for consumer electronics caused shifts that rippled up the supply chain. Orders began to pile up as manufacturers struggled to create enough chips to meet the new levels of demand. A backlog began to grow and grow and grow. Carmakers from Tokyo to Detroit are slashing production. PlayStations are getting harder to find in stores. Even Apple has to scale back its production plans for the new iPhone. All have one thing in common: an abrupt and cascading global shortage of semiconductors. The global chip crisis is a wake-up call for countries around the world about the importance of semiconductors to their future. Opinions on when the shortage will end vary. Sector leaders estimate that the shortage might last two more years.
3- EU aims to curb deforestation with coffee ban
Beef, palm oil, cocoa and other products linked to deforestation will be banned from entering the European Union under landmark legal proposals that attempt to help prevent the felling of the world’s great forests. This is an important step as continental Europe is responsible for 10% of global deforestation, according to a commission estimate. Of course, Europe itself won’t solve the global deforestation but it sends a clear message to the market and global commodities market.
4- First-ever “Earthshot Prize” winners announced
In 2018, Prince William said there was too much pessimism in the climate debate, and wanted to inject some optimism — coming up with the Earthshot prize, inspired by JFK’s Moonshot Project, with the hope of inspiring the innovators of the future.
This year’s winners were:
• Protect and Restore Nature: The Republic of Costa Rica — A scheme paying local citizens to restore natural ecosystems that have led to an incredible revival of the rainforest
• Clean our Air: Takachar, India — A cutting-edge technology to create fuel from agricultural waste and put a stop to the global air problem of crop burning
• Revive our Oceans: Coral Vita, Bahamas — An innovative approach to coral farming that can help restore our world’s dying coral reefs faster than any traditional method
• Build a Waste-free World: The city of Milan, Italy — A city-wide initiative that has dramatically cut waste while tackling hunger.
• Fix our Climate: AEM Electrolyser, Thailand/Germany/Italy — A green hydrogen technology developed to transform how we power our homes and buildings.
5- US rejoins Paris accord
On January 20, on his first day in office, President Biden signed the Paris Agreement to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement. Climate has emerged as the single largest category in President Biden’s new framework for a huge spending bill, placing global warming at the center of his party’s domestic agenda in a way that was hard to imagine just a few years ago. While the spending bill was pared down from USD3.5 trillion to USD1.85 trillion, the USD555 billion in climate programs remained.
6- The Great Resignation: Millions of workers are quitting
People are quitting their jobs at a record pace in what’s been dubbed the Great Resignation. Many want flexible working and greater support for mental health from companies. A range of studies has shown that resignation rates have risen fastest among mid-career employees, led by those with a tenure of 5 to 10 years. This may reflect the fact that many people delayed making a move in 2020 because of heightened uncertainty, as well as increased workloads and burnout. And women are quitting at higher rates than men, a trend that pre-dates the Great Resignation but has accelerated in 2021.
7- The Great Resignation opens doors for creators
The Great Resignation ignites the Great Transformation and this transformation is creating purposeful and passionate creators. The creator economy and funds for creator economy have exploded over the past year, accounting for more than 50 million creators and USD 1.5 billion in venture funding between January and June 2021. Ecosia, the search engine that uses its ad revenue to plant trees, has launched a USD 405 million venture capital fund focused on the climate crisis. The World Fund will invest in the “next generation” of founders looking to tackle the issue, Ecosia said, and will measure its success on “climate returns” as well as financial returns.
8- Impact investing is on the rise
While creators are increasing in number and their scale: impact investments continue to gain traction. According to the International Finance Corporation estimates that up to USD 2 trillion is currently invested with a mandate to achieve positive impact. But investors’ appetite for impact investing is much larger — up to $25 trillion, or about 10% of global capital markets. Investments of that scale could close the investment gap to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which require about USD 2.6 billion a year of additional private financing.
9- Climate-induced famine in Madagascar and 42 other countries
2021 witnessed one of the worst modern famine in world history. In contrast to the world’s other IPC 5 famines, in Yemen, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, which are conflict-driven, the Madagascar crisis is likely a result of devastating climate factors. Conflicts, climate crisis, broken supply chains, and the COVID19 pandemic have spiked an unprecedented global crisis, pushing families in 43 countries one step away from famine as the WFP food price index has increased 27.3% annually compared to November 2020.
10- Human mass is greater than biomass
Human activities are having an ongoing impact on Earth’s biomass. For example, we’ve lost significant forest cover in the past decades, to make room for agricultural land use and livestock production. One result of this is that biodiversity in virtually every region is on the decline. A study in Nature has found that all things human-made, known as anthropogenic mass, now weigh the same as all of Earth’s living biomass. The anthropogenic mass has doubled in the last 20 years.
11- French ban on short flights
French lawmakers voted to abolish domestic flights on routes than can be covered by train in under two-and-a-half hours. Flights shorter than 500 km contributed less than 4% of the EU’s total emissions from aviation in 2019, despite making up one-quarter of all European flights. Meanwhile, 6% of EU flights traveled 4,000 km or further in 2020 but produced more than half of EU-wide emissions from flying. To curb its share, ban domestic flight routes that can be covered by train in under 2hr 30min.
12- Single-use face mask problem
Recent studies in 2021 estimated that we use an astounding 129 billion face masks globally every month — that is 3 million a minute. Most of them are disposable face masks made from plastic microfibers. And the total footprint of one mask is around 50 grams of CO2-equivalent. Per month, Germany is using about 17 million FFP mask which translates to 850 tones of CO2 for protective N95 masks alone.
13- Carbon labels could soon be on all Unilever products
Unilever has revealed it will be piloting carbon labels on a select number of products this year in the U.S. and Europe. It comes ahead of its plan to label all 75,000 of its products globally. According to U.N. data, around a third of the world’s GHG emissions stem from the food industry. Meat and dairy products are among the most carbon-intensive products, with animal agriculture driving 18% of the entire world’s emissions.
14- Future of Meat: First lab-grown-meat factory
As with growing consumer demands more and more companies are looking to innovate how we eat our calories and protein. Planted, a start-up pursuing a unique method of creating a vegetarian chicken alternative has raised USD18 million. Now the company has a presence in more than 3,000 retail locations across Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and works with restaurant and food service partners as well. On the other hand, Israeli Future Meat Technologies sees it as a key stepping stone in efforts to scale up its operations. The company generates 80% less greenhouse gas emissions, uses 99% less land and 96% less freshwater than typical meat production.
15- Locust plague in East Africa
East Africa has not just suffered from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, but also the worst locust plague in decades. In 2021, the swarms returned, and experts are concerned about food security in the region. East Africa is seeing its worst desert locust crisis in 25 years. The swarms have devastated crops and pastures. The losses have exacerbated conditions for more than 42 million people facing food insecurity.
16- Ever-broken supply chains
In March 2021, the Suez Canal was blocked for six days after the grounding of Ever Given. The canal obstruction last 6 days while blockage prevented an estimated US$9.6 billion worth of trade. The event delayed goods, which impacted industries with existing shortages, such as with semiconductors, thereby influencing markets already at risk of collapsing. To mitigate shortages of goods in the long term would have a domino effect for several months along the supply chain. According to Council on Foreign Relations, companies — which for decades had been disciplined by the market into creating “just-in-time” supply chains and holding little inventory — scrambled to keep up. `
17- A healthy environment is a universal right
For the first time ever, the United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world passed a resolution recognizing access to a healthy and sustainable environment as a universal right. Campaigners hope the new HRC resolution will anchor the work of environmental defenders squarely in the human rights framework, conferring extra legitimacy on those who are persecuted for their activism. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 13.7 million deaths a year are linked to the environment, caused by air pollution, chemical exposure. Acceptance of universality as a right will promote fairness to climate injustice.
18- COP26 and our only 1% chance
UNEP research shows that despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still heading for a potentially catastrophic 3.2°C temperature rise this century — far beyond the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C. While the COP 26 can be seen as a failure on world leaders plate the central goal of COP26 was to put the planet on a pathway to limit warming to 1.5°C Very interesting report by Chatham House estimates we might have less than 1% chance of reaching the 1.5°C targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. We are working purposefully to bet on that 1%.
19- Extreme effects of climate crisis
The climate crisis has made extreme rainfall events similar to those that led to floods in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg between 1.2 and 9 times more likely to happen, according to a rapid attribution study by an international team of climate scientists, which also found that such downpours in the region are now 3–19% heavier because of the human-induced climate crisis.
It is evident that the changing climate is induced by humans and human-caused climate crisis is the main driver of changes in weather extremes. The report found that, as temperatures rise, Western and Central Europe will be exposed to increasing extreme rainfall and flooding. Not only in Europe but many regions around the globe witnessed the downpour and floods. Throughout July 2021, China’s Henan province was affected by severe flooding, attributed to a prolonged period of heavy rainfall where over 14 million people were affected.
The disruption in the jet stream 2021 Eurasia winter heatwaves resulted in the highest overall winter temperature across Europe and parts of Asia. Wildfires in several continents including countries like Turkey, Greece, South Africa, Algeria, and Russia also witnessed one of the worst wildfires in history. We should prepare for further polar vortex and global heatwaves as rain to replace snow in the Arctic as the climate heats faster than expected based on recent researches.
Back to wildfires according to the CAMS scientists, global wildfires in 2021 caused an estimated total of 1760 megatonnes of carbon emissions, which is the equivalent of 6450 megatonnes of CO2. To put this figure into some perspective — total CO2 emissions from fossil fuel in the EU in 2020 amounted to 2600 megatonnes, in other words — wildfires this year generated 148% more than total EU fossil fuel emissions in 2020.
We are in a Decade of Action to deliver the Global Goals. While 2021 had many good news to celebrate for people and planet, we are fighting a losing war. We need both solution for climate mitigation and adaptation while providing an inclusive growth. I’ve tried to curate the most impactful news from 2021, and I know this is not an exhaustive list. For any news that you think it should be included you can reach me through twitter.
