MORE than 120,000 children across Britain are living in the most extreme form of poverty, according to charity survey which reveals the situation is worsening.
The devastating rise in levels of destitution was branded “stark and worrying” by Buttle UK, which works with young people in crisis.
Its poll of 1,240 front-line professionals found that six in 10 of the children they work with are experiencing extreme poverty — up from 45 per cent the previous year and 36 per cent in 2021.
The London-based charity, which published its annual State of Child Poverty report yesterday, said: “The families our front-line workers are supporting includes approximately 122,000 children living in destitution.
“The year-on-year change between the last three survey cohorts dramatically illustrates the progressively worsening circumstances for children in poverty.”
The organisation described the term “destitution” as referring to the absolute lowest standard of living any adult, child or young person can experience, leading to a “lived reality which is degrading and unsustainable.”
Specifically, its study said someone is considered destitute if they have gone a month without at least two of the following — shelter, food, lighting, heating, clothing or basic toiletries.
Exclusive: Assessment that used to happen annually will now take six years despite rising concerns
April 2023 Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)
A nationwide annual health check of England’s water bodies which used to take place annually, will now take six years to complete, prompting anger from campaigners and politicians, as public alarm grows over the state of the nation’s rivers and coasts.
The assessments, undertaken by the Environment Agency, look at the ecological and chemical condition of rivers, lakes, groundwater, and transitional and coastal waters, and are required under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
In 2019, the last time the full assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health. Before 2016 the tests were done annually, but the government has now opted not to deliver a complete update until 2025, the latest permissible under the WFD.
Clean water advocates accused the government of trying to hide the data.
Rivers activist Feargal Sharkey said: “The future of England’s rivers has been sacrificed in a cynical act of self preservation by the very same failed government agency set up to protect them.”
The Green party peer Natalie Bennett said the government “clearly recognised the huge public anger about the parlous state of our waterways, but instead of taking action to clean them up, it is instead trying to hide the data”.
She added that the “stench of pollution, the choking of our waters with sewage, plastics and farm runoff is evident to all”, and that the Green party wanted to see a return to more frequent publication of the river health statistics. “Democracy demands transparency, and that’s one more thing this government is not delivering.”
In May 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) sent shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry and its allies in government by concluding that no new coal mines or oil and gas fields should be developed if the world is to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C), the limit agreed by governments to preserve a livable climate. The IEA’s logic was clear: Already-developed extraction projects – those actively producing fossil fuels or under construction – contain enough oil, gas, and coal to fulfill declining levels of demand aligned with limiting warming to 1.5°C. Developing more fields and mines would come with climate and/or economic costs that could be avoided by simply saying “no” to new extraction.
One year later, in May 2022, Oil Change International and a team of researchers [1] published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL) that went a step further than the IEA’s analysis (building on OCI’s path-breaking 2016 study).
We found that developed extraction projects hold not only enough fossil fuels to meet 1.5°C-aligned demand but way too much. Extracting the oil, gas, and coal within already developed fields and mines would push the world well beyond 1.5°C of warming. In fact, our study concluded nearly 40% of developed fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground to keep the 1.5°C limit in reach. Thus, in addition to ceasing new oil, gas, and coal development, as per the IEA’s recommendation, governments must also ensure a significant portion of existing extraction sites are shut down and decommissioned prematurely.
Unfortunately, since the IEA and OCI studies were published, governments (with a fewexceptions) and oil and gas companies (with zero known exceptions) have continued approving and investing in new extraction projects, and global fossil fuel emissions hit a new record high in 2022.
In this analysis, I provide an updated estimate of the steep and deep climate hole the fossil fuel industry has dug us into. Because of the lag time between research and final publication (and the difficulty of compiling quality coal mine data), the ERL study was based on estimates of committed carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from developed fossil fuel reserves and remaining carbon budgets aligned with global climate goals as of January 1, 2018. Here I update the oil and gas reserves and carbon budget estimates to a baseline of January 1, 2023.
Figure 1: CO2 emissions committed by developed oil and gas fields and coal mines, compared to remaining carbon budgets from the start of 2023
The majority of the fossil fuel reserves within active fields and mines must now stay in the ground. Using updated 2023 data, the proportion of coal, oil, and gas reserves that must remain unextracted to meet the 1.5°C limit has increased from nearly 40% in 2018 to almost 60% in 2023.
As of 2023, developed oil and gas reserves alone, if fully extracted, would cause cumulative carbon emissions nearly 25% greater than the world’s remaining 1.5°C carbon budget. Thus, even in the theoretical scenario where coal mining stops immediately, developed oil and gas reserves alone could push the world beyond 1.5°C.
A significant portion – almost one-fifth (20%) – of oil and gas fields must be shut down, even if no new fields are developed and coal extraction stops tomorrow.
Developed fields and mines contain enough fossil fuel to push the world beyond 2°C, a significantly more dangerous threshold that could make parts of our planet newly uninhabitable.
These findings underscore why governments must show up to the upcoming United Nations-hosted climate summits, the Climate Ambition summit in September in New York and COP28 in December in the UAE, with super-charged commitments to:
Stop licensing and permitting new fossil fuel development, and
Initiate a fast and fair global phase-out of fossil fuels. To be fair, wealthy fossil fuel-producing countries must move fastest to revoke permits for and retire polluting infrastructure while fully funding a just transition to renewable energy.
There have been some rays of light. Core members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance have committed to stop licensing new oil and gas exploration and phase out their oil and gas production on a 1.5°C-aligned timeline. A group of six Pacific Island nations recently issued a call committing to a fossil-free Pacific and demanding “a global, just and equitable phase out of coal, oil and gas.” And, at last year’s United Nations COP27 climate summit, over 80 countries pushed for the summit conclusions to include a call to phase out fossil fuels.
Yet, many of the same countries ostensibly backing the call for a fossil fuel phase-out at COP27 – including the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Norway – have turned around and hypocritically continued developing more fossil fuels.
When you are in a hole, the first step is to stop digging. It is time for countries to heed the call of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and come to New York in September with new and accelerated commitments to phase out fossil fuels backed by concrete policy action. To be credibly 1.5°C aligned, these commitments must include, at minimum, action to end licensing, permitting, or funding of new fossil fuel production – and, for the wealthiest countries, to fund a just global transition to renewable and sustainable energy.
Read on for more of the technical analysis comparing our updated results on developed fossil fuel reserves to those in the ERL study published last May.
