Liontrust Sustainable Investment Annual Review 2023 - Flipbook - Page 7
Reasons to be cheerful in 2024
The news in 2023 was dominated by reports of wars, lack of progress
at COP 28 climate talks, biodiversity loss and democracy under
threat – all topics that could lead one to have a dismal view of future
prospects. On the Sustainable Investment team, however, we think it
is important to look behind the headlines and counter this bleak view
of the future. While it is not all rosy, we highlight some areas where,
perhaps surprisingly, things have been getting significantly better.
Air pollution – Remember the 2008 Olympics in Beijing? Athletes
complained of choking air pollution. We wrote about it under the
headline ‘Airpocalypse Now’. Sulphur dioxide and particulate
pollution reached multiples of the safe limits set by the World
Health Organisation. Yet there was a 55% reduction in air pollution
between 2013, when it was at its worst, and 2020. This has
improved life expectancy in the city by an estimated 4.6 years1.
This progress has also been seen globally, with death rates from air
pollution estimated to have halved since 1990.
Natural disasters – Earthquakes, tsunamis, storms and floods make
for dramatic news. But again perhaps surprisingly, the number of
global deaths from natural disasters has halved in absolute terms
over the last 100 years. This is in spite of the global population
quadrupling over that time. We have become much more resilient
to these natural events.
Decadal average: Annual number of deaths from disasters
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
Source: EM-DAT, CRED, 2023. Decadal figures are measured as the annual average over the subsequent ten-year period. This means
figures for ‘1900’ represent the average from 1900 to 1909; ‘1910’ is the average from 1910 to 1919 etc. Data includes disasters
recorded up to September 2023.
Much of this data comes from the excellent ‘Not the End of the World’ by Hannah Ritchie, lead researcher of Our World in Data.
1
Liontrust Sustainable Investment: Annual Review 2023 - 7