In a report released ahead of the COP 24 climate summit in Poland, the World Meteorological Organization pointed out that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, and that “2018 is on course to be the 4th warmest year on record.”

“This would mean that the past four years – 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 – are also the four warmest years in the series,” the UN agency said in its provisional report on the state of the climate this year.

The “warming trend is obvious and continuing,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas told reporters in Geneva.

The report shows that the global average temperature for the first 10 months of the year was nearly 1.0-degree Celsius above the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).

– ‘Last generation’ –

“It is worth repeating once again that we are the first generation to fully understand climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it,” Taalas warned.

With levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the main driver of climate change, at a record high, “we may see temperature increase of 3-5C by the end of the century,” Taalas said.

“If we exploit all known fossil fuel resources, the temperature rise will be considerably higher.”

Delegations from nearly 200 countries are due in Poland next week for the latest COP24 climate summit, aimed at renewing and building on the Paris deal and limiting global warming.

World leaders have been trying to breathe new life into the 195-nation agreement amid backsliding from several nations — most notably the United States — over commitments made when it was signed in December 2015.

It is to take effect in 2020 and calls for limiting global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

But experts warn that global warming is on track to surpass three degrees by 2100 and urge governments to do more than first planned to rein it in.

“Every fraction of a degree of warming makes a difference to human health and access to food and fresh water, to the extinction of animals and plants, to the survival of coral reefs and marine life,” WMO deputy chief Elena Manaenkova stressed in a statement.

“It makes a difference to economic productivity, food security, and to the resilience of our infrastructure and cities,” she said.

“It makes a difference to the speed of glacier melt and water supplies, and the future of low-lying islands and coastal communities.”

Featured Photo: AFP / Alain BOMMENEL. 2018, fourth hottest year on record?

“The situation in Gaza is becoming less and less livable,” said Isabelle Durant, the deputy head of the United Nations development agency (UNCTAD).

BELGA/AFP / KRISTOF DEBECKER. Deputy head of the United Nations development agency Isabell Durant, pictured in 2912, says the situation in Gaza “is becoming less and less livable”.

“It is catastrophic,” she told reporters in Geneva.

In a new report, the UN agency said the Palestinian economy, long stifled by the Israeli occupation, was being hit hard by a sharp drop in international support to the Palestinians, even before Washington’s dramatic cuts.

Last year, international development assistance to the Palestinians shrunk by more than 10 percent compared to a year earlier.

And at $720 million, it stood at just a third of the $2 billion received a decade earlier, the UNCTAD report showed.

– US cuts –

That dramatic drop in support came before US President Donald Trump’s government decided to completely halt its funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which had previously stood at around $350 million a year.

The Trump administration has also scrapped around $200 million in payments by USAID to the Palestinians, and at the weekend said it would cut $25 million more in direct aid to six hospitals that primarily serve Palestinians in Jerusalem.

The declining international support, coupled with “a freeze in the reconstruction of Gaza and unsustainable credit-financed public and private consumption, paint a bleak picture for future growth,” UNCTAD said in a statement.

The widespread restrictions on the movement of people and goods, confiscation of land and natural resources, and the accelerating expansion of Israeli settlements were also damaging, it said.

Wednesday’s report slammed the shackling of the economy in the Palestinian territories, which are struggling with the world’s highest unemployment rate — of more than 27 percent overall and around 44 percent in Gaza alone.

Women and youth are disproportionately impacted by the lack of jobs, it said, with half of Palestinians under the age of 30 out of work, while only 19 percent of women participate in the labour force.

In a report last year, the UN agency said that the Palestinian economy could easily double and that sky-high unemployment and poverty would plummet if the Israeli occupation were lifted.

And in its latest report, UNCTAD suggested that simply removing some of the Israeli restrictions on Palestinian trade and investment could allow the territory’s gross economy to swell by up to 10 percent.

– ‘Profound suffering’ –

Removing restrictions on Gaza was particularly important, UNCTAD said, warning that the Strip had been “reduced to a humanitarian case of profound suffering and aid dependency”.

AFP/File / MAHMUD HAMS. In 2012, UNCTAD warned that Gaza (pictured August 2018) risked becoming “uninhabitable” by 2020, but the agency says conditions “are worse” than when they made that prediction.

Mahmoud Elkhafif, who coordinates UNCTAD’s Assistance to the Palestinian People Unit, told reporters that the agency had not yet analysed the impact the US cuts might have on the Palestinian economy, but stressed they would certainly result in “more misery” in Gaza especially.

In 2012, UNCTAD warned that the area risked becoming “uninhabitable” by 2020 unless trends were reversed, but on Wednesday the agency said conditions “are worse” than when they made that prediction.

In the past decade, Gaza has been subjected to three major military operations and a continuous and crippling air, sea and land blockade, which have “eviscerated” its productive capacity, it said.

Gaza’s some 1.8 million residents currently count on average a real income per person that is 30 percent lower than in 2000.

And Elkhafif pointed out that half of the people in the Strip were considered food-insecure even before the US announced its cuts to UNRWA, which provides aid to some 80 percent of the population.

Simply lifting the blockade would quickly see its economic growth shoot up by a third, the report said.

Featured Photo: AFP/File / SAID KHATIB. The dramatic drop in support came before US President Donald Trump’s administration decided to completely halt its funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

“We are seeing a massive displacement inside Syria… From January to April, there were over 920,000 newly displaced people,” Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters in Geneva.

“This was the highest displacement in that short period of time we have seen since the conflict started,” he said.

It brings the number of people internally displaced in the war-ravaged country to 6.2 million, while there are still some 5.6 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries, according to UN figures.

Moumtzis said most of the newly displaced had been forced on the move by escalations in fighting in the former rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta and within the northwestern province of Idlib, which is almost entirely controlled by various jihadist and hardline rebels.

His comments came after several deadly air strikes in recent days in Idlib that have left dozens of people dead, including children.

He said Idlib is part of the “de-escalation” agreement for Syria reached between Turkey, Russia and Iran, and warned of the dire consequences if the province, which has some 2.5 million inhabitants, sinks into full-blown conflict.

More than 350,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

– The worst to come? –

But Moumtzis said “our worry is that with the Idlib situation, we may not have seen the worst of the crisis in Syria”.

He said the world must “make sure that we don’t see a similar scenario as we saw in Eastern Ghouta,” which was recaptured in April by the Syrian government after a blistering two-month offensive.

“We worry about seeing really 2.5 million people becoming displaced,” he said, adding that the UN was currently drawing up a range of contingency plans in case the situation escalates.

“We are on high alert,” he said.

Following the Eastern Ghouta offensive, and the previous offensive to retake Syria’s second city Aleppo, rebels and civilians were forcibly evacuated to Idlib.

AFP/File / OMAR HAJ KADOUR. Several deadly air strikes in recent days in Idlib have left dozens dead, including children.

But for the people of Idlib, “there is no other Idlib to take them out to,” Moumtzis said.

“Really, this is the last location. There is no other location to further move them.”

At the same time, the mishmash of armed groups in the province are increasingly fighting amongst themselves.

“The current composition makes (the situation) highly explosive,” Moumtzis warned.

– ‘Breaking point’ –

Elsewhere in Syria, he said the numbers of people stuck in besieged or other areas humanitarian workers cannot easily access has shrunk dramatically since last year to just over two million people.

But he said far too few aid convoys were making it through to such areas, with only nine succeeding since January.

The UN, he said, has the capacity to send in at least three convoys a week, so it has made only 11 percent of possible deliveries this year — “the lowest ever” since the start of the conflict.

A convoy carrying food aid for 60,000 people finally made it to Douma in Eastern Ghouta on Sunday, he said, the first UN aid delivery there since March 14.

Elsewhere, access is easier and the UN is currently providing aid to some 5.5 million people across the country each month.

But Moumtzis voiced deep concern over the lack of funds for the massive aid operation, with only 26 percent of the $3.5 billion needed inside Syria this year materialising to date.

“The humanitarian response on the ground is really at a breaking point. We are stretched to a maximum,” he said. “Our warehouses are empty.”

Feature Photo: AFP/File / Sameer Al-Doumy. The number of people internally displaced in Syria is 6.2 million according to UN figures.