A MAKE OR BREAK YEAR

Expect some stiff targets, radical policy measures and rapid innovations as polycrisis reaches a crescendo this year

- Richard Mahapatra, Rohini Krishnamurthy, Himanshu N, Kiran Pandey, Rajit Sengupta, Snigdha Das, Shimali Chauhan

If 2024 was the "biggest" year of democracy-nearly half of the world population elected governments in 64 countries the New Year will be that of fulfilling the promises made.

This is no mean task, and 2025 will therefore stand out as a pivotal year for the planet. The world is caught in a polycrisis I that has never been experienced earlier, and is in a bind over how to navigate through it. From economy, ecology and geopolitics to the emergence of new governance ideology, 2025 will be a test case. But, nature's revenge-in response to the brutal and incessant anthropogenic ravages-has reached a crescendo, threatening humans' very existence.

The planet is in a "critical condition", as scientists diagnose. In 2024, the Earth marked its 10th consecutive warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It is also the first year to cross the warming threshold of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial period. More than three-fourths of the Earth's land has become permanently drier in the three decades leading up to 2020, compared to the previous 30-year period (1961-90), according to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. In the last half-a-century, 12,000 disasters struck as a result of extreme weather, climate and water-related events, killing over 2 million humans, says the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).