Laurie Goering

Progress on global development could come to a halt due to surging conflicts, accelerating climate change impacts and increasingly deep divisions over politics, a survey of risk experts, policymakers and business leaders showed on Wednesday.

They also warned that the spread of misinformation and disinformation, driven in part by new artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a key risk to major elections in 2024 that could potentially undermine the legitimacy of new governments.

With a raft of key global elections scheduled for this year, and a new agreement to "transition away from oil, coal and gas this critical decade" in hand after COP28 in Dubai, what will 2024 bring for climate action?

We asked top climate analysts and activists for their predictions, from potential "tipping points" to reasons for optimism, even as climate-changing emissions continue to rise:

As the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai enters its final days, one key dispute remains: Does the world need to phase out the production and use of fossil fuels, as scientists say? Or could it eliminate just the emissions from burning coal, oil and gas?

Many large countries with commitments to reach net-zero emissions around mid-century - particularly major oil and gas-producing nations - say they intend to achieve net-zero in part by using "carbon capture and storage" (CCS).

As impacts from prolonged droughts to extreme heat worsen, climate change is threatening the world's ability to produce enough nutritious food and ensure everyone has access to it.

At COP28 in Dubai, more than 130 country leaders on Friday called for global and national food systems to be rethought to address climate change - the first such official recognition at a U.N. climate summit of growing worries about food security and planet-heating emissions from agriculture.

From Afghanistan to Somalia, countries affected by conflict are often highly vulnerable to climate change impacts as well.

Wars and insecurity, and absent or problematic governments, can make getting help to the people who are most at risk from extreme weather, crop failure or other climate-change-related threats hugely challenging. 

Heatwaves have been breaking records around the world, with China enduring its highest-ever temperature, heat advisories being issued across vast swathes of the United States, and fierce heatwaves in southern Europe endangering lives.

Sweltering heat in Europe this summer has presented severe threats to people's health in Italy, Spain and Greece, where wildfires on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu have led to thousands of residents and tourists being evacuated.

When the London borough of Wandsworth introduced "low traffic neighbourhoods" a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, blocking off some streets and adding cycle lanes in an effort to spur more healthy walking and cycling, the changes backfired.

Queues of fume-spewing traffic built up on major roads and with alternative routes blocked, emergency vehicles struggled to get through. Frustrated drivers hefted road-blocking flower planters out of their way and protest petitions took off.

In nations from Somalia to Pakistan, the world's poorest and most fragile communities are facing the harshest impacts of climate change - a reality that is driving worsening poverty, potential for conflict and resentment against major polluters.

But finding innovative ways to get finance directly to those communities, to build resilience that is based on local knowledge and desires, could save cash and lives, and protect a global humanitarian system increasingly overwhelmed by surging need.

As global hunger swiftly rises - by more than a third last year - curbing it will require not growing more food but rethinking broader systems of trade and aid, farming's heavy reliance on fossil fuels, food waste and meat eating, experts said.

Farmers today grow sufficient crops to feed twice the current population - but nearly a third of food produced globally is spoiled or thrown away, said Philip Lymbery, the chief executive of Compassion in World Farming International.

Climate change activist group tries less disruptive London protests to win bigger support - but will it work?