Humans

• [New] NASA's renewed efforts to return humans to the moon by 2024 has led to advances in new space technologies to improve processes, and reduce costs and development time.
• [New] The need for international humanitarian assistance will reach a record high in 2021: more than 230 million people will be dependent on assistance.
• [New] Venezuela's humanitarian and economic crisis will enter a new chapter in 2021, as Joe Biden enters the White House and turns away from Trump's maximum pressure campaign.
• [New] A record 235 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2021, a 40% increase that the UN attributes almost entirely to Covid-19.
• [New] The automotive landscape faces existential disruption over the next 5-7 years as governments around the world target regulations to achieve carbon neutrality.
• [New] WITH the arrival of effective vaccines likely to bring the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic under control in much of the world by summer 2021, the fight against climate change will once again be humanity's great existential challenge.
• Humanitarian crises are worsening around the world, with 235 million people expected to be in need of urgent assistance compared to 175 million people at the start of 2020.
• If major donors fail to contribute to UN humanitarian relief operations - which has been the case so far in 2020 - the world's worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen will cross a new threshold into famine or worse.
• In Zimbabwe, an estimated 7.9 million people, including 4.1 million children, will be in urgent need of life-saving health services and humanitarian assistance in 2021 due to multiple hazards, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the economic crisis.
• By 2050, more than half of the global population will live in areas that suffer water scarcity at least one month each year.
• As the UN's Global Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2021 laid out in stark terms, 235 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.
• The triple blows of long-running war, Covid-19 and climate change have combined to pitch record numbers of people into humanitarian emergency in 2020, an aid charity has warned.
• A successful static firing of the Space Launch System core stage by the end of 2020 would keep NASA on track for an uncrewed Orion capsule flight test in November 2021-but odds on a human return to the Moon in 2024 are lengthening.
• To this day, the CANZUK countries have continued to stand with Hong Kong in protecting democracy and human rights that have been threatened by the Chinese government, and continue to develop mutual foreign policies.
• NASA still plans to return humans to the Moon in 2024 but will require sustained technical progress and political support to stay on track.
• DJI made a solid case that it does not pose a national security risk to the United States through multiple US-government initiated third-party audits that found that DJI drones do not collect data.
• With innovation and technical progress, In-Orbit services are the object of a renewed interest and could reach a higher level of technological readiness in the coming years.
• In 2021, the United Kingdom will use its presidency of the G7 to ramp up its work worldwide with like-minded allies to champion freedom, human rights and the equality of opportunity.
• The most dangerous humanitarian emergencies of 2021 are nearly all neglected, long-running crises like Afghanistan, Syria, and the DRC that remain highly volatile after years or decades of crisis.
• Concern Worldwide, is already calling for an urgent international response to meet the needs of millions of people and avert multiple humanitarian crises including famine in 2021.
• The greatest need for humanitarian assistance in 2021 is in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.

Last updated: 10 January 2021