Weekly Numerics | A million coal jobs under threat, compliance cost burden, and the persistent issue of hunger

Weekly Numerics is a column where we will present you with three to five charts based on major events or interesting data points that emerged during the week. Several key numbers were released in the week gone by. Here are some of the figures we found interesting.

Declining prospects for coal miners

Around one-third of the current coal mine workers could face lay-offs by 2050, even without climate pledges to phase out coal, according to a recent report by Global Energy Monitor. Nearly 2.7 million coal mine workers produce 93 percent of the world’s coal, and as much as one million of the overall workforce could be shed across the world by 2050 as many mines will reach their end of life.

India and China have the largest number of coal mine workers in the world. The report, which is based on data from Global Coal Mine Tracker, shows that workers from both these countries will be the hardest hit by the lay-offs. In fact, according to estimates, Coal India itself could potentially lay off 73,800 miners by 2050 as India aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070.

These figures do not include ‘informal’ workers for which the data isn’t available. Studies suggest that the Indian mining industry employs four informal workers for every direct employee.

According to the report, by 2050, the world’s ten largest coal-producing companies could shed up to 243,100 coal mining jobs.

Taking into consideration the climate goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C, only around 252,200 workers would be needed globally to maintain production given the current global average labour productivity of 337 workers per million tonnes of coal produced.

“Coal miners often have the skills necessary to shift into other careers within the energy sector or other low-carbon industrial sectors should governments and companies create those opportunities. Coal companies can prevent sudden shocks to workers and coal communities if they take proactive steps to plan for mine closures associated with the anticipated end of a life of mine,” said the report.

The rising costs of financial crime compliance

Financial institutions across the world had to face a total cost of $206 billion towards financial crime compliance requirements during the 12-month period ended June 2023, according to a report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a US-based data and analytics company.

A breakdown of the data in the report provided to Moneycontrol shows that the total cost for Indian firms reached $11.5 billion during the period.

Meanwhile, financial firms from India seem to be quicker at adopting advanced analytics and AI technologies. As much as 85 percent of the financial organisations from India said that they are using data analytics to enhance their data utilisation. Further, 78 percent of organisations in the country are using analytics and AI to enhance their compliance procedures. However, globally these figures stood at 71 and 72 percent, respectively.

As can be seen from the table above, a lesser percentage of Indian firms said that regulations and sanctions act as a constraint on their business operations compared to the global figure. Meanwhile, a larger number of Indian organisations said that optimising the efficiency and efficacy of financial crime compliance concerning payments is a high priority for them.

Notably, enhancing customer experience is a lesser priority for Indian firms.

Hunger continues to be a problem

The Global Hunger Index 2023 released on Thursday ranked 111th out of 125 nations with sufficient data to calculate the scores. With a score of 28.7, hunger in India remains at a “serious” level, said the report.

Due to the revision of the methodology and the set of countries surveyed, the 2023 rank and score are not directly comparable to the 2022 report, in which India ranked 107 out of 121 countries.

However, compared to 2015, the adjusted score for which is included in the latest report, India’s score has improved with a 1.7 percent decline in the hunger index. But the country’s ranking slipped two positions from 109 in 2015, indicating that some other countries reduced their GHI scores by equal or greater amounts.

“India’s 2023 GHI score is 28.7, considered serious according to the GHI Severity of Hunger Scale. This is a slight improvement from its 2015 GHI score of 29.2, also considered serious, and shows considerable improvement relative to its 2000 and 2008 GHI scores of 38.4 and 35.5, respectively, both considered alarming,” said the report.

The most concerning part of the report for India is that the country has a child wasting rate of 18.7 percent, the highest in the world. Furthermore, its child stunting rate was estimated to be at 35.5 percent and its prevalence of undernourishment was at 16.6 percent.

The Indian government, however, has rejected the findings of the report, as it has done in the previous years. “The index is an erroneous measure of hunger and suffers from serious methodological issues. Three out of the four indicators used for the calculation of the index are related to the health of children and cannot be representative of the entire population. The fourth and most important indicator 'Proportion of Undernourished (PoU) population' is based on an opinion poll conducted on a very small sample size of 3,000,” said the Ministry of Women and Child Development in a statement.

"The percentage of child wasting, as seen on the Poshan Tracker, has been consistently below 7.2 percent, month-on-month, as compared to the value of 18.7 percent used for child wasting in the Global Hunger Index 2023," the ministry added.