2024 is the year of the USA Presidential election, an event that affects the greater part of the world. However in addition this is also the year when Presidential elections for Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan, not to mention Venezuela are also scheduled. As though this was not enough, the general elections for the UK are also most likely this year, unless these get pushed to very early 2025.

The European Parliament elections are also due in mid-2024. General elections for such important countries as Mexico and Indonesia are also scheduled for this year. Above all this is going to be an extremely important year for South Asia where the general elections for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are scheduled (as also the presidential election for Sri Lanka). While the results of all these elections will be awaited with keen interest, the US Presidential election coming toward the end of the year will have the biggest impact on world affairs.

Moreover, it is not just the results but how the electoral campaigns and processes roll out in the more important elections that will be significant in terms of what is stated and promised, and how various powerful lobbies exert their influence. In the American election, for example, the role of the very resourceful and powerful pro-Israeli lobby is considered to be important and this importance increases in the context of the recent conflict and in particular the highly distressing events in Gaza. While the need for bringing early and substantial relief to Gaza is increasing, powerful lobbies in the USA may be working for continuing support to Israel’s highly disproportionate response to the initial horrible attack by Hamas.

This cruelty would end sooner without America’s excessive and almost unconditional support for Israel’s aggression but powerful lobbies work to ensure continuing support for even those actions of Israel which have resulted very rapidly in a most serious humanitarian crisis. How this crisis shapes up in early 2024 will be very important from the point of view of ending this serious humanitarian tragedy of course, but in addition it will be also very important for the politics of a volatile region. In particular great care will have to be taken to avoid spread of the conflict will all its dangerous implications.

The dangers of the wider spread of the Ukraine war have been even more acute and at one stage there was frequent discussion of this proxy war leading to a direct confrontation between Russia and USA/NATO with all its frightening possibilities of instigating a world war or a nuclear war. The worst of such dangers appear to have passed for now, but one never knows.

The longer such conflicts continue, the longer such dangers persist too. As it is, the costs of this war in terms of the loss of human lives on both sides, the large number of serious injuries and the very massive internal and external displacement in Ukraine have been intolerably high. Both the Gaza and Ukraine wars should end as soon as possible together with several less talked-about but nevertheless regrettable and costly conflicts. However, the question is whether this is more of a wish than reality. Powerful interests work relentlessly to ensure that orders for the military-industrial complex never slacken and continuation of some war or the other gives a boost to the billions flowing in.

This increasingly resourceful and powerful complex has become not just a provider of weapons for existing wars, but also an instigator of new wars to ensure that its order book never dries up. What is more, the linkages of the military-industrial complex to powerful politicians and policy makers have been increasing, with many industry spokespersons occupying policy making posts, or those occupying policy posts moving to highly lucrative positions in armssupplying multinational companies. Corruption in the arms industry is often stated to be the highest.

All these deeply troubling legacies from recent years will obstruct the path of those who seek to bring peace and end the most dangerous conflicts in the new year. What is true beyond doubt is that despite all the difficulties they face, peace and disarmament efforts are needed more than ever before. In recent years even the existing inadequate treaties to restrict weapons of mass destruction in various ways have collapsed or have not been renewed. At the same time new threats are appearing, as in the form of AI weapons.

Our world is becoming a more and more dangerous place due to this as well as the quest for dominance. Apart from the existing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle-East, the even more dangerous threat of a USAChina war in the near future casts a scary shadow over the world. Hence the strengthening of peace and disarmament movements at world level will be one of the most important and urgent needs of 2024.

The other most important need is to strengthen the environmental movement and the overall environment protection efforts in such a way as to check the various life-threatening environmental problems including climate change before it is too late. As COP 28 has confirmed, the existing efforts and frameworks for resolving climate change are far from adequate.

Hence one of the most pressing needs of the world is to strengthen the environmental movement, with close links to scientists, in such ways that more trustworthy and credible responses to the many-sided environmental crisis can emerge. This should be another must-do for the new year.

However the environmental movement can secure the close involvement of people only when it links up with justice concerns of common people and particularly the weaker sections. Hence there is a global need for planning and ensuring that within the existing environmental and carbon constraints, the basic needs of all people are met on a priority basis.

One source of hope is that the most basic concerns of environment protection, justice and equality, peace and disarmament are essentially mutually supportive. The challenge is to combine them in such a way that an integrated, comprehensive response can emerge which on the one hand brings immediate relief to people and on the other hand helps in the efforts to protect the basic life-nurturing conditions of our planet.

(The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children and A Day in 2071.)