The received wisdom of 2021 is that, in the larger global context, the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change will be the biggest challenges to human security. The numbers tell their own story. At the end of 2021, global cases of Covid-19 were estimated at around 292 million with almost 5.5 million deaths. This translates to almost 700 deaths per million among the global population. With the emergence of the rapidly transmissible Omicron variant , the number of daily global cases has surpassed 1.5 million and is still increasing. While there is agreement among experts that the new variant appears to be relatively mild, there is still the reasonable chance that the coming year could bring a more lethal mutation and a subsequent spike in the global death toll. Climate change had disastrous effects across the globe in 2021. Images of floods and unseasonal weather patterns punctuated a blighted year. A preliminary report by the NGO Christian Aid estimated that each of the year’s 10 mostly costly natural disasters crossed the US$1.5 billion mark, with Hurricane Ida in the United States topping the list at US$65 billion in damage. Two of the top 10 events – Cyclones Yaas and Tauktae – took place in India. While their costs have been estimated, their overall impact on the country’s large population has yet to be accurately determined. This tragic pattern permeates the developing world. Those at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder are the worst hit by climate change while the sources of the ecological degradation leading to climate change lie with the world’s rich and powerful . There is a consensus that the only way of managing these complex global challenges is a sustained, multilateral effort involving states, civil society and corporate leaders. In this, however, the experience of 2021 was disappointing but predictable. Meetings of world leaders on climate change during the past two decades have shown that the priorities of the global elite invariably win out over the more altruistic pursuit of shared well-being for all humanity. Climate change deliberations from Paris to Glasgow can be fairly summarised as the costs of managing and mitigating the crisis being farmed out by the haves to the have-nots, while the excesses that are driving climate change are primarily caused by developed nations and their patterns of consumption. Truly equitable climate justice remains elusive. The new year is unlikely to be much different, even as the glaciers and icebergs of the world disappear and species that have existed for centuries slip into extinction. The management of the global pandemic is illustrative of how the profit motive has blunted the human imperative, with vaccine statistics providing just one of several stark examples. The global average of vaccine booster doses – which can help reduce the severity of Covid-19 infections – is about 6.6 per 100 people. Among this number, high-income nations average about 24 booster doses per 100 people. Meanwhile, upper-middle-income countries average 8.5 such doses and lower-middle-income countries just 0.5 doses. Vaccine nationalism has been justified on legal and economic grounds. It has been said that protections must be put in place to protect the commercial rights of pharmaceutical countries that hold the intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines and have the necessary R&D infrastructure to deal with the pandemic. The ethics of this narrow, profit-driven justification are debatable. However, it is fully in keeping with the current global orientation of wealth distribution, which is fundamentally unequal but revered as a cardinal tenet of capitalism. Hongkongers getting booster shots outnumber those getting first, second doses Climate change and the pandemic will continue to loom large and could have even more dire consequences in 2022. Even so, the priority for the world’s leaders still appears to be the geopolitical contest that has carried over from the last century. While existential challenges pose threats to human security worldwide and warrant urgent multilateral consultation and consensus, geopolitical issues continue to dominate the agenda at the highest levels. The death of a Ukrainian soldier during fighting with pro-Moscow separatists on Saturday – while the rest of the world was transitioning into 2022 – is symbolic of the security-strategic imperatives that are shaping the course of global events. While the US and Russia are stuck in a complex impasse over Ukraine, tensions between China and India across the contested Line of Actual Control in the high Himalayas are simmering while their territorial dispute remains intractable. Logic would suggest that the larger existential challenges to the world – climate change and the pandemic – would bring about a swift closing of the ranks globally. In reality, though, 2022 will in all likelihood be just as selfish and short-sighted. While leaders in democracies fret over the next electoral cycle and authoritarian leaders remain focused on staying in power, the world is glossing over the glaring global ecological imbalance that is manifesting itself through climate change and the pandemic. An ostrich with its head in the sand could be a fitting mascot for 2022. Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is director of the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), an independent think tank based in New Delhi