A quarter of all premature deaths and diseases worldwide are due to manmade pollution and environmental damage, the United Nations said Wednesday in a landmark report on the planet's parlous state.

Deadly smog-inducing emissions, chemicals polluting drinking water, and the accelerating destruction of ecosystems crucial to the livelihoods of billions of people are driving a worldwide epidemic that hampers the global economy, it warned.

The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) -- a report six years in the making compiled by 250 scientists from 70 nations -- depicts a growing chasm between rich and poor countries as rampant overconsumption, pollution and food waste in the developed world leads to hunger, poverty and disease elsewhere.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise amid a preponderance of droughts, floods and superstorms made worse by climbing sea levels, there is a growing political consensus that climate change poses a future risk to billions.

But the health impacts of pollution, deforestation and the mechanised food-chain are less well understood.

Nor is there any international agreement for the environment close to covering what the 2015 Paris accord does for climate.

The GEO compiles a litany of pollution-related health emergencies.

It said that poor environmental conditions "cause approximately 25 percent of global disease and mortality" -- around 9 million deaths in 2015 alone.

Lacking access to clean drinking supplies, 1.4 million people die each year from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea and parasites linked to pathogen-riddled water and poor sanitation.

Chemicals pumped into the seas cause "potentially multi-generational" adverse health effects, and land degradation through mega-farming and deforestation occurs in areas of Earth home to 3.2 billion people.

The report says air pollution causes 6-7 million early deaths annually.

"Urgent action at an unprecedented scale is necessary to arrest and reverse this situation," said a note to policymakers accompanying the report.

- 'Massive human damage' -

"If you have a healthy planet it supports not only global GDP but it also supports the lives of the very poorest because they depend on clean air and clean water," Joyeeta Gupta, GEO co-chair, told AFP.

"If you turn that around, an unhealthy system has massive damage on human lives."

The report called for a root-and-branch detoxifying of human behaviour while insisting that the situation is not unassailable.

Food waste for instance, which accounts for 9 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, could be slashed. The world currently throws away a third of all food produced. That figure is fuelled by 56 percent in richer nations going to waste.

"Everyone is saying that by 2050 we have to feed 10 billion people, but that doesn't mean we have to double production," Gupta said.

"If we reduce our waste and perhaps have less meat you could immediately reduce that problem."

The report also called for a rapid drawdown in greenhouse gas emissions and pesticide use to improve air and water quality, and a move towards more sustainable industry.

"There is a clear prognosis of what will happen if we continue with business as usual," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

- Tale of inequality -

The GEO draws on hundreds of data sources to calculate the environmental impact on over 100 diseases.

Its unveiling at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi is likely to add to the debate over who bears the greatest responsibility for the damage already borne by Earth.

Sources close to the negotiations told AFP some developed nations, led by the United States, had threatened not to "welcome" the GEO report -- a procedural but nonetheless significant hurdle if nations are to agree on the necessary cuts in waste, overconsumption and pollution.

Gupta said that nations, however big or small, would all have to adapt to the environmental reality facing every human on the planet.

"If you look at land, it's fixed," she said. "If the population is going to go up we have to redistribute, one way or the other.

"If you look at freshwater, it's more or less fixed. You have to end up sharing. This is a discourse that many developed countries don't like."

Mohamed Adow, climate lead for Christian Aid, said while the report highlighted many dangers and solutions, it stopped short of directly naming the problem.

"Our environmental and climatic breakdown is driven by an economic model that pursues endless growth at all costs," he told AFP.

"Without reform and transformational change it's not sustainable and the UN needs to spell out these hard inconvenient truths."

Air pollution raises diabetes risk in China: study
Hong Kong (AFP) March 13, 2019 - Long-term exposure to harmful smog particles increases the risk of diabetes, a new study in China has shown, providing evidence for a link between the country's air pollution and the disease.

China is facing the largest diabetes problem in the world with around 11 percent of its population suffering from the metabolic illness, according to a United States study published in 2017.

Increased prosperity has brought changing diets and lifestyles, along with an air pollution crisis that the World Health Organization estimates causes over a million premature deaths every year.

The risk of diabetes rose by about 16 percent for an increase of 10 microgrammes per cubic metre in long-term PM2.5 particle exposure, researchers from Fuwai Hospital in Beijing and Emory University in the US found in a study published online by Environment International last week.

"Sustained improvement of air quality will help decrease the diabetes epidemic in China," Lu Xiangfeng, one of the study's authors, told AFP in an email.

Researchers collected data from over 88,000 subjects across 15 provinces, estimating their exposure to PM2.5 based on satellite data from 2004 to 2015.

PM2.5 includes toxins like sulfate and black carbon, which can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system, and have been linked to higher rates of lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and heart disease.

While similar studies in North America, Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan have linked air pollution with diabetes, researchers say this is the largest study of its kind in mainland China.

"Due to high levels of PM2.5, different exposure pattern and population susceptibility, results from developed countries with low PM2.5 levels were not applicable in China," Lu said.

His team adjusted for factors such as age, body mass index, smoking status, family history of diabetes and work-related physical activity levels, but did not directly factor in dietary habits and other types of pollutants.

Ho Kin-fai, a professor at the Chinese University in Hong Kong who studies air pollutants and is not involved in the study, told AFP the study shows air pollution is a factor in the diabetes epidemic "that we cannot ignore".

But scientists still need to find evidence showing how PM2.5 particles work in the human body to increase risk of the disease," Ho said.

Ho said the study excludes "some other factors in the environment that maybe we haven't considered ... so that's why we need to have more evidence from the biological mechanism to prove it's true."

Diabetes is a growing public health problem throughout the world, killing an estimated 1.6 million people in 2016, according to the WHO, which says the problem is increasing more rapidly in low and middle-income countries.

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