The United Nations has launched a global campaign to confront a growing danger: antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. The warning is stark. By 2050, drug-resistant infections could claim as many as 10 million lives each year, underscoring how pollution and environmental degradation accelerate the emergence, transmission, and spread of resistance. The economic toll is likewise alarming, with estimates suggesting billions of dollars in lost GDP annually and millions pushed into extreme poverty by 2030 due to RAM-related costs and disruptions.
Experts describe “superbugs” as microbial threats that resist the antibiotics and other medicines used to treat infections. These pathogens include bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi that withstand standard treatments. If actions are delayed, the impact could surpass that of cancer in terms of deaths and suffering.
Antimicrobial resistance occurs when strains adapt and endure the medicines designed to kill them or slow their growth. The World Health Organization has made AMR one of its top global health threats, while the United Nations views preventing its appearance and spread as a fundamental condition for preserving modern medicine, ensuring safe food systems, and safeguarding the environment.
The risk is substantial: if antimicrobials lose effectiveness, even mild infections could become deadly, threatening core medical capabilities. The UN warns that the situation is already urgent.
Recent assessments show that superbugs are present today. In 2019 alone, drug-resistant pathogens were linked to a significant number of deaths worldwide, with mortality figures rising when considering both direct and indirect effects reported by environmental programs and health agencies.
Triple planetary crisis
Global attention on AMR has traditionally centered on human health and agriculture. Yet there is growing evidence that the environment plays a dual role: it influences how antimicrobial resistance emerges, moves, and persists, and it also offers essential solutions. The United Nations emphasizes a multidimensional framework to understand these processes across ecosystems, with a call for coordinated action that integrates science, policy, and practice.
The UN acknowledges progress in areas such as waste management and safe handling of materials. At the same time, it stresses that meaningful gains require continued improvement in environmental stewardship and responsible practices across sectors.
Antimicrobial resistance is linked to climate change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and pollution. It compounds a broader crisis driven by human activity and unsustainable consumption patterns. Addressing climate change, protecting biodiversity, and reducing pollution are all part of stopping the emergence of resistant organisms.
Increased and sometimes improper use of antimicrobials—along with environmental stressors like pollutants—creates favorable conditions for resistance to develop in humans and in the environment, including wastewater systems where pathogens can thrive.
The UN emphasizes that the core of the AMR response lies in integrating environmental considerations as a central element of the solution.
Limit antimicrobial use
The UNEP report recommends a holistic approach that recognizes the interdependence of human health, veterinary care, and plant protection while proposing actions at global, regional, and local levels. It calls for broad participation from all sectors and stakeholders, including governments and non-governmental organizations.
The document outlines a long agenda for various sectors. In the pharmaceutical industry, it urges stronger regulatory frameworks and inspection systems, along with incentives to ensure that updates and improvements occur in drug manufacturing processes.
The food and agriculture sector is urged to limit antimicrobial use and reduce waste that enters the environment, protecting water resources from pollution caused by resistant organisms and antimicrobial residues. It also highlights the importance of avoiding antibiotics used as a last resort in human medicine and improving management of waste from agricultural sources.
In health care, attention is given to the disposal, procurement, management, and treatment of antimicrobial drugs, and to removing hazardous waste from health facilities. Another key proposal focuses on strengthening scientific research and innovation to reduce antimicrobial use and minimize the release of resistant organisms into the environment.
For further reading and official context, the UNEP provides a comprehensive reference: UNEP resource on environmental action related to superbugs (UNEP report on antimicrobial resistance and the environment).