wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  WWF 24 Oct 06
Human footprint too big for nature

Yahoo News 24 Oct 06
Humans living far beyond planet's means: WWF
By Ben Blanchard

Yahoo News 24 Oct 06
WWF warns of dire impact of world's over-consumption
by Peter Capella

GENEVA (AFP) - The world's population will be using twice as many resources as the planet can produce within 50 years unless there is immediate change in the way humanity lives, the environmental group WWF said in a report.

"We are in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the earth can replace them," said WWF Director General James Leape.

"The consequences of this are predictable and dire. "The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging over-consumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable living," he added.

The "Living Planet" report, a balance sheet of the world's environment published every other year, showed relentless growth in demand on the earth's capacity to produce clean air, and to provide raw materials, food and energy.

Two years ago, the same report based on 2001 data said the world's population was already outstripping the earth's capacity to regenerate resources by just over 20 percent.

The 2006 edition of the WWF report said that figure had risen to 25 percent in 2003. Humanity's "ecological foot print" tripled between 1961 and 2003, fuelled largely by the use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, it added.

The WWF said carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption were the fastest growing component of the index in that period, increasing more than ninefold.

Meanwhile, a survey of animal life from 1970 to 2003 found that terrestrial species had declined by 31 percent, freshwater species by 28 percent and marine species by 27 percent.

"This global trend suggests that we are degrading natural ecosystems at a rate unprecedented in human history," the report said.

Leape said: "It is time to make some vital choices. Change that improves living standards while reducing the impact on the natural world will not be easy."

Each person occupies an "ecological footprint" equivalent to 2.2 hectares (5.4 acres) in terms of their capacity to pollute or consume energy and other resources including food, while the planet can only offer them 1.8 hectares each, according to the report.

"Even moderate 'business as usual' is likely to accelerate these negative impacts," it said.

The WWF estimated that even a rapid reversal in consumption habits now would only bring the world back to 1980s levels -- when it was already over-consuming -- by 2040.

The United Arab Emirates (11.9 hectares per person) and the United States (9.6) again came at the top of the Living Planet's ranking of the environmental impact of countries, largely due to high energy consumption.

Finland and Canada overtook oil-producing and consuming Kuwait to take third and fourth place in the table. Like other Nordic nations, Finland has relatively low energy consumption but its timber industry puts forests under strain, according to the WWF.

Australia, Estonia, Sweden, New Zealand and Norway made up the rest of the top ten of national ecological footprints, followed by Denmark, France, Belgium and Britain.

China's 1.2 billion people ranked 69th with a growing average footprint of 1.6 hectares. The WWF said the Asian giant's rapid economic development implied that it had "a key role in keeping the world on the path to sustinability".

The WWF's footprint for a country includes all the agricultural land, forest, and fishing areas required to produce the food, fibre, and timber it consumes. It also assesses a nation's capacity to absorb the amount of wastes it produces while generating energy, as well as the space needed for its infrastructure.


Yahoo News 24 Oct 06
Humans living far beyond planet's means: WWF
By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and will need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends, the WWF conservation group said on Tuesday.

Populations of many species, from fish to mammals, had fallen by about a third from 1970 to 2003 largely because of human threats such as pollution, clearing of forests and overfishing, the group also said in a two-yearly report.

"For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth's ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF's 2006 Living Planet Report.

"If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us," Leape, an American, said in Beijing.

People in the United Arab Emirates were placing most stress per capita on the planet ahead of those in the United States, Finland and Canada, the report said. Australia was also living well beyond its means. The average Australian used 6.6 "global" hectares to support their developed lifestyle, ranking behind the United States and Canada, but ahead of the United Kingdom, Russia, China and Japan.

"If the rest of the world led the kind of lifestyles we do here in Australia, we would require three-and-a-half planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste," said Greg Bourne, WWF-Australia chief executive officer.

Everyone would have to change lifestyles -- cutting use of fossil fuels and improving management of everything from farming to fisheries.

"As countries work to improve the well-being of their people, they risk bypassing the goal of sustainability," said Leape, speaking in an energy-efficient building at Beijing's prestigous Tsinghua University.

"It is inevitable that this disconnect will eventually limit the abilities of poor countries to develop and rich countries to maintain their prosperity," he added.

The report said humans' "ecological footprint" -- the demand people place on the natural world -- was 25 percent greater than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste in 2003. In the previous report, the 2001 overshoot was 21 percent.

"On current projections humanity, will be using two planets' worth of natural resources by 2050 -- if those resources have not run out by then," the latest report said. "People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources."

RISING POPULATION

"Humanity's footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003," it said. Consumption has outpaced a surge in the world's population, to 6.5 billion from 3 billion in 1960. U.N. projections show a surge to 9 billion people around 2050.

It said that the footprint from use of fossil fuels, whose heat-trapping emissions are widely blamed for pushing up world temperatures, was the fastest-growing cause of strain.

Leape said China, home to a fifth of the world's population and whose economy is booming, was making the right move in pledging to reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years.

"Much will depend on the decisions made by China, India and other rapidly developing countries," he added.

The WWF report also said that an index tracking 1,300 vetebrate species -- birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals -- showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms.

Among species most under pressure included the swordfish and the South African Cape vulture. Those bucking the trend included rising populations of the Javan rhinoceros and the northern hairy-nosed wombat in Australia. (Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Helsinki)


WWF 24 Oct 06
Human footprint too big for nature

Beijing, China/Gland, Switzerland – The world’s natural ecosystems are being degraded at a rate unprecedented in human history, according to a report released today by WWF, the global conservation organization.

WWF’s 2006 Living Planet Report, the group’s biennial statement on the state of the natural world, says that on current projections humanity will be using two planets’ worth of natural resources by 2050 — if those resources have not run out by then.

It also confirms the trend of biodiversity loss seen in previous Living Planet reports.

Already resources are depleting, with the report showing that vertebrate species populations have declined by about one-third in the 33 years from 1970 to 2003.

At the same time, humanity’s Ecological Footprint — the demand people place upon the natural world — has increased to the point where the Earth is unable to keep up in the struggle to regenerate.

"We are in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the Earth can replace them," WWF International’s Director General James Leape said. “The consequences of this are predictable and dire." "It is time to make some vital choices," he added.

"Change that improves living standards while reducing our impact on the natural world will not be easy. The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging over-consumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable living.”

The Living Planet Report, launched in Beijing, China, pulls together various data to compile two indicators of the Earth’s well-being.

The first, the Living Planet Index, measures biodiversity, based on trends in more than 3,600 populations of 1,300 vertebrate species around the world. In all, data for 695 terrestrial, 344 freshwater and 274 marine species were analyzed. Terrestrial species declined by 31 per cent, freshwater species by 28 per cent, and marine species by 27 per cent.

The second index, the Ecological Footprint, measures humanity’s demand on the biosphere. Humanity’s footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003.

This report shows that our footprint exceeded biocapacity by 25 per cent in 2003. In the previous report (based on data to 2001), this figure was 21 per cent.

The carbon dioxide footprint, from the use of fossil fuels, was the fastest growing component of our global footprint, increasing more than ninefold from 1961 to 2003.

Countries of over a million people with the largest footprint, in global hectares per person, are the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, Finland, Canada, Kuwait, Australia, Estonia, Sweden, New Zealand and Norway.

China comes mid-way in world rankings, at number 69, but its growing economy and rapid development mean it has a key role in keeping the world on the path to sustainability.
links
Singapore's score? Unfortunately, Singapore was not included in the 2006 report because "insufficient data were available to calculate Ecological Footprint and biocapacity figures".
Living Planet Report 2006 - Full Report (PDF file 3.08 MB) download

Background on the Living Planet Report on the WWF website

Related articles on Global issues: general
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com