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UAE, US Top List of Pressures on Nature, WWF Finds
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Humans Living Far Beyond Planet's
Means, WWF Says
By Ben Blanchard
Reuters
Tuesday 24 October 2006
Beijing - 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 prestigious 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 vertebrate 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.
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UAE, US Top List of Pressures
on Nature, WWF Finds
Reuters
Tuesday 24 October 2006
Following is a ranking issued by
the WWF conservation group on Tuesday of the 10 nations
whose inhabitants place most demands per capita on the
world's natural resources.
It said in a report that humans were
stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and would need
two planets' worth of natural resources every year by
2050 on current trends.
Nations with the biggest per capita
"ecological footprints" were: 1. United Arab Emirates
2. United States 3. Finland 4. Canada 5. Kuwait 6. Australia
7. Estonia 8. Sweden 9. New Zealand 10. Norway.
People in the United Arab Emirates,
for instance, needed the equivalent of almost 12 hectares
(29.65 acres) per person of productive land or seas in
2003 to provide natural resources they used and to re-absorb
their waste.
The global average demand was 2.2
hectares, far above the available supply of 1.8 hectares
per person.
The "ecological footprints", calculated
by the WWF, comprise use of fossil fuels, nuclear power,
cropland, grazing land, built-up land, fishing grounds,
forests. For the top nations, emissions from using fossil
fuels were the main component. |
