Green
decline 'may bring irreversible change'
With
forests and fish stocks declining, water demand rising and lack of
action on climate change, humanity's path is anything but
sustainable, the UN warns
By
Richard Black, Environment correspondent, BBC News
BBC,
6
June, 2012
The
Global Environmental
Outlook says significant progress is seen on only four out of 90
environmental goals.
Meanwhile,
a team of scientists warns that life on Earth may be on the way to an
irreversible "tipping point".
The
UN Environment Programme (Unep) urges leaders to agree tough goals at
this month's Rio+20 summit.
Where
governments have agreed specific treaties, it says, major change has
transpired.
However,
negotiations leading up to the summit appear mired in problems, with
governments failing to find agreement since January on issues such as
eliminating subsidies on fossil fuels, regulating fishing on the high
seas and obliging corporations to measure their environmental
footprint.
"GEO-5
reminds world leaders and nations meeting at Rio+20 why a decisive
and defining transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient,
job-generating 'green economy' is urgently needed," said Achim
Steiner, Unep's executive director.
"If
current trends continue, if current patterns of production and
consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed, then
governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and
degradation."
Pollution
costs
This
is the fifth edition of the Global Environmental Outlook, Unep's
blue-chip five-yearly assessment of the natural world.
Lettuces
growing in computer-controlled greenhouse in China Innovative farming
methods can save on water and fertilisers while giving good yields
The
last, published in 2007, warned that factors such as rising demand
for freshwater were affecting human wellbeing.
For
the current edition, researchers assessed progress in 90 important
environmental issues.
They
concluded that meaningful progress had been made on just four -
making petrol lead-free, tackling ozone layer depletion, increasing
access to clean water and boosting research on marine pollution.
A
further 40 showed some progress, including the establishment of
protected habitat for plants and animals on land and slowing the rate
of deforestation.
Little
or no progress was noted for 24, including tackling climate change,
while clear deterioration was found in eight, including the parlous
state of coral reefs around the world.
For
the remainder, there was too little data to draw firm conclusions.
This
is despite more than 700 international agreements designed to tackle
specific aspects of environmental decline, and agreements on
alleviating poverty and malnutrition such as the Millennium
Development Goals.
Among
the report's "low-lights" are:
- air pollution indoors and outdoors is probably causing more than six million premature deaths each year
- greenhouse gas emissions are on track to warm the world by at least 3C on average by 2100
- most river basins contain places where drinking water standards are below World Health Organization standards
- only 1.6% of the world's oceans are protected.
A
few hours after GEO-5's release, the journal Nature published a
review of evidence on environmental change concluding that the
biosphere - the part of the planet that supports life - could be
heading for rapid, possibly irreversible change.
The
authors, headed by Anthony Barnofsky from the University of
California, Berkeley, combined information on major transformations
in the Earth's past (such as mass extinctions) with models
incorporating the present and the immediate future.
More
than 40% of the Earth's land is used for human needs, including
cities and farms; and with the population set to grow by a further
two billion by 2050, that figure could soon exceed 50%.
Rising
demand for resource-expensive foods such as beef could mean it
happens by 2025, Prof Barnofsky's modelling suggests.
"It
really will be a new world, biologically, at that point," he
said.
"I
think that if we want to avoid the most unpleasant surprises, we want
to stay away from the 50% mark."
Rio
calling
At
the core of the Rio+20 agenda is the idea of changing many of the
factors driving this pattern of environmental decline while also
raising living standards for the world's poor.
Unep
adds its voice to many others urging world leaders to seize this
baton when they assemble in Rio on 20 June.
Before
and after image of Sumatran forest cleared for palm oil plantation
The world continues to lose forested areas, despite planting
campaigns in East Asia and Europe
Population
growth, unsustainable consumption in western and fast-industrialising
nations, and environmentally destructive subsidies all need urgent
action, it says.
A
few years ago the World Bank concluded that destructive fishing
practices, fuelled largely by subsidies, had depleted stocks so much
that society was missing out on $50bn per year worth of fish it could
otherwise have eaten.
The
G20 has previously agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies -
calculated at over $400bn per year - without setting firm targets or
a timetable. Unep says leaders should make specific moves on this in
Rio.
The
summit - which marks 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit and 40 years
since the very first UN environmental gathering in Stockholm - is
likely to agree to develop a set of sustainable development goals
(SDGs), a concept that Unep endorses.
It
points out that factors such as air pollution and climate change are
also imposing costs on the global economy - in the US, for example,
air pollution is calculated to cut crop yields by $14-26bn each year.
"The
moment has come to put away the paralysis of indecision, acknowledge
the facts and face up to the common humanity that unites all
peoples," said Mr Steiner.
"Rio+20
is a moment to turn sustainable development from aspiration and
patchy implementation into a genuine path to progress and prosperity
for this and the next generations to come."
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