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Humanity’s survival at risk, warns
UN environment report
29 October, 2007
Humans are living far beyond their
means and wreaking havoc on the
environment that could be
irreversible, according to a report
released by the
United Nations.
Climate change, the rate of extinction
of species and the challenge of
feeding a growing population are among
the threats putting humanity at risk,
the UN Environment Program said in its
fourth Global Environmental Outlook
since 1997.
In the report released on October 25,
2007, Achim Steiner, executive
director of the UN Environment
Program, said, “The human population
is now so large that the amount of
resources needed to sustain it exceeds
what is available at current
consumption patterns. Efficient use of
resources and reducing waste now are
among the greatest challenges at the
beginning of 21st century.”
The UN Environment Program described
its report, which was prepared by 388
experts and scientists, as the
broadest and deepest of those that the
UN issues on the environment and also
as the “the final wake-up call to the
international community.”
Over the past two decades, the global
population has risen by nearly 34% to
6.7 billion from 5 billion. In a
similar fashion, financial wealth of
the planet
has jumped by about a third.
However, the land available to each
person on earth had shrunk to 2.02
hectares (5 acres) by 2005 from 7.91
hectares in 1900 and is projected to
drop further to 1.63 hectares for each
person by 2050.
The outcome of the population growth,
coupled with unsustainable
consumption, has resulted in an
increasingly stressed planet where
natural disasters and environmental
degradation endanger millions of
humans, as well as plant and animal
species, the Global Environmental
Outlook said.
The demand for resources is about 22
hectares per person – a figure that
would have to be cut to between 15
hectares and 16 hectares per person to
stay within existing, sustainable
limits.
The persistent problems which the
report identified include a rapid rise
of so-called “dead zones” – where
marine life no longer can be supported
because of depletion of oxygen caused
by pollutants like fertilizers – and
the resurgence of diseases linked with
environmental degradation.
The UN Environment Program’s report is
being published two decades after a
commission headed by Gro Harlem
Brundtland, former Prime Minister of
Norway, had warned that the survival
of humanity was at stake from
unsustainable development.
Many of the problems identified by the
Brundtland Commission, Achim Steiner
said, are even more acute because not
enough had been done to stop
environmental degradation as flows of
goods, services, people, technologies
and workers had expanded, even to
isolated populations.
West European governments, he added,
had taken effective measures to cut
air pollutants, and lauded Brazil’s
efforts to stop deforestation in some
parts of the Amazon.
An international treaty to tackle the
hole in the earth’s ozone layer had
led to the phasing out of release of
95% of ozone-damaging chemicals.
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