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Our News
A Chance for Change
Two decades after the first Earth Summit, WWF’s latest Living Planet Report finds that humankind is still overdrafting the planet’s resources. How can we move towards a sustainable future?
The UN returns to Rio de Janeiro for Earth Summit 2012 (also known as Rio 20+) this June. The conference focused on “a green economy in the context of sustainable development poverty eradication” and “the institutional framework for sustainable development.” World leaders worked in concert with NGOs, members of government, the private sector and other groups to shape the future of our planet.
In May, WWF issued the Living Planet Report 2012, a biennial publication detailing the health of the planet based on our Living Planet Index (LPI) and Ecological Footprint. The report finds that our planet is not healthy. Humanity is currently using 50 percent more resources than the Earth can provide, putting tremendous pressure on our ecosystems. It takes the Earth one and a half years to regenerate the goods and services we use, and to absorb the CO2 emissions that we produce. If this trend continues, by 2030 even two Earths will not be enough to sustain us!
Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact
Biodiversity continues to decline. Tropical and freshwater habitats have been hit hardest. The Living Planet Report uses the global Living Planet Index to measure changes in the health of the planet's ecosystems by tracking 9,000 populations of 2,688 vertebrate species. The global LPI shows a decrease of around 30 percent since 1970, with the tropics declining by a staggering 60 percent in less than 40 years.
The situation is particularly worrisome in biodiversity-rich Asia. In the Indo-Pacific region, the LPI shows an even greater decline of 64 percent in key populations of species over the same period. For example, in the Heart of Borneo, an average of 850,000 hectares of forest was lost every year between 1985 and 2005, due to palm oil plantations, mining and timber production. If this continues, by 2020 forest cover will drop to less than a third of what it was in 1950. Such habitat loss leads to tremendous impact on the wildlife inhabiting this region, such as orangutan, pygmy elephant, clouded leopard and Sumatran rhino.
Things are not well underwater either. Over 40 percent of the coral reefs and mangroves of the region have disappeared from the Coral Triangle over the last 40 years, exacerbating the decline in many fish populations. The Mekong River, in the Greater Mekong Subregion, is facing huge pressure on infrastructure development, threatening its populations of Irrawaddy dolphins.
Oceans are also seriously threatened by overexploitation. Between 1950 and 2005, industrial fisheries expanded worldwide. Since 1950, the area fished by global fishing fleets has increased ten-fold. By 2006, 100 million square kilometres, around one-third of the ocean surface, was already heavily impacted by fishing. There has been nearly a five-fold increase in global marine catch, from 19 million tonnes in 1950 to 87 million tonnes in 2005. The lack of effective management and the ever increasing market demand has led to widespread unsustainable fisheries. Populations of some of the highly-sought after and vulnerable species, such as bluefin tuna, sharks and a lot of the live reef food fish like groupers are showing serious signs of decline.
What are the components of the Ecological footprint?(click to enlarge)
Competition for Resources: Food, Water and Fuel
In general, wealthy nations continue to depend on other countries for food, water and energy. This has been contributing to an alarming rate of biodiversity loss in low-income, high-biodiversity countries. High income countries have an Ecological Footprint on average three times more than that of middle income countries and on average five times that of low income countries. The poorest and most vulnerable nations are subsidizing wealthy lifestyles.
The loss of biodiversity and its related ecosystem services in particularly impacts the poor, who rely most directly on nature to survive—especially for their daily food. For example the Coral Triangle alone directly sustains the lives of more than 120 million people who depend heavily on marine resources for food and income. Ever increasing demand for seafood from this region drives overexploitation and unsustainable fisheries, which eventually impact the livelihood of this ocean community.
On land, agriculture has come with environmental challenges. Globally agricultural production has soared by 45 per cent in the past 20 years. For example, demand for meat has been increasing over the last two decades. On average meat consumption worldwide rose from 34 kilograms per annum in 1992 to 43 kilograms in 2011. Such rapid growth was only made possible largely by intensifying production, use of agrochemicals and fertilizer. All these bear considerable ecological impact on the environment.
At present, 2.7 billion people live in river basins that experience severe water shortages at least one month of the year. The global increase in agriculture now accounts for 70 per cent of the water abstracted from rivers and underground reserves. Further unsustainable expansion of the global agriculture will unavoidably worsen the current situation.
The number of people living in cities around the world has shown a 45 per cent increase since 1992 and in general urban dwellers tend to consume more. Cities now account for 75 percent of energy consumption worldwide and are therefore responsible for the majority of the world’s fossil fuel related CO2 emissions.
All human needs for food and fuel have considerable implications for land use, natural ecosystems and the size of humanity’s Ecological Footprint. City dwellers in the developed world will be affected: many high-biodiversified regions serve as the world’s carbon sinks and fresh water sources, upon which our food, water and energy depend.
What is the Solution?
The global population has more than doubled since 1950 and is forecasted to reach 9.3 billion by 2050. Rising consumption trends in high-income groups around the world and in BRIICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa), combined with growing population numbers, indicate the potential for an even larger Ecological Footprint in the future. Global urbanization needs new ways of thinking to ensure adequate resources for all. Unsustainable use of natural resources should be abandoned; sustainable practices should be the norm. Investment in energy efficient infrastructures and ecosystems will be necessary to support the increasing numbers of urbanites.
We must reverse the tide by making better choices that place the natural world at the centre of economies, business models and lifestyles. Living within ecological boundaries requires a global consumption and production pattern in balance with the Earth’s biocapacity. We have to rethink the way we consume food, water and energy in order to minimise the impact on nature.
Equitable resource governance is essential to shrink and share our resource use. The solution to these problems may come at Rio 20+. We have the capacity to create a prosperous future that provides food, water and energy for the ten billion people who are expected to share the planet in 2050, but only if everyone—governments, companies, communities, citizens—step up to this challenge.
The full Living Planet Report, and an executive summary, can be downloaded at wwf.panda.org/lpr