24/10/06, Tenille Bonoguore, Humans are ‘bankrupting' the environment
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The world's natural ecosystems are being degraded at a rate unprecedented in human history, and it's the first-world behemoths doing most of the damage.
An international report compiled by the World Wildlife Fund has studied the impact of each nation on the environment as well as changes in the world's biodiversity. Both parts of the report deliver bad news.
Despite having enough natural resources to be an “ecological debtor,” Canada came fourth on the list of nations putting the heaviest burden on the environment.
The only countries with a worse ecological footprint — the per capita measurement of a nation's ecological impact — were the United Arab Emirates, thanks almost entirely to its carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the United States and Finland.
“Canadians are probably eight times more profligate than the planet can actually sustain. We'd be in trouble if the rest of the world acted like us,” said botanist and zoologist Steven Price, who is senior director of conservation policy for WWF Canada.
Not only do industry and households waste energy, but the nation also wastes natural resources, says Mr. Price, and that is adding up to disaster.
In a bid to make more people understand the situation, the WWF is shying away from the traditional terms of environmental reporting and instead has tied the report to one bottom line: humans are withdrawing too much from the world's reserves, and the resource bank is running out.
“We're creating an ecological debt and over time we have to pay. Nature's capital is falling,” Mr. Price said.
The report states that impact on the planet has more than tripled since 1961, and society's footprint now exceeds the world's ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent. Reliance on fossil fuels continues to grow, and climate-changing emissions now make up 48 per cent of that global footprint.
The carbon dioxide footprint from the use of fossil fuels was the fastest growing component of world change, increasing more than ninefold from 1961 to 2003.
The other index in the report, the Living Planet Index, shows a rapid and continuing loss of biodiversity, with populations of vertebrate species declining by about one third since 1970.
“Effectively, the Earth's regenerative capacity can no longer keep up with demand – people are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources,” the report states.
Even with moderate projections of population, food and carbon dioxide impacts, the WWF says that humanity's resource demand will be double the Earth's capacity by 2050.
The change had to come from both industry and individuals, Mr. Price said.
“We are bad performers. We overheat our homes in winter, and over-cool them in summer,” he said.
“There are greener choices out there. There are ways to buy green energy. You can buy wind power and solar power right now. If we make these greener choices and if we use less, we can drastically reduce that footprint. Ultimately, if we don't show the financial benefit of these, we'll miss one of the greatest drivers of change.”
The average per-capita environmental footprint is 2.2 global hectares per person (a hectare with world-average ability to produce resources and absorb wastes). Canada averages 7.6 gha, while the United States uses 9.6 gha.
One saving grace, however, is Canada's vast wealth of resources. Thanks to its massive bio-capacity, the WWF says Canada does have plenty up its sleeve and, unlike most nations, has a positive ecological deficit and puts very little stress on its freshwater systems.
The footprint of a country includes all the cropland, grazing land, forest, and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre, and timber it consumes, to absorb the wastes emitted in generating the energy it uses, and to provide space for its infrastructure.
An international report compiled by the World Wildlife Fund has studied the impact of each nation on the environment as well as changes in the world's biodiversity. Both parts of the report deliver bad news.
Despite having enough natural resources to be an “ecological debtor,” Canada came fourth on the list of nations putting the heaviest burden on the environment.
The only countries with a worse ecological footprint — the per capita measurement of a nation's ecological impact — were the United Arab Emirates, thanks almost entirely to its carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the United States and Finland.
“Canadians are probably eight times more profligate than the planet can actually sustain. We'd be in trouble if the rest of the world acted like us,” said botanist and zoologist Steven Price, who is senior director of conservation policy for WWF Canada.
Not only do industry and households waste energy, but the nation also wastes natural resources, says Mr. Price, and that is adding up to disaster.
In a bid to make more people understand the situation, the WWF is shying away from the traditional terms of environmental reporting and instead has tied the report to one bottom line: humans are withdrawing too much from the world's reserves, and the resource bank is running out.
“We're creating an ecological debt and over time we have to pay. Nature's capital is falling,” Mr. Price said.
The report states that impact on the planet has more than tripled since 1961, and society's footprint now exceeds the world's ability to regenerate by about 25 per cent. Reliance on fossil fuels continues to grow, and climate-changing emissions now make up 48 per cent of that global footprint.
The carbon dioxide footprint from the use of fossil fuels was the fastest growing component of world change, increasing more than ninefold from 1961 to 2003.
The other index in the report, the Living Planet Index, shows a rapid and continuing loss of biodiversity, with populations of vertebrate species declining by about one third since 1970.
“Effectively, the Earth's regenerative capacity can no longer keep up with demand – people are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources,” the report states.
Even with moderate projections of population, food and carbon dioxide impacts, the WWF says that humanity's resource demand will be double the Earth's capacity by 2050.
The change had to come from both industry and individuals, Mr. Price said.
“We are bad performers. We overheat our homes in winter, and over-cool them in summer,” he said.
“There are greener choices out there. There are ways to buy green energy. You can buy wind power and solar power right now. If we make these greener choices and if we use less, we can drastically reduce that footprint. Ultimately, if we don't show the financial benefit of these, we'll miss one of the greatest drivers of change.”
The average per-capita environmental footprint is 2.2 global hectares per person (a hectare with world-average ability to produce resources and absorb wastes). Canada averages 7.6 gha, while the United States uses 9.6 gha.
One saving grace, however, is Canada's vast wealth of resources. Thanks to its massive bio-capacity, the WWF says Canada does have plenty up its sleeve and, unlike most nations, has a positive ecological deficit and puts very little stress on its freshwater systems.
The footprint of a country includes all the cropland, grazing land, forest, and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre, and timber it consumes, to absorb the wastes emitted in generating the energy it uses, and to provide space for its infrastructure.
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