Yahoo! News - Humans Must Change Course for Planet to Sustain Future Generations - Science Panel
Abid Aslam, OneWorld US
WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 31 (OneWorld) - Our children and grandchildren will live in a world hostile to human habitation unless we curb runaway consumption and the environmental abuses that fuel modern development, more than 1,300 scientists have warned in an unprecedented study of Earth’s ability to sustain life.
‘’At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning,'’ representatives of the science panel said in a statement. ‘’Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.'’
Growing demand for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel led humans to change ecosystems on which life depends more rapidly and extensively over the past 50 years than in any comparable time in human history, the experts said in a ‘’Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.'’
‘’This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth,'’ they said, adding that extinction stalks 10-30 percent of mammal, bird, and amphibian species. Possible consequences include outbreaks of disease among humans or among animals and plants on which we rely for food.
Two-thirds of ecosystems on which life depends already have been degraded or exploited too much, the study said. Two natural resources–fisheries and fresh water–appeared to be well below levels that could sustain current, much less future, demand.
Nevertheless, major changes in consumption, better education, and new technology could reduce the damage and improve the outlook.
If humans do not alter course, the scientists warned, then these systems likely will deteriorate further over the next half-century as the increased use of resources that accompanied economic growth in the late 20th century continues at an unsustainable rate.
The assessment was aimed at influencing governments’ thinking on how to achieve the goals set out by four major international treaties covering the protection of species and environments. It further concluded that international commitments to improve the health, education, and economic opportunities of the world’s poorest people could not be met without addressing environmental crises.
‘’Any progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental protection is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem ’services’ on which humanity relies continue to be degraded,'’ the report said.
The situation is not hopeless, so long as humans change the way we manage our economies, run our businesses, and consume goods and services.
The report’s recommendations for urgently needed action included removing subsidies to agriculture, fisheries, and oil and gas companies that encourage environmental harm–for example by rewarding overproduction, which gives farmers an incentive to ignore gluts and drive up surpluses by using chemical fertilizers.
Rather, the scientists recommended paying landowners to manage property in ways that help the environment, and using free-market incentives to reduce farm pollution and global-warming gas emissions.
Currently, for example, airlines pay for the fuel they buy but not for the fumes they emit by burning it. The study suggested such ‘’externalities'’ should be factored into companies’ bottom lines, adding that ways existed to soften the impact on businesses and consumers.
The scientists also sought greater investment in cleaner agricultural and energy technology–particularly for harvesting wind, solar, and other forms of renewable power–and urged that oceans and other critical areas receive greater protection from development.
Progress has been made in some areas, the scientists said. New forests planted mainly in the Northern Hemisphere have begun to make a dent in global warming although the problem itself remains critical.
Policymakers, businesses, and consumers should not be naive about the tasks that lie ahead.
‘’These changes will be large and are not currently under way,'’ the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that worked on the study, said in a statement.
The study differed slightly from previous ones by categorizing ecosystems in terms of the ‘’services,'’ or benefits, that they provide people–timber for building, for example, clean air to breathe, fish for food, and fibers to make clothes.
It said a booming world population and the demands of modernization drove the overuse of these natural resources after World War II.
Real human progress was made. Economies and food production soared. But the cost to the environment now imperils future prosperity, the study said.
Take the case of agriculture. More land was converted to plant and animal farming since 1945 than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, first made in 1913, used on the planet were applied after 1985. Crop, livestock, and aquaculture yields flourished.
The cost? Nitrogen and phosphate farm runoff has choked off oxygen, creating coastal ‘’dead zones'’ around the world and the problem likely will worsen, threatening fishery production and more. In the United States, such dead zones include those in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and Puget Sound.
Four years of research by 1,360 experts in 95 countries culminated in the 2,500-page study, released Wednesday and based on evidence that enjoyed consensus endorsement by scientific bodies around the world. The United Nations, World Bank, international environmental and development agencies, and U.S. philanthropies backed the effort. The private sector and non-governmental organizations provided advice and guidance.
‘’The overriding conclusion of this assessment is that it lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the nature services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all,'’ the science panel’s directors concluded.
‘’Achieving this, however, will require radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making and new ways of cooperation between government, business and civil society.'’
