UN Report Offers Bleak Environmental Outlook
A new and exhaustive UN report on the state of the environment and the world’s resources makes for sobering reading.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Environment Outlook 4, GEO-4, comes 20 years after the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) produced its seminal report, Our Common Future.
While there has been progress on some of the more straightforward problems for which solutions are proven, like the pollution of air and water, there remain what GEO-4’s authors call the persistent problems for which solutions are emerging - for example, climate change, deterioration of fisheries, and the extinction of species.
The report says the scale of the challenge is huge and without action humanity’s very existence is threatened.
Worldwide, greenhouse gas emissions, for example, some experts say, will need to fall by up to 50 per cent by 2050, compared with their 1990 levels – this is based on a threshold of a 2°C increase in the global mean temperature above pre-industrial levels, beyond which, some experts say, climate impacts become significantly more severe, and the threat of major, irreversible damage more plausible.
This implies emissions cuts of 60-80 per cent by 2050 in developed countries, and significant cuts for developing nations, should they accept emissions reduction commitments.
GEO-4 also warns that we are living far beyond our means. The human population is now so large that “the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available.”
Humanity’s footprint [its environmental demand] is 21.9 hectares per person while the Earth’s biological capacity is, on average, only 15.7 ha/person…”.
The crisis includes not just climate change, extinction rates and hunger, but other problems driven by growing human numbers, the rising consumption of the rich and the desperation of the poor, the report says.
Examples are:
- Decline of fish stocks;
- Loss of fertile land through degradation;
- Unsustainable pressure on resources;
- Dwindling amount of fresh water available for humans and other creatures to share
- Risk that environmental damage could pass unknown points of no return.
GEO-4 says climate change is a “global priority”, demanding political will and leadership. Yet it finds “a remarkable lack of urgency”, and a “woefully inadequate” global response.
The report concludes that “while governments are expected to take the lead, other stakeholders are just as important to ensure success in achieving sustainable development. The need couldn’t be more urgent and the time couldn’t be more opportune, with our enhanced understanding of the challenges we face, to act now to safeguard our own survival and that of future generations.”
The report can be downloaded at no charge from the UNEP website.
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