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Compiled By GayToday
Inequalities of wealth, power, opportunities, and survival prospects among the world's peoples are confounding efforts to reverse environmental degradation, reports a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2000:The Environmental Trends That are Shaping Our Future.
“From the global digital divide to the devastating AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics, the trends in Vital Signs 2000 are exposing numerous fault lines between the North and the South, within nations, and between men and women,” said Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, co-author of the report. “At the same time, however, we need an unprecedented level of cooperation to solve global problems.” Although the world economy pumped out nearly $41 trillion of goods and services in 1999, 45 percent of the income went to the 12 percent of the world's people who live in western industrial countries. “This wealthy minority is largely responsible for the excessive consumption that drives environmental decline,” said co-author Molly O. Sheehan, Worldwatch Research Associate. For example, per capita paper use in industrial nations is 9 times higher than in developing countries. The number of cars per person is about 100 times higher in North America, Western Europe, and Japan than in India or China, according to Vital Signs, funded by the United Nations Population Fund and the W. Alton Jones Foundation.
But even the richest nations cannot insulate themselves from emerging global threats. The resurgence in tuberculosis (TB) may kill an additional 70 million people by 2020. A catastrophic decline in amphibians is wiping out a rich source for new medicines. The warming atmosphere has spurred more severe weather events, including the December 1999 storms that caused nearly $10 billion in damage in Central and Western Europe. Some of the other shared challenges highlighted in Vital Signs 2000 include:
“We have begun to address these global challenges,” said Renner, “but all too often we are only slowing destructive trends, rather than reversing them. If we are going to build a more environmentally stable, healthy, and equitable society, we need to massively scale up our efforts.” Even though cigarette smoking has declined worldwide in recent years, annual deaths are projected to jump from 4 million in 1998 to 10 million in 2030. Some 80 percent of the world's smokers live in developing countries. Cigarette-related illnesses are likely to surge in countries that can least afford to treat them. The AIDS epidemic is particularly devastating in Sub-Saharan Africa, where it now causes one out of five deaths each year. Average life expectancy there is expected to plummet from a high of 59 years in the early 1990s to 45 years in this decade. The poor also bear the brunt of the TB epidemic: 95 percent of all new cases reported in 1998 were in developing countries.
Another trend that is not moving fast enough in the right direction is carbon emissions. Worldwide, climate-altering carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning fell 0.2 percent in 1999, marking a second consecutive year of decline. However, far more serious reductions are necessary to achieve the 70 percent cut that many scientists believe is needed to avert dangerous climate change. In this case, consumption in rich countries is hindering progress. Growth in motor vehicle production, and erosion of fuel efficiency as a result of surging sales of sports utility vehicles (SUVs), thwart a more substantial decline.
Global disparities are found not just between rich and poor countries, but also between men and women. “Women make up more than two-thirds of the illiterate population and three-fifths of the poor,” said Sheehan, “and they account for only 13 percent of the representatives in national legislatures.” Population growth is most rapid in the world's poorest regions, where women often lack access to family planning and education. The global population passed the 6 billion milestone in 1999, growing from only 2.5 billion in 1950. Vital Signs 2000 highlights several encouraging trends in renewable energy and efficiency technologies. For instance, 1999 saw wind power, the world's fastest-growing energy source, surge by 39 percent, production of solar cells expand by 30 percent, and sales of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) grow by a robust 11 percent. As these energy alternatives are scaled up and take root in developing countries as well, they will make a serious dent in carbon output and help stabilize the climate. Another instance of a positive trend that could be accelerated is organic farming. Much of the agricultural economy around the world has stagnated, but sales of organic products are growing by more than 20 percent a year. Organic farmers replace agrochemicals with a greater diversity of crops, rotations, and sophisticated pest control strategies. As a result, organic farming can reduce groundwater pollution, threats to wildlife, and consumer exposure to pesticides. Farmers in Europe have doubled the area cultivated with organic methods to 4 million hectares in only 3 years. In Italy and Austria, the share of agricultural land certified organic topped 10 percent in 1999. However, farmers around the world are expected to scale back plantings of genetically modified seeds in 2000. Tax reform is one of several policy tools that can accelerate positive environmental change. By levying taxes on fossil fuels and pesticides and other pollutants, governments can simultaneously reduce environmental decay and reduce levies on income, wages, profits, and built property. In the last decade, eight Western European countries pioneered “tax shifts,” raising taxes on environmentally harmful activities and using the revenue to cut conventional taxes. Although these nations have taken the first modest steps, environmental taxes must be boosted above the 3 percent of worldwide tax revenue they now generate if they are to halt global environmental decline. International treaties can help to push reforms forward. The list of international environmental accords now numbers almost 240. Five were forged in the past year alone, and more than two-thirds of the total were crafted since the 1972 UN conference on the environment in Stockholm. The 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion is among the most successful pacts, spurring a nearly 90 percent drop in global chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions. However, most of these treaties are neither strong enough nor monitored and enforced sufficiently to reverse ecological decline. Growth in the satellite remote sensing industry is a potentially beneficial trend for environmental protection efforts. Satellites can collect detailed information about parts of the Earth that are otherwise difficult to access, and can record changes to the environment over large areas and long periods of time. International organizations and national governments can also incorporate satellite monitoring into stepped up efforts to enforce national and international environmental laws. “As the unfulfilled potential of satellite remote sensing suggests, the solutions for overcoming social inequities and reversing environmental decline will not be merely technical,” said Renner. “We need a groundswell of public support to prod governments to use the whole range of tools at their disposal—from taxes and laws to new information technologies—to reverse the trends that threaten our future.” |
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