Human comsumption 'destroying earth's resources'

Reliance on fossil fuels, the spread of cities, the destruction of natural habitats for farmland and over-exploitation of the oceans are destroying Earth’s ability to sustain life, the World Wildlife Fund warns in a new report.

The biggest consumers of non-renewable natural resources are the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait, Australia and Sweden, which leave the biggest “ecological footprint”, the environmental group said in its Living Planet Report released in Geneva yesterday. Ireland is 10th on the list.

Humans currently consume 20% more natural resources than the Earth can produce, the report says.

“We are spending nature’s capital faster than it can regenerate,” said WWF chief Claude Martin. “We are running up an ecological debt which we won’t be able to pay off unless governments restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources and the Earth’s ability to renew them.”

But Fred Smith, president of the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and a former official of the US Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon and Ford administrations, said he was sceptical.

He said the WWF view was “static” and failed to take into account the benefits many people received from resource use.

Use of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil increased by almost 700% between 1961 and 2001, the study said.

Burning fossil fuels – in power plants and cars, for example – releases carbon dioxide, which experts ay contributes to global warming. The planet is unable to keep pace and absorb the emissions, WWF says.

Populations of land, fresh water and marine species fell on average by 40% between 1970 and 2000. The report blamed urbanisation, forest clearance, pollution, overfishing and the introduction by humans of non-native animals, such as cats and rats, which often drove out indigenous species.

“The question is how the world’s entire population can live with the resources of one planet,” said Jonathan Loh, one of the report’s authors.

The study, WWF’s fifth since 1998, examined the “ecological footprint” of the planet’s entire population.

Most of a person’s footprint is caused by the space needed to absorb the waste from energy consumption, including carbon dioxide. WWF also measured the total area of cities, roads and other infrastructure and the space required to produce food and fibre – for clothing, for example.

“We don’t just live on local resources,” so the footprint is not confined to the country where consumers live, said Mathis Wacknagel, head of the Global Footprint Network, which includes WWF.

For example, Western demand for Asia’s palm oil and South America’s soya beans has wrecked natural habitats in those regions, so the destruction is considered part of the footprint of importing nations. The same applies to Arab oil consumed in the United States.

The findings are similar to those in WWF’s 2002 report, which covered the period up to 1999. But the latest study contains more detailed data stretching to 2001. It shows the situation has changed little in most countries and is now more worrying in fast-growing China and India.

The world’s 6.1 billion people leave a collective footprint of 33.36 billion acres, 5.44 acres per person. To allow the Earth to regenerate, the average should be no more than 4.45 acres, says WWF.

The impact of an average North American is double that of a European, but seven times that of the average Asian or African.

Residents of the United Arab Emirates, who use air conditioning extensively, leave a 24.46-acre footprint, two-thirds caused by fossil fuel use. The average US resident leaves a 23.47-acre footprint, also largely from fuel.