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Fossil fuel use and feeding world cause greatest environmental impacts
Fiscal incentives, including taxes, and higher investment in innovation needed to “decouple” economic growth from damage
2 June 2010 - How the world is fed and fueled will in large part define development in the 21st century as one that is increasingly sustainable or a dead end for billions of people.
A new and hard-hitting report concludes that dramatically reforming, re-thinking and redesigning two sectors—energy and agriculture—could generate significant environmental, social and economic returns.
Current patterns of production and consumption of both fossil fuels and food are draining freshwater supplies; triggering losses of economically-important ecosystems such as forests; intensifying disease and death rates and raising levels of pollution to unsustainable levels.
The report, prepared by the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, says decoupling the environmental impacts of these two broad sectors from economic growth, can start at the level of the household.
Sustainability goals can begin through dramatic improvements in household patterns of energy and food use including heating and cooling systems, gadgets and appliances and the way people travel.
Perhaps controversially, it also calls for a significant shift in diets away from animal based proteins towards more vegetable-based foods in order to dramatically reduce pressures on the environment.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which hosts the Panel, said: “Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation—thus setting priorities would seem prudent and sensible in order to fast track a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy.”
“The Panel have reviewed all the available science and conclude that two broad areas are currently having a disproportionately high impact on people and the planet’s life support systems—these are energy in the form of fossil fuels and agriculture, especially the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products,” he said.
“Smart market mechanisms, more intelligent fiscal policies and creative policy-making are among the options for internalizing the costs of unsustainable patterns. Some tough choices are signaled in this report, but it may prove even more challenging for everyone if the current paths continue into the coming decades,’ added Mr. Steiner.
Ernst von Weizsaecker, co-chair of the Panel, said the report challenged the widely-held view that rising affluence leads automatically to environmental improvements.
“In the case of CO2, a doubling of wealth leads typically to an increase of environmental pressure by 60 to 80 per cent and in emerging economies this is sometimes even higher. In the case of food, rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and diary products—livestock now consumes much of the world’s crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilizers and pesticides linked with that crop production in the first place,” he added.
Ashok Khosla, co-chair of the Panel and President of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), said: “Incremental efficiency gains in for example motor cars or home heating systems have provided some improvements but, faced with the scale of the challenge, far more transformational measures need to be taken—currently we are fiddling—or fiddling around the edges—while Rome burns.”
“Part of that new and decisive action also relates to the way the world is trying to combat climate change—as the report points out, for many of the developed economies 20-30 percent of a nation's pollution is not taking place on its territory, but happening abroad via imports. Given this fact, perhaps the current way of structuring agreements on emission reduction targets are becoming obsolete,” he added.
The report, called Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials, is the latest in a series from the 27 high-level experts that constitute the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management.
Launched today with the European Commission in Brussels on the eve of UN World Environment Day (June 5), the 149-page report provides science-based priorities for world environmental efforts -- ranking products, materials and economic and lifestyle activities according to their environmental and resource impacts.
The Panel, which has drawn on numerous studies including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for action: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus, overexploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, solid cooking fuels, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational (including kitchen) exposure to particulate matter. |
