I was somewhat surprised that the UAE was the first....
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1225563.htmEnvironmental organisation WWF International has warned that the global population is consuming about 20 per cent more natural resources than the planet can produce.
The group's Living Planet Report for 2004 estimates that each person has an ecological footprint equal to 2.2 hectares in terms of their capacity to pollute or consume energy and other resources, including food.
However, it says the planet can only offer 1.8 hectares each.
This contrasts with the position in 1960, the year WWF was launched, when people used only 50 per cent of what the earth could generate.
WWF says the country with the largest overall footprint in 2001 was the
United Arab Emirates, with about 10 hectares per person.
It was followed by the
US and
Kuwait with scores above nine hectares, while
Australia was the fourth-largest burden on the world's resources, with 7.7 hectares per person.
'Ecological debt'
WWF International director-general Dr Claude Martin says the world is "running up an ecological debt which we will not be able to pay off".
The report, the fifth in a series, says that between 1970 and 2000, populations of marine and terrestrial species fell 30 per cent. Those of freshwater species declined 50 per cent.
"This is a direct consequence of increasing human demand for food, fibre, energy and water," it said.
Jonathan Loh, one of the report's authors, says that on present trends, countries will miss a target of significantly reducing biodiversity loss by 2010, as agreed at the Johannesburg Earth Summit in 2002.
The fastest-growing component of the footprint was energy use, which had risen by 700 per cent between 1961 and 2001.
Overall, resource use as measured by the footprint rose 8 per cent in per capita terms among the planet's richer 1 billion inhabitants in the years 1991-2001 but fell by the same percentage among the rest of the world, WWF said.
It found that North Americans are consuming resources at a particularly fast rate, with an ecological footprint twice as big as that of Europeans and seven times that of the average Asian or African.
Unsustainable
"If we all reached the level of per capita footprint of the average North America, it is clearly an unsustainable situation," Mr Loh said.
"The planet clearly would not be able to sustain that level of consumption for very long."
Mr Loh says bringing the world back into balance involves action on a number of fronts, including slowing world population growth.
But he says technology could play a vital role, particularly through the use and development of more environment friendly energy sources.
"If you look at that 20 per cent excess, a very large part of our footprint is coming from the consumption of fossil fuels," he said. "And that is the biggest problem to target."
