The World Wide Fund for Nature calls the planet sick and says it has the statistics to prove that. WWF says its Living Planet index finds biodiversity has decreased globally by nearly 30 percent since 1970 and, in the hardest hit tropics, by 60 percent.
The report also measures the ecological footprint of nations; that is the accumulative pressure they put on the planet. It gauges the total amount of land and resources used, including the amount of carbon emissions and compares this with how much land and sea is available.
WWF Director-General Jim Leape says there has been a huge increase and unsustainable demand for natural resources since 1961. "So, at this point, we are using 50 percent more resources each year than the Earth can replenish. … We are living as if we had one-and-one-half planets to support us. … So, while we are now 50 percent over the earth's capacity to support us, by 2030 we would need two planets to support the way we are living - [and] by 2050, almost three planets. So, we are on a track that is clearly by any measure unsustainable," he said.
The report considers the impact of human population growth and over-consumption as critical driving forces behind environmental pressure.
WWF finds wealthy countries on average consume five times more natural resources than do poor countries. This is borne out by the top 10 countries with the biggest ecological footprint per person. They include three oil-producing countries in the Middle East, four European countries, the United States, Canada and Australia.
The Living Planet Index notes declines in biodiversity since 1970 have been fastest in lower-income countries. It says this demonstrates how the poorest and most vulnerable nations are subsidizing the lifestyles of wealthier countries.
Jim Leape says time is running out for the planet, but it has not yet run out, and there are many actions nations and individuals can take to reverse biodiversity decline. He says some ecosystems must be protected, whether in the water or on land. He says some land must be put aside to maintain the health of the larger system.
"It is also important that we are restoring native ecosystems and managing them in a way that sustains the basic integrity of those systems. So you will see this in the report: If countries step up and end net deforestation by 2020 - and many countries have already pledged to do this - then you could save 180 million hectares of forest by 2050, compared to business as usual," he said.
The environmentalists also are urging nations to become more energy-efficient. They say nations should develop renewable energy, in particular wind and solar. They say this can make nations fuel independent, save them money and slow down climate change by lowering carbon dioxide emissions. They are calling for better water management and a stop to over-fishing.
WWF says individuals can do a lot to preserve the world's dwindling resources by becoming smarter consumers. It says they can choose to walk rather than drive, they can buy food produced closer to home than that which is transported long distances. It says people can use the power of the ballot box to vote in politicians who are environmentally friendly and oust those who are not.
Source: VOA News
The study's lead author, Hamish Pritchard, is a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey. In 1993, and again in 2003, he observed the collapse of two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula. He says the glaciers they had been holding back picked up speed and flowed six times faster than normal into the Southern Ocean.
When Pritchard’s team deployed satellite laser instruments to measure changes in the Antarctic ice shelves between 2003 and 2008 they saw a distinct pattern.
“Some of the ice shelves were lowering quite strongly," he says, "and in particular those were the ice shelves in west Antarctica.”
Previous studies looking for the causes of the shrinking ice shelves had ruled out decreased snowfall or any slow-down in the movement of glaciers toward the sea.
Pritchard says the new data points to a process they call “basal melt:” warmer ocean water heating the ice shelf from below.
“We looked at 54 ice shelves around Antarctica and of those, 20 were thinning by this process. Going beyond that we found in every case where we saw this ice shelf thinning by basal melt, we also saw thinning by acceleration of the glaciers that drained from the ice sheet.”
Pritchard says stronger westerly winds in the Southern Ocean are driving warmer ocean currents closer inland to ice shelves on the Antarctic coast. “It tells us that the ice shelves can be very sensitive to quite subtle changes in the climate, such as the wind patterns, that we hadn’t really appreciated before.”
Jan Gunnar Winther, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, is not affiliated with the study. He says the research provides important new insight into how climate change-induced melting of the Earth’s polar ice sheets is affecting global sea levels.
“In very many places around the world, most places where you have glaciers, and in Greenland, in parts of Antarctica, not in all of Antarctica, they add to the global sea level and they may already be, from what we know, the most important explanation of why we have an increased sea level."
Winther says emissions from fossil-fuel combustion in our power plants, cars and buildings continue to pump global warming gases into the atmosphere. As Prichard and colleagues note in their Nature study, these warming trends are driving wind and ocean current changes that are speeding up the melting and thinning of Antarctic ice.
That dynamic appears to be self-sustaining, the researchers warn, concluding that it “may have already triggered a period of unstable glacier retreat” across the western Antarctic ice sheet.
Source: VOA News
Justice For The World (JFW) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental human rights organization (NGO) based in The Netherlands, Europe, dedicated to protect human rights and to creatively raise awareness about the value of human rights with in particular the right to life, freedom and faith.
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![]() | 83.6% | Unknown |
![]() | 4.5% | United States |
![]() | 2.0% | Russian Federation |
![]() | 1.5% | Germany |
![]() | 1.5% | United Kingdom |
![]() | 1.2% | Ukraine |
![]() | <1.0% | Netherlands |
![]() | <1.0% | France |
![]() | <1.0% | Poland |
![]() | <1.0% | China |
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