If you imagine Planet Earth having a routine health check, the Living Planet (LPR) report would be its biennial diagnostic report. The study is a science based analysis of the state of the planet – the health of our forests, rivers and oceans, as well as the impact of humans.

Dr Chris Hails, Director, Network Relations, WWF International discussed the key findings of LPR 2012 on 16th June 2012 at the Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens.

Video link here

1. LIVING PLANET INDEX : The poor are bearing the brunt

The Living Planet Index (LPI) measures the changes in the state of the planet’s ecosystems by studying population trends of more than 2500 species. The LPI reflects the biodiversity of the earth.

The Global LPI, whose data is provided by the Zoological Society of London, showed a 28% decrease during the time period of 1970 to 2008, while in tropical countries, the decline was to the tune of 60%. This reflects the rapid destruction of natural habitats in the last 30 years.

The LPI in temperate countries increased by 31% over the same period, which could be a result of environmental conservation.  As Dr Hails pointed out, most of the biodiversity in temperate areas declined during and after the industrial revolution – big historical losses which are not reflected in the time period under study.

The global terrestrial, freshwater and marine indices all declined, with the freshwater index declining by 37%. The tropical freshwater index’s decline by 70% is most alarming.

The biodiversity trends of high, middle and low income countries also reflect disparities. The index shows a 7% increase in high income countries, a 31% decrease in middle income countries and a 60% decline in low-income countries, showing that poorer nations are rapidly losing their biodiversity. It is the poor who are most dependent on nature directly for their livelihoods and sustenance.

 2. ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT: The rich are overconsuming

The Ecological Footprint measures the amount of land area per person, needed to produce renewable resources, including the area of vegetation required to reabsorb the carbon being emitted into the atmosphere. In 2008, humanity’s ecological footprint was 18.2 billion global hectares (gha) or 2.7 gha per person

This is compared with Biocapacity or the area of land actually available to produce renewable resources and absorb carbon emissions. The earth’s biocapacity in 2008 was 12.0 billion gha, or 1.8 gha. 

This difference between the ecological footprint and biocapacity represents an ecological overshoot. It takes 1.5 years to regenerate the renewable resources required to sustain the current human population. Another way of expressing the same is that we’re using the resources of 1.5 planets to keep us ticking. Instead of living off our natural capital, we’re living off the interest.

There are huge footprint disparities amongst nations. Higher income, more developed countries have in general a higher footprint than poorer, less developed countries. The top 10 countries with the largest Ecological Footprint per person are Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, the United States, Belgium, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Ireland.

Singapore ranks 12th in its Ecological Footprint, which would require 3 planets to sustain this level of consumption.

If you click on the filter of “carbon” on the interactive graph above, Singapore ranks 5th in the world in its carbon footprint, and the highest amongst Asia-Pacific countries.

According to BBC News, “ It’s a view that doesn’t sit well with the government because the report attributes emissions to the country where carbon is consumed, instead of where it is produced.

The WWF explains that if a car is made in Japan but exported to Singapore, its carbon emissions are counted under Singapore not Japan.”

Dr Hails also highlighted that China and India are likely to experience the greatest increase in footprint by 2015, equal to 37% of the world’s total.

3. PRESCRIPTION FOR THE PLANET- Business as Usual is not a choice

As Jim P. Leape, Director General, WWF International said recently, “We are living as if we have an extra planet at our disposal. We are using 50 per cent more resources than the Earth can provide, and unless we change course that number will grow very fast – by 2030, even two planets will not be enough.

“But we do have a choice. We can create a prosperous future that provides food, water and energy for the 9 or perhaps 10 billion people who will be sharing the planet in 2050.”

Source: The Living Planet Report 2012

Dr Hails highlighted a few solutions especially certifications that are improving the sustainable use of resources.  These encompass:

1. The Forest Stewardship Council certification for sustainable timber and products such as furniture and paper, which do not overexploit forests.

2. The Marine Stewardship Council certification which helps consumers identify fish which are endangered.  80% of the world fish stocks are overexploited, according to FAO which predicts that the stock of fish species for food is expected to collapse by 2048.   Singapore in particular can take action to limit its impact on the ‘coral triangle’, a biodiverse but threatened tropical fisheries zone, by encouraging sustainable fish consumption, as Dr Hails mentions in the video.  WWF’s Sustainable Seafood Guide is available for download here.

3. The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, which is working on sustainable palm oil to protect tropical rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia.  As Michelle Desilets pointed out in an earlier interview with EWTT, the RSPO has its loopholes, but as ‘the only game in town’ , the process needs to be strengthened and made more robust.

To read the full Living Planet Report 2012, please click this link. 

ABOUT THE WRITER:

Bhavani Prakash is the Founder of Eco WALK the Talk .com.  She is a sustainability speaker, trainer and writer can be contacted at bhavani[at]ecowalkthetalk.com. Follow Eco WALK the Talk on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN and YouTube

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The Third Pole is thus known because it is the largest frozen area of fresh water outside the two polar regions.  Also called the Hindu Kush- Himalayan (HKH) region, it extends 3,500 km over all or part of eight countries from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east.

It is the source of ten large Asian river systems -– the Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra (Yarlungtsanpo), Irrawaddy, Salween (Nu), Mekong (Lancang), Yangtse (Jinsha), Yellow River (Huanghe), and Tarim (Dayan).

Picture credit: http://www.icimod.org/?page=43

The river and river basins provide water to 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the world population. They also support livelihoods of over 210 million people in the region.

A new report on the importance of the Third Pole as a vital resource as well as a potential cause of crisis in Asia has just been released by ChinaDialogue.net. 

The Waters of the Third Pole: Sources of threat, sources of survival  is the joint effort of China Dialogue, University College London, King’s College London and the Australian National University.

The report highlights the various natural and man made stresses to this valuable ecosytem.

Natural stresses:

HKH region already faces several natural hazards such as seismic activity, glacial melting, extreme weather, windstorms, droughts, wildfires, and sea-level rise.  This affects the region’s glaciers, rivers, wetlands, grasslands and coasts.

Man made stresses:

There are a plethora of man-made stresses leading to unsustainable use of water, arising from dam constructions, diversion of rivers, floods, ground-water contamination, and water shortages.

The pressures are created by huge and rapidly growing populations. Urbanisation and globalisation lead to heavy demand on resources.

The policy responses and approaches are short-term, with governments trying to increase agricultural productivity and electricity generation, without adequate regard to the environmental consequences.

The number of people being displaced is rising. These environmental migrants or refugees number in millions, moving away due to larger dams, diversion projects, and degradation of farmland or fisheries.

A Common Ecosystem

There is little co-operation between countries and regions, with long standing disputes over decreasing water resources.

Due to the lack of a “systems” perspective and co-ordinated research, there is no understanding of the region as a whole as one common ecosystem, each element of which is interconnected and interdependent.

An example quoted by the report:

‘…large water management projects have created social, ecological, and economic problems, the repercussions of which cannot be immediately gauged. For instance, China has initiated massive infrastructural projects in Tibet, where many major Asian rivers originate. Industrialisation upstream in China has led to soil erosion, deforestation, and landslides, whose impacts are felt in the lower riparian states of Bangladesh and India. That these countries are part of a common ecosystem was made tragically clear by the flash floods that ravaged northeast India in 2000 caused by a landslide in Tibet.’

 
HKH region is already facing a crisis, affecting millions of people. The effects are likely to continue, increasing the likelihood of mass displacement and environmental migrantion, disease and conflict. Short term thinking of various governments and the lack of effective water management is constraining the preparedness for catastrophes.
 

Led Zeppelin once said “Then as it was, then again it will be, and though the course will change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea.”  For this to continue to hold true and to ensure the rivers can sustain present and future generations, a new kind of thinking, a shared understanding of the precious rivers of the Third Pole is the urgent order of the day.

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Eco WALK the Talk summarises various environmental reports that may be technical or usually accessible to those in academia or research, to make the public more aware of important larger issues facing the environment. For various past report summaries, please click here. 

Reuters: Rivers a source of rising tensions

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Photo Credit: Flickr - Crustmania

One of the most significant studies in “Evaluating the Relative Environmental Impact of Countries” has been released by the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute  in conjuction with the National University of Singapore and Princeton University.

Do we need yet another indicator or study, one may ask, considering there are many alternative indices already: the City Development Index(CDI), Ecological Footprint(EF), Environmental Performance Index(EPI), Environmental Sustainability Index(ESI), Genuine Savings Index(GSI), Human Development Index(HDI), Living Planet Index(LPI), and the Well-Being Index(WI)?

The authors of this study, Corey J.A. Bradshaw, Xingli Giam and Navjot S.Sodhi seem to think so.  They have deliberately excluded indicators such as human health (e.g., EPI) or economics (e.g., GSI), populations size or quality of governance, as this lends greater clarity in determining the environmental impact of different nations, both in relative and absolute terms.

This clarity is essential because as  Corey Bradshaw, the Institute’s Director of Ecological Modelling and co-author of the report says, “The environmental crises currently gripping the planet are the corollary of excessive human consumption of natural resources. “There is considerable and mounting evidence that elevated degradation and loss of habitats and species are compromising ecosystems that sustain the quality of life for billions of people worldwide.”

The team used 7 indicators in the study which were:

• natural forest loss
• habitat conversion
• fisheries and other marine captures
• fertiliser use
• water pollution
• carbon emissions from land use
• species threat

The top 10 countries with the worst environmental impact in absolute terms are :

1. Brazil 2. USA 3. China 4. Indonesia 5. Japan 6. Mexico 7. India 8. Russia 9. Australia and 10. Peru.

The top 10 worst environmental performers according to the proportional environmental impact index (relative to resource availability) are below. It is interesting to see that 9 of the 10 countries are in Asia.

1. Singapore 2. Korea 3. Qatar 4. Kuwait  5. Japan 6.  Thailand 7. Bahrain 8. Malaysia 9. Philippines and 10. Netherlands

According to the authors, “We correlated rankings against three socio-economic variables (human population size, gross national income and governance quality) and found that total wealth was the most important explanatory variable – the richer a country, the greater its average environmental impact.

This has important implications for policy making, as it throws a popular theory called the Kuznets curve hypothesis out of the door. According to this theory, environmental degradation declines as a nation grows richer as they supposedly become more environmentally conscious and have better access to clean technology. 

As the authors conclude “Our results show that the global community not only has to encourage better environmental performance in less-developed countries, especially those in Asia, there is also a requirement to focus on the development of environmentally friendly practices in wealthier countries.”

The report can be accessed here.

Further links you may be interested in:Wild Shores of Singapore : Singapore No. 1 global eco-destroyer?

The Ecologist: The Damage caused by Singapore’s insatiable thirst for land

Asia Is Green:  Stop burying our head in the sand

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According to the NEF website,

” Four years on from NEF’s Growth isn’t Working (report), this new report goes one step further and tests that thesis in detail in the context of climate change and energy. It argues that indefinite global economic growth is unsustainable. Just as the laws of thermodynamics constrain the maximum efficiency of a heat engine, economic growth is constrained by the finite nature of our planet’s natural resources (biocapacity).”

Download the report from the NEF “Growth isn’t working : We need a new economic direction” here.

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