The World Wildlife Fund’s [url=http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/]Living Planet Report 2010[/url]is the world’s leading science-based analysis on the health of our only planet and the impact of human activity.
Its key finding?
Humanity’s demands exceed our planet’s capacity to sustain us. That is we ask for more than what we have.
Putting a price on carbon is part of a move towards environmental accounting: putting a value and account for the contribution to humankind of all living systems from forests and rivers to the sea.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems must be a priority.
A business-as-usual scenario would result in humanity using resources and land at the rate of 2 planets each year by 2030 and a little more than 2.8 planets each year by 2050. Not actually possible.
The rising interest of the OECD and the World Trade Organisation in the concept of pricing ecological services is significant. When you are seeing the OECD come out with these things there is recognition that the trajectory we are on is wrong.
The Living Planet Index which charts the trends in 7953 populations of mammals birds reptiles amphibian and fish species shows a decline of about 30% between 1970 and 2007.
The tropical LPI has declined by about 60% in less than 40 years. The temperate LPI has increased by 29% in the same period largely because temperate region resources were more heavily depleted before the index data started to be compiled.
It also demonstrates the link between increased wealth and community demands for better environmental management and repair.
The report includes a measure of ‘[b]biocapacity per person as measured in global hectares[/b]’. This is the ability of the land to be productive determined by the area of cropland grazing land fishing grounds and forest located within its borders. The global hectares is the land including territorial waters in the country. Australia fares surprisingly well on this measure compared to many other countries.
Gross domestic product deals badly with environmental accounting. We are leaving an environmental debt to our chilodren that is increasingly growing and well documented to show that the cost of doing nothing adds up to 20% onto GDP over the next 20 years.
The [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economics_of_Ecosystems_and_Biodiversity]Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report[/url]highlights the growing cost of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and draws together expertise from the fields of science economics and policy to enable practical action. One motive for the study was to establish an objective global standard basis for natural capital accounting. Various estimates establish the cost of biodiversity and ecosystem damage expected to cost 18% of global economic output by 2050 and currently at over US$2trillion with some estimates as high as US$6trillion/year. The World Bank in particular has led recent efforts to include the cost of biodiversity and climate harm in national accounts.