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Rapporto WRI: lo sviluppo attuale e' insostenibile
Nuovo Rapporto del World Resources Institute rivela che gli ecosistemi
sono in marcato declino a livello globale.
http://www.wri.org/wr2000/wr2000-nr01.html
L' attuale uso delle risorse naturali non e' sostenibile. Un cambio di
rotta si impone a tutti i paesi.
Klaus Töpfer, executive director dell' UNEP ha dichiarato
'Possiamo continuare ad alterare ciecamente gli ecosistemi della Terra o
imparare ad usarli in modo piu' sostenibile'.
James D. Wolfensohn, presidente della World Bank ha dichiarato:
'Governi e industria devono riesaminare assunzioni di base riguardo a
come misurare e pianificare la crescita economica.'
..Ce n'e'abbastanza per fornire solide basi e giustificazioni a
politiche 'verdi' in ogni paese.
Dettagli sotto
Alessandro Gimona
WASHINGTON, DC, April 17, 2000 -- Summary
findings of a new report reveal a widespread decline
in the condition of the world’s ecosystems due
to increasing resource demands and warn that if the
decline continues it could have devastating
implications for human development and the welfare of all
species.
"Many signs point to the declining capacity of
ecosystems," says the Guide to the World Resources
2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying
Web of Life. The full report, to be released in
September, is published by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Bank
and the World Resources Institute (WRI). Over 175
scientists contributed to the report, which
took more than two years to produce.
Ecosystems are communities of interacting
organisms and the physical environment in which they
live; they are the biological engines of the
planet. At the heart of the re
irst-of-its-kind Pilot
Analysis of Global Ecosystems (PAGE). The
report examines coastal, forest, grassland, freshwater
and agricultural ecosystems.
It analyzes their health on the basis of their
ability to produce the goods and services that the world currently
relies on. These
include production of food, provision of pure
and sufficient water, storage of atmospheric carbon, maintenance of
biodiversity and
provision of recreation and tourism
opportunities.
The scorecards that accompany the World
Resources 2000-2001 describe most of the ecosystems in fair, but
declining
conditions. The statistics it contains are
staggering:
Half of the world’s wetlands were lost
last century.
Logging and conversion have shrunk the
world’s forests by as much as half.
Some 9 percent of the world’s tree species
are at risk of extinction; tropical deforestation may exceed 130,000
square
kilometers per year.
Fishing fleets are 40 percent larger than
the ocean can sustain.
Nearly 70 percent of the world’s major
marine fish stocks are overfished or are being fished at their
biological limit.
Soil degradation has affected two-thirds
of the world’s agricultural lands in the last 50 years.
Some 30 percent of the world’s original
forests have been converted to agriculture.
Since 1980, the global economy has tripled
in size and population has grown by 30 percent to 6 billion people.
Dams, diversions or canals fragment almost
60 percent of the world’s largest rivers.
Twenty
orld’s freshwater
fish are extinct, threatened or endangered.
"For too long in both rich and poor nations,
development priorities have focused on how much humanity can take from
our
ecosystems, with little attention to the impact
of our actions, " said Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP administrator. "With
this report,
we reconfirm our commitment to making the
viability of the world’s ecosystems a critical development priority for
the 21st
century."
However, World Resources 2000-2001 warns that
halting the decline of the planet’s life-support systems may be the most
difficult
challenge humanity has ever faced.
"Our knowledge of ecosystems has increased
dramatically, but it has simply not kept pace with our ability to alter
them," said
Klaus Töpfer, UNEP executive director. "We can
continue blindly altering Earth’s ecosystems, or we can learn to use
them more
sustainably."
World Resources 2000-2001 recommends that
governments and people must view the sustainability of ecosystems as
essential
to human life. It calls for an ecosystems
approach to managing the world’s critical resources, which means
evaluating decisions
on land and resource use in light of how they
affect the capacity of ecosystems to produce goods and services.
"Governments and businesses must rethink some
basic assumptions about how we measure and plan economic growth," said
James D. Wolfensohn, World Bank president. "The
poor, who often depend directly on ecosystems for their livelihoods,
suffer
most when ecosystems are degraded."
According to World Resources 2000-2001, one of
the most import
lack of much
of the
baseline knowledge that is needed to properly
determine ecosystems conditions on a global, regional or even local
scale.
"The dimensions of this information gap are
large and growing, rather than shrinking as we would expect in this age
of satellite
imaging and the Internet," said Jonathan Lash,
WRI president. "If we are to make sound ecosystem management decisions
in the
21st century, dramatic changes are needed in
the way we use the knowledge and experience at hand and the range of
additional
information we need."
The PAGE report has provided the impetus for
the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment – a plan put forward by
governments, UN
agencies, and leading scientific organizations
to allow an on-going monitoring and evaluation of the health of the
world’s
ecosystems.
Copies of A Guide to World Resources 2000-2001:
People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life can be downloaded at
http://www.wri.org/wri/wr2000. The full report
will be available in September.
http://www.wri.org/wr2000/wr2000-nr01.html