ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN-UNITED STATES: World Suffers Environmental Stress

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Danielle Knight

WASHINGTON, May 9 1998 (IPS) - The world today is warmer, more urban, economically richer and environmentally poorer than ever before, according to the latest report from Worldwatch Institute.

With the expansion of the global economy – despite the Asian financial crisis – at a near record four percent in 1997, the world also showed signs of major environmental stress, says ‘Vital Signs 1998,’ the Washington think-tank’s annual study of global

trends.

While incomes pushed to a new high, with the biggest gains in developing countries, “Indonesia’s rainforests burned out of control for several months and the Earth’s temperature reached yet another record high, providing further evidence that the world is warming,” warned Lester Brown, president of Worldwatch.

At the end of 1997, the population of Earth had increased by 80 million people in 12 months and cities were growing at a rapid rate. In 1800, London was the only city in the world with one million inhabitants; today there were 326 cities with at least on e million – 14 of which had populations greater than 10 million, observed Vital Signs.

Brown said the combination of population growth and rising incomes had increased stresses on the natural world, especially on the global climate. Record temperatures in 1997 added to the 14 warmest years on record since 1866, which all have been since 19 79.

Evidence of global warming can be seen in melting icecaps in the Andes, shrinking glaciers in the Alps, and the breakup of the sea ice around Antarctica, he said.

The increased temperatures correspond with a rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Concentrations in 1997 climbed to 364 parts per million – the highest in 160,000 years. Carbon emissions – caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and gas also reached record highs at 6.3 billions tonnes, up from 6.2 billion tonnes in 1996, the report said.

Part of this rise in carbon emissions was related to the record number of motor vehicles produced worldwide in 1997, although car manufacturers also released several fuel-efficient, low- pollution models.

The report also noted that,in many parts of the world, bicycles are gained in popularity with more than 100 million bicycles being produced compared to about 40 million automobiles.

Vital Signs also warned that even as grain farmers harvested a record 1,881 million metric tons throughout the world in 1997, the production increase did not keep up with population growth. Grain output per capita dropped from 324 kilograms to 322 kilogr ams.

Land scarcity and a shortage of water emerged as serious constraints on efforts to expand food production for a growing population, the report said. Growth in irrigated area was falling behind population growth, leading to a steady shrinkage in irrigated area per person.

In China, the Yellow River, the northernmost of China’s two major rivers, was drained dry by withdrawals from upstream provinces and failed to make it to the sea for 226 days out of the year, Brown noted.

Increasing demand for animal protein – which required more grain – was an added stress in meeting food demand. As incomes continued to rise worldwide, the production of beef, pork and poultry climbed from 44 million tons in 1950 to 211 million tons in 19 97.

The growth of economic activity also had an effect on the earth’s forests. Between 1980 and 1995, the world lost at least 200 million hectares of forest – an area larger than the crop land area of the United States.

“Among the most disturbing developments in 1997 was the uncontrolled burning of Indonesia’s rainforests, filling the region’s air with smoke so intense that it left millions physically sick,” said Vital Signs.

The consequence of destruction of forests, and other habitat, has meant an accelerating loss of species and about 11 percent of all birds and 34 percent of fish varieties are threatened with extinction, the report said.

Among the 233 species of primates, half are now threatened with extinction while a recent plant study by the World Conservation Union said one in eight plants worldwide were endangered.

Vital Signs reported a number of surprising trends in renewable energy in 1997, including the fact that new electrical generation capacity from wind exceeded that from nuclear power. Similarly, the growth of sales in solar cells, for solar energy, averag ing 15 per year from 1990 to 1996, jumped by 43 percent in 1997.

In a new section on telecommunications in this year’s ediition of Vital Signs, Worldwatch reported that the Internet more than doubled in size in each year in the 1990s. Of the estimated 100 million people on line, more than half were in the United State s, with the rest mainly from Canada, Europe, and Japan. The number of people online in China and India was expected to multiply 15-fold by the year 2000.

Telephone access also expanded rapidly, said the study. New telephone hookups increased seven percent a year, reaching 740 million in 1996. The number of telephones per 100 people varied widely among countries – the United States had 60 phones per 100 pe roson while China had only four. But the gap was narrowing as the number of telephones in developing countries was increasing by 19 percent each year, the report said.

Education levels continued to rise worldwide, especially for females. Between 1990 and 1995, female enrollment in 47 countries increased 226 million to 254 million. As a result nearly 70 percent of girls of primary-school age worldwide were in school in 1995.

While female education went up, military expenditure went down. After peaking in 1984 at 1,140 billion dollars, global military expenditures dropped to 701 billion in 1996, a decline of 39 percent, according to the report.

U.S. spending on military hardware, down to 243 billion dollars in 1997 from 370 billion dollars in the late 1980s, accounted for one-third of the world total.