State of the World 2002

Addressing Climate Change and Overpopulation

The Worldwatch Institute

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781610916370
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy

State of the World 2002 includes chapters on climate change, farming, toxic chemicals, sustainable tourism, population, resource conflicts and global governance.

Chapter 1

The Challenge for Johannesburg: Creating a More Secure World

Gary Gardner

In the anxious days following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, world leaders described the global community as suddenly and irrevocably changed. On September 11, 2001, “night fell on a different world,” in the words of President George W. Bush, largely because of a more broadly shared experience of vulnerability.¹

“Americans have known wars,” he observed, but rarely on their own soil. “Americans have known surprise attacks. But never before on thousands of civilians.” The new experiences of that September morning produced a shift in national priorities, literally overnight.²

Those who would move the world rapidly toward sustainability must be amazed at the galvanizing power of the attacks. We are left to wonder: are tragedies of this magnitude needed to steer the world toward a new model of development, one built along the recommendations of the 1992 Earth Summit? If so, there is plenty to report. Imagine a prime minister or president at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2002 reviewing events and findings of the past decade, in an echo of President Bush:

The human family has suffered sickness, but rare is the plague that can kill a third of a nation’s adults—as AIDS may well do in Botswana over the next decade. . . . Our planet has regularly seen species die-offs, but only five times in 4 billion years has it experienced anything like today’s mass extinction. . . . Nations have long grappled with inequality. But how often have the assets of just three individuals matched the combined national economies of the poorest 48 countries, as happened in 1997?³

These trends are no doubt less riveting than the drama of a surprise attack. Yet they alert the world to a danger less visible than terrorism but over the long term more serious. These and other trends—from the loss of forests, wetlands, and coral reefs to social decay in the world’s most advanced nations—warn us of creeping corrosion in the favored development model of the twentieth century. That model, used by developing as well as industrial nations, is materials-intensive, driven by fossil fuels, based on mass consumption and mass disposal, and oriented primarily toward economic growth—with insufficient regard for meeting people’s needs. In 1992 the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) challenged this model and offered a comprehensive alternative. It called the human family to a new experience—that of sustainable development.

Steps in the 1990s toward a more just and ecologically resilient world were too small, too slow, or too poorly rooted.

Ten years after the historic meeting in Rio de Janeiro, the world has begun to respond to this call—but only tentatively and unevenly. Steps in the 1990s toward a more just and ecologically resilient world were too small, too slow, or too poorly rooted. Wind and solar energy grew vigorously over the decade, for example, yet the world still gets 90 percent of its commercial energy from fossil fuels—whose carbon molecules play increasing havoc with our climate. Imaginative advances in the way goods and services are produced and consumed could generate manifold reductions in materials use and waste generation, yet most remain largely on the drawing board or are only at the pilot stage. And improvements in health and education, while laudable in many developing countries, were uneven—and by some measures may actually be unraveling in wealthy ones.⁴

Not surprisingly, then, global environmental problems, from climate change to species extinctions, deforestation, and water scarcity, have generally worsened since delegates met in Rio. Social trends have shown some improvement, yet gaping global disparities in wealth remain: one fifth of the world’s people live on a dollar or less each day, even as the world’s wealthy suffer from symptoms of excess, such as obesity. And a growing number of economies have a voracious appetite for materials. While recycling of glass, paper, and a few other household wastes is now common practice in many countries, most materials in industrial nations are used only once before being discarded. In sum, while awareness of the environmental and social issues central to sustainable development undoubtedly was raised in the 1990s, the new consciousness has yet to register improvements on the ground for most global environmental issues.⁵

Still, emerging awareness of the need for a sustainable path is an important start. More than ever, citizens, businesses, and government leaders understand that development is about more than economic growth—a key theme of the Earth Summit. Agenda 21, the action plan that emerged from the conference, addresses social issues, the structure of economies, conservation of resources, and problems of civil society. This broad panorama is consistent with the picture of development endorsed by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP): expanding people’s choices to lead the lives they value, especially choices that foster a long and healthy life, access to education, a decent standard of living, and participation in community life. Following the lead of the Earth Summit and UNDP, this chapter will assess development over the past decade with a broad lens, examining how well the world has advanced environmental protection, human health and education, and ecological economics since Rio.⁶

As nations gather in Johannesburg in September for the World Summit to recommit to a just and environmentally healthy world, delegates would do well to summon the singleness of purpose that characterizes the battle against terrorism. “We have found our mission and our moment,” President Bush declared in response to the attacks in 2001. Imagine a global community with the same resolve—directed wholeheartedly to realizing the vision of development outlined at Rio. That is the potential and the hope for Johannesburg.⁷

The Toll on Nature

More than any previous international conference, the 1992 Earth Summit highlighted the central importance of the natural environment for a healthy economy. This idea found conceptual support in 1997 when environmental economist Robert Costanza and colleagues quantified the value of “nature’s services”—things like the soil-holding capacity of tree roots and the flood protection offered by mangroves—at a minimum of $33 trillion annually, nearly twice the gross world product that year. Despite improved understanding of the importance of the natural environment for development, global response to environmental degradation was sluggish—even as nearly every global environmental indicator worsened.⁸

Leading the list of growing environmental problems is climate change, which gained prominence over the decade as scientists improved their understanding of the link between emissions of greenhouse gases, climbing global temperatures, rising sea levels, and the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. (See Chapter 2.) Ice core readings suggest that current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at their highest level in 420,000 years; the global temperature record points to the 1990s as the warmest decade since measurements began in the nineteenth century; and scientists have documented a 10–20 centimeter rise in global average sea levels over the past century. Responding to these and other data, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than 2,500 scientists from around the globe, warned in 1996 that a “discernible human influence” was evident in the changing world climate. By 2001, its Third Assessment Report was more definitive: “most of the warming of the past 50 years,” it declared, “is attributable to human activities.”⁹

Despite the growing evidence of a human-generated disruption of climate, global emissions of carbon—a key greenhouse gas—increased by more than 9 percent over the decade, although performance varied widely from nation to nation. Some countries, notably Germany, the United Kingdom, and former Eastern bloc nations mired in economic recession, reduced their emissions. Others, especially China, saw emissions increase with rapid economic expansion, but they also became more efficient, reducing the amount of carbon needed to build products or deliver services. Perhaps the most disappointing performance was that of the United States, which is responsible for nearly a quarter of global carbon output. Although armed with the wealth and technology to curb carbon emissions, and in spite of ample scope for cuts, U.S. emissions rose some 18 percent between 1990 and 2000. The capstone of American reluctance to address to climate change came in 2001, when the Bush administration abandoned the U.S. commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, a key diplomatic initiative whose origins trace back to the Earth Summit.¹⁰

The connection between climate change and economic and human development became increasingly apparent as the 1990s unfolded. Insurance companies were among the first businesses to side with environmentalists in debates about climate change. Their epiphany came as damage claims from storms surged over the decade: claims from violent weather were greater in 1998, for example, than in the entire decade of the 1980s. Another group that emerged in the 1990s in response to the expected impact of climate change was the Alliance of Small Island States, a disparate group of island nations from all parts of the world with one thing in common: all face economic ruin—even physical extinction—from rising seas in a warming world. The group’s 43 member states, representing about 5 percent of the world’s population, were active in seeking commitments from other governments to reduce emissions of carbon. A host of other effects of climate change, from the impact on agriculture to the spread of disease and insect plagues in a warmer world, were cited as possible impediments to development over the decade.¹¹

Another environmental issue that took on great importance over the decade was water scarcity. This leapt up the international issue agenda in the 1990s as projections of huge gaps between supply and demand and fears of conflict over water gained a high profile. (See Chapter 6.) A 1997 U.N. assessment of global fresh water found that about a third of the world lives in countries that find it difficult or impossible to meet all their water needs, a condition known as water stress. That share could double to two thirds by 2025, as population increase and economic growth combine to squeeze fixed supplies of water. Water stress typically shows up as a shortage of water for farms; agriculture is a prime target for water savings because this sector is often politically weak and can account for two thirds or more of a nation’s water use.¹²

Water scarcity could also have serious developmental consequences through its impact on food supplies. Water-scarce countries increasingly turned to two coping strategies in the 1990s: tapping into groundwater reserves to maintain or expand agricultural production, and increasing food imports. But neither is likely to be a long-term solution for guaranteeing food supplies. Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project estimated in 1999 that nearly 10 percent of the world’s grain harvest is produced with water pumped from wells faster than it is replenished, notably in the agriculturally rich regions of India, China, and the Great Plains of the United States. Without a change in water use practices, and unless substitute sources of water are found, that share of the harvest will one day be unavailable—with disruptive consequences for nations that depend on those supplies.¹³

Importing food can mean major water savings for parched regions, sin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Worldwatch Institute Board of Directors
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Boxes, Tables, and Figures
• Foreword, by Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations
• Preface
• 1 The Challenge for Johannesburg: Creating a More Secure World
• 2 Moving the Climate Change Agenda Forward
• 3 Farming in the Public Interest
• 4 Reducing Our Toxic Burden
• 5 Redirecting International Tourism
• 6 Rethinking Population, Improving Lives
• 7 Breaking the Link Between Resources and Repression
• 8 Reshaping Global Governance
• Notes
• The acclaimed series from Worldwatch Institute
• You Can Make a Difference