Monday August 26, 2002
The Guardian
The real level of world inequality and environmental degradation may be far worse than official estimates, according to a leaked document prepared for the world's richest countries and seen by the Guardian.
It includes new estimates that the world lost almost 10% of its forests in the past 10 years; that carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming are expected to rise by 33% in rich countries and 100% in the rest of the world in the next 18 years; and that more than 30% more fresh water will be needed by 2020.
The background paper for last month's Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) pre-Johannesburg meeting on sustainable development draws on many previously unseen UN, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, and academic papers.
Although the governments of the world's 22 richest nations who make up the OECD have seen the document, many of the calculations are new and considerably different from their own.
Donor assistance for environmental protection and basic social services has declined to less than 15% of all aid compared with 35% at the time of the last earth summit in 1992.
Meanwhile, the paper finds that foreign assistance from western European countries, including private funding and direct investment encouraged through national policies, was more globally oriented in 1900 than it is today.
The paper's calculations of environmental degradation suggest the many conventions, treaties and intergovernmental agreements signed in the past decade have had little or no effect on stopping the rush for timber and mineral resources in the developing world and that extinction of species is now reaching 11% of birds, 18%-24% of mammals, 5% of fish, and 8% of plants.
Over the next 18 years, says the report, global energy use is expected to expand by more than 50%, and by more than 100% in China, east Asia and the former Soviet Union.
"The non-renewable fossil fuel resource base is expected to be sufficient to meet demand to 2020, though problems beyond that point are foreseen for natural gas and possibly oil," the report says.
It adds that OECD countries subsidise the emission of global warming gases by $57 billion - almost exactly what the report estimates it would cost to meet international targets. The paper suggests that investing the money in reducing climate change emissions would have next to no effect on the global economy. "Through the provision of subsidies on fossil fuels, governments are effectively subsidising pollution and global warming, as more than 60% of all subsidies flow to oil, coal and gas."
Environment and development groups yesterday reacted to the report with horror. "The rich world knows this is happening," said the chair of Friends of the Earth International, Ricardo Navarrez. "We in poor countries have always known the climate is changing, aid does not come, and the poor are getting poorer. The richest countries are here in Johannesburg to keep the system going."
Depleted resources: Key facts from OECD report:
- Nearly 50% of all fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are overexploited.
- Only 2% of global fisheries are recovering from overfishing.
- On current trends by 2025, 15% of all forest species will be extinct.
- 60% of the world's population lives in ecologically vulnerable areas.
- 3 million people die each year due to air pollution and 5 million due to unsafe water.
- 80% of global finance flows went to rich countries in 2000, with the entire African continent receiving less than 1% of direct foreign investment.
- In 1914, 40% of western European investment went to Africa,Latin America and Asia. In 1990 less than 20% went to those regions.
- Global water withdrawals are expected to rise 31% by 2020.
- Most groundwater resources are being replenished at a rate of between 0.1% and 0.5%.
Oh look out world,
take a good look,
what comes down here.
You must learn this lesson fast,
and learn it well.
This aint no awkward mobile freeway,
oh no,
this is the road
this is the road
this is the road
to hell.
mp3-The Road To Hell
-by Chris Rhea
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