Natural Resource Meltdown Dwarfs Banking Meltdown As World Wide Danger

A new paper released today by the World Wildlife Fund titled the Living Planet Report 2008 indicates that the world is headed towards a natural resource crisis which will dwarf the credit crisis as a danger to future prosperity.

The paper cites reckless over-consumption by what it terms as ecological resource debtor nations. The definition of an ecologicical debtor nation is one "where national consumption has outstripped their country’s biological capacity." The report puts world wide over-consumption at a third higher than the earth's carrying capacity while biological diversity continues to decline at an alarming rate (Any rate of decline is alarming in my book). Also mentioned was the number of countries who are slipping into permanent or seasonal water emergencies.

“The world is currently struggling with the consequences of over-valuing its financial assets, but a more fundamental crisis looms ahead – an ecological credit crunch caused by under-valuing the environmental assets that are the basis of all life and prosperity,” said WWF International Director-General James Leape, in the foreword to the new report. “Most of us are propping up our current lifestyles, and our economic growth, by drawing - and increasingly overdrawing - on the ecological capital of other parts of the world,” Leape said.

Not surprisingly, the United States was in the top three nations with the biggest ecologicical footprints. The Living Planet Report also included water footprint measurements for the first time which illustrates how products we consume here, have very large water footprints in third world countries. A WWF press release adds..

...for example, the production of a cotton T-shirt requires 765 gallons of water. On average, each person consumes 327,177 gallons (about half an Olympic swimming pool) of water a year, but this varies from 654,354 gallons per person a year (USA) to 163,325 gallons per capita annually (Yemen). Approximately 50 countries are currently facing moderate or severe water stress and the number of people suffering from year-round or seasonal water shortages is expected to increase as a result of climate change

In a BBC interview with WWF President David Norman said at our present state of consumption, by 2050 we will need two planets to keep up.

This report is just one more dire warning that the world as we know it is rapidly approaching a point where serious consequences will start to be felt by us all. WWF's Director General Leape sums it up well.

“These Living Planet measures serve as clear and robust signposts to what needs to be done. If humanity has the will, it has the way to live within the means of the planet, but we must recognize that the ecological credit crunch will require even bolder action that that now being mustered for the financial crisis.”

The Living Planet Report 2008 can be down loaded at http://www.panda.org/index.cfm