This is an extended version of the eight categories of the Basic Human Dignity Needs Holistic Index, with over 600 sub-categories.
Basic Human Dignity Needs include:
ENVIRONMENT - Nat'l - Int'l Ecological Issues
##########
From www.enn.com
New Report Outlines the Ecological Footprint of 146 Nations: Humanity's Consumption Exceeds the Earth's Biological Capacity by 20 Percent
From Redefining Progress
Monday, November 25, 2002
OAKLAND, CALIF. -- Redefining Progress' Sustainability Program today released its latest Ecological Footprint of Nations report
that outlines the ecological impact of 146 of the world's nations.
The issue brief shows to what extent a nation can support its resource consumption with its available ecological capacity. It also illustrates the degree to which a nation could reproduce its consumption at a global level. The issue brief also outlines the significant improvements and refinements made to the Ecological Footprint accounts since last year's report.
The report is available for download in pdf format at www.RedefiningProgress.org/publications/ef1999.pdf.
"Humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeds the Earth's biological capacity by 20 percent," explained Sustainability Program Director Mathis Wackernagel. "Many nations, including the United States, are running even larger ecological deficits. As a consequence of this overuse, the human economy is liquidating the Earth's natural capital."
Ecological Footprint accounts provide a conservative estimate of humanity's pressure on global ecosystems. They represent the biologically productive area required to produce the food and wood people consume, to supply space for infrastructure, and to absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from burning fossil fuels.
The Ecological Footprint is expressed in "global acres." Each global acre corresponds to one acre of biologically productive space with world average productivity. (An acre is approximately the size of an American football field without its end zones.)
The global Ecological Footprint in 1999 (the latest year for which data is available) is 5.6 global acres, while the Earth's biocapacity was 4.7 global acres. The United States recorded an Ecological Footprint of 24.0 global acres, nearly doubling its national biocapacity of 13.0 global acres.
"Sustainability talk is meaningless unless it is backed up by specific measurable commitments and timetables for implementation," said Wackernagel. "We will achieve sustainability only when every person can lead a satisfying life within the Earth's biological capacity. People can use the Ecological Footprint to hold individuals, organizations, businesses, and governments accountable for their sustainability performance."
###
For more information, contact:
Craig Cheslog
Communications Director
Redefining Progress
510-444-3041
cheslog@rprogress.org
Web site: http://www.redefiningprogress.org
From www.enn.com
People take up most of the planet, U.S. study says
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
By Reuters
WASHINGTON -- Humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface to live on, farm, mine, or fish, leaving just a few areas pristine for wildlife, a report issued Tuesday said.
People also have taken advantage of 98 percent of the land that can be farmed for rice, wheat, or corn, said the report, produced by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network in New York.
Their map, published on the Internet at http://www.wcs.org/humanfootprint, adds together influences from population density, access from roads and waterways, electrical power infrastructure, and the area used by cities and farms.
The few remaining wild areas include the northern forests of Alaska, Canada, and Russia; the high plateaus of Tibet and Mongolia; and much of the Amazon River Basin.
"The map of the human footprint is a clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth," Eric Sanderson, a landscape ecologist for the WCS, who led the report, said in a statement.
"It provides a way to find opportunities to save wildlife and wild lands in pristine areas and also to understand how conservation in wilderness, countryside, suburbs, and cities are all related."
Copyright 2002, Reuters
All Rights Reserved
**********
From www.enn.com
From War Zones to Shopping Malls: New study reveals deadly link between consumer demand and third world resource wars
From Worldwatch Institute
Thursday, October 17, 2002
WASHINGTON, DC -- Hold For Release
Thursday, October 17, 2002
12:00 PM EDT 16:00 GMT
The world's insatiable demand for cellular phones and other consumer luxuries is fueling violent conflict and killing millions in
developing countries, reports a new study from the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. Brutal
wars over natural resources like coltan-- a mineral that keeps cell phones and other electronic equipment functioning-- diamonds,
tropical woods, and other rare materials have killed or displaced more than 20 million people and are raising at least $12 billion a
year for rebels, warlords, repressive governments, and other predatory groups around the world.
"From Columbia to Angola to Afghanistan people are dying every day because consumer societies import and use materials
irrespective of where they originate," says Worldwatch Institute senior researcher Michael Renner, author of The Anatomy of
Resource Wars. "If you purchase a cell phone, for example, you may very well be paying to keep the war going in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, where rival armies fight for control over deposits of coltan, a commodity that just over a decade ago had
little commercial value, but is now vital for the one billion plus cell phones in use today."
"The enormous expansion in global trade, coupled with lax or corrupt customs officials, has made access to key markets relatively easy for warring groups. Companies and rich nations that benefit from cheap raw materials have long turned a blind eye to the destruction at their source, and most consumers don't know that a number of common purchases bear the invisible imprint of violence," Renner says.
Most of the violence in resource-related conflicts is directed against civilians. Grotesque practices like hacking off limbs serve to
terrorize local populations into submission or flight. Young boys are often turned into child soldiers and girls into sex slaves for
older fighters. Child and slave labor is used to extract the resources. More than 5 million people were killed in resource-driven
conflicts during the
1990s. Another 5-6 million fled to neighboring countries, and anywhere from 11 to 15 million people
were displaced inside the borders of their home countries.
In addition to the human toll these wars take, many resource-related conflicts are being fought in or near areas of great environmental value, accelerating deforestation and decimating populations of gorillas, elephants, and other wildlife.
Resource conflicts have revealed the limits of international peacekeeping and conflict resolution capacities. In order to curb resource wars and inform consumers about their purchases, Renner calls for the following actions:
*Develop strong global certification systems for diamonds, timber, and other resources in order to track the origins of commodities
and screen out those produced and traded illicitly in conflict areas.
*Improve the capacity of international organizations and governments to monitor compliance with embargoes against conflict
commodities and enforce sanctions, so that traffickers can no longer operate with impunity.
*Develop corporate codes of conduct in resource extraction industries, support NGO campaigns that "name and shame" companies into doing business in more responsible ways, and increase corporate transparency and accountability (for instance, by requiring companies to disclose all taxes, fees, royalties, and other payments they make to host governments as a condition for being listed on leading stock exchanges and financial markets).
*Reduce the availability of small arms, the weapons of choice in many conflicts, by establishing stricter national export criteria, regulating arms brokers, marking and tracing weapons, and improving collection of surplus arms.
*Promote democratization, justice, and greater respect for human rights and reduce the impunity with which some governments and rebel groups engage in extreme violence.
*Facilitate the diversification of the economy away from a strong dependence on primary commodities. To do so, invest in human development, improve health and education services, and provide adequate jobs and opportunities for social and economic advancement in order to reduce the risk that a country's natural resource endowment will become its undoing.
-END-
Notes to Editors:
Purchasing Information: The Anatomy of Resource Wars costs $5 plus shipping and handling, and can be purchased through the Worldwatch website: www.worldwatch.org or by calling 1-888-544-2303 (in US) or 1-570-320-2076 (from overseas) or by faxing 570-320-2079.
Worldwatch Email list: To receive Worldwatch press advisories by email, send a message to majordomo@crest.org. In the first line of text, type: "subscribe Worldwatch."
About the Worldwatch Institute: The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organization, based in Washington, D.C., that works toward the evolution of an environmentally sustainable and socially just society, in which the needs of all people are met without threatening the health of the natural environment or the well being of future generations.
Through accessible, fact-based analysis of critical global issues, Worldwatch helps to inform people around the world about the complex interactions between people, nature, and economies. Worldwatch focuses on the underlying causes of and practical solutions to the world's problems, in order to inspire people to demand new policies, investment patterns, and lifestyle choices. For more information, visit: www.worldwatch.org.
For more information, contact:
Susan Finkelpearl
Media Coordinator
Worldwatch Institute
202-452-1999
sfinkelpearl@worldwatch.org
Web site: http://www.worldwatch.org
*****
No streams are unpolluted, many animal and plant species face extinction
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The United States may have no streams left that are free from chemical contamination, and about one-fifth of animal species and one-sixth of plant types are at risk of extinction, says a private report on the nation's ecosystems.
The findings are in an ambitious study commissioned five years ago by former President Bill Clinton and released Tuesday by the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment.
The report tries to document in one place the sort of statistics about natural resources that until now were dispersed among several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department.
But perhaps more important than any particular findings, administration officials and lawmakers said, is that the report for the first time proposes an objective set of ecological "indicators" about the nation's environmental health. The study offers 103 indicators but says completed and adequate data is available for only 56 percent of them. For example, the only national data on nonnative or invasive species are for birds and freshwater fish.
"This report is, at one level, a road map of what we need to do to gather adequate data," said Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee.
The Heinz Center plans to update its study every five years. William Clark, a Harvard University government professor who oversaw the mammoth project, said the purpose was to "help raise the factual basis of the debate" over difficult environmental issues.
"This report is going to mean a great deal for our environment," EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said at a ceremony. "Environmental indicators are clearly the tools that we need to do our job well."
Each year the federal government spends more than $600 million collecting environmental data, but the center's experts say that information still isn't comprehensive. At the same time, those experts say, the government spends billions of dollars on pollution controls and cleanups: $120 billion in 1994, the last year for which such figures are available.
Members of the center's team of 150 experts and others compared the need for indicators to the role that factors such as interest rates, unemployment, and inflation play in helping gauge the economy. Environmental, industry, government, and academic groups all participated in the report's making.
Copyright 2002, Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
******
Earth can't meet human demand for resources, says study
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
By Christopher Doering, Reuters
WASHINGTON -- The consumption of forests, energy, and land by humans is exceeding the rate at which Earth can replenish itself, according to research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study, conducted by California-based Redefining Progress, a nonprofit group concerned with environmental conservation and its economics, warned that a failure to rein in humanity's overuse of natural resources could send the planet into "ecological bankruptcy."
Earth's resources "are like a pile of money anyone can grab while they all close their eyes, but then it's gone," said Mathis Wackernagel, lead author of the study and a program director at Redefining Progress.
Scientists said humanity's demand for resources had soared during the past 40 years to a level where it would take the planet 1.2 years to regenerate what people remove each year. The impact by humans on the environment had inched higher since 1961 when public demand was 70 percent of the planet's regenerative capacity, the study showed. "If we don't live within the budget of nature, sustainability becomes futile," Wackernagel said.
The study, which details the population's impact on the Earth with a quantitative number, measured the "ecological footprint" of human activities such as marine fishing, harvesting timber, building infrastructure, and burning fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Researchers then used government data and various estimates to determine how much land would be required to meet human demand for those actions.
For example, Wackernagel and his team found that in 1999, each person consumed an average of 5.7 acres. The global average was significantly lower than industrialized countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where 24 acres and 13.3 acres, respectively, were consumed per person.
'ECOLOGICAL BANKRUPTCY'
In order to develop a formula that measured humanity's consumption with the Earth's regenerative capacity, the researchers were forced to reach several assumptions and omit the use of some resources because of insufficient data. The results, for example, excluded the impact of local freshwater use and the release of solid, liquid, or gaseous pollutants other than CO2 into the environment.
Even though the findings revealed that human use of resources was far outstripping Earth's supply, it stopped short of determining how long the process could continue without detrimental consequences.
"Like any responsible business that keeps track of spending and income to protect financial assets, we need ecological accounts to protect our natural assets," Wackernagel said. "And if we don't ... we will prepare for ecological bankruptcy."
Wackernagel said the study's results could be used to gauge the impact of new technologies and how they affect the environment. The use of an alternative technology, such as one that produces renewable energy or replaces natural biological processes, could allow society to live better without increasing consumption, he said.
Governments could also determine the impact consumers and businesses were having on depleting area resources and evaluate potential ways to reduce consumption, Wackernagel said.
Copyright 2002, Reuters
All Rights Reserved
Return to Home Page - Return to Index