EARTH'S TOP ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

As we head into a new year, the main news is that we face an enormous environmental crisis. The worse news is that it is growing bigger at a rate faster than ever. The worst news of all is that if we continue with our present lifestyles, economies, etc., we shall not recover from the debacle for at least 50 years, and more like 500 years in the case of global warming (even 5 million years in the case of mass extinction of species). The better news is that the final disaster has not overtaken us yet. The best news is that it need never overtake us at all, provided we move smartly and immediately to change our lifestyles, our economies, etc. The supremely best news is that if we shift to another track for our lifestyles, our economies, etc., we shall surely find we prefer it to our present track. In many ways it will be more enjoyable, less frenetic, more fulfilling all round--and it will often put money into our pockets.

First off, let us note the distinctly downside news of our present predicament. Of the present 6.2 billion people, over 800 million are malnourished, yet we have farmed all the most productive soils and caused one third of croplands to be eroded away. At least one billion people depend on fish for their main source of animal protein, yet their fisheries are mostly declining through over-exploitation. We consume or otherwise appropriate two fifths of all net plant growth, yet there will soon be half as many people again, many of them demanding more plant products than today.

1. Population growth

For some better news, consider Bangladesh, sometimes viewed as a population disaster. Its family size today is a mere 3.3 children, only half as many as twenty years ago. The government spends over $60 to prevent a birth, but saves at least ten times as much on social services outlays for each birth avoided. The nation-wide programme prevents almost 900,000 births annually, with net savings of $550 million, leaving more funds to invest in education and child care.

But we cannot look at population in isolation from consumption. Population growth in Britain: it causes as much damage to global climate as does population growth in Bangladesh, thanks to Britons' prodigal consumption of fossil fuels. Yet Britain has no population policy at all. We have never asked ourselves how many people we want in our crowded island. How many people are good for Britain--and how many Britons are good for the world? Ironically we could get down to zero population growth through the simple expedient of phasing out half of our unwanted births. That would be good for the parents, good for the unwanted child, and good for the economy through fewer child support payments.

2. Global warming

The biggest "strictly environmental" problem right now stems from our use of fossil fuels with their carbon dioxide emissions bringing on half of that most dreaded future, a globally warmed world. The world's climate is certainly warming up--just as the debate about it is cooling down because there is hardly any more scientific dispute. During the past ten years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced one set of reports after another, each more forceful than before. To cite the latest, "Climate change will have adverse consequences undermining the very foundation of sustainable development." Note too a statement by 2500 economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners: "For the United States, there are policy options that would slow climate change without harming American living standards, and these measures may in fact improve U.S. productivity in the longer run."

The United States occupies a pivotal position in the global warming arena. With 4.6% of global population it accounts for almost 25% of global CO2 emissions, a proportion that is rising fast. The biggest single source of CO2 emissions is cars, accounting in developed nations for 25% of the total (so are they truly "developed"?). The most car-friendly and climate-unfriendly nation is the United States, where emissions from motor vehicles exceed the total emissions from all sources in all but a few nations. The fuel economy of new American cars has not improved since the late 1980s, whereas it could leap ahead if it were to switch to fuel-efficient cars such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. The market for clean vehicles is projected to grow from $2 billion in 2000 to $48 billion by 2010. What a potential boost for the U.S. economy, what a flood of new jobs available--counter to President Bush's insistence that a switch out of oil (especially Texas oil?) would damage the American economy.

A second way to meet energy needs in non-fossil-fuel ways is to mobilize clean and renewable forms of energy--wind and solar power among others. When once they become widespread with economies of scale, the clean and renewables would be competitive with fossil fuels. Wind power is growing by 30% per year and solar energy by 43%. Denmark already gains 18% of its electricity from wind farms, and aims for 50%. Surely Americans can be as smart as Danes. The greatest potential worldwide probably lies in the American Great Plains, where a wind turbine in one tenth of a acre can easily produce annual royalties of $800 for a farmer or rancher, while providing the local community with $40,000 worth of electricity.

Moreover there are big profits to be made from clean and renewables, which are expected to grow from $7 billion in 2000 to $82 billion by 2010. All in all, then, if global warming turns out to be a fairy tale, the United States could still come out ahead on many fronts.

3. Biodepletion, a.k.a. Mass Extinction of Species

Forget the word biodiversity, what's important is biodepletion. According to 80% of biology experts, we are into the opening phase of a mass extinction of species. We are losing thousands and more likely tens of thousands of species every year. This is thousands and more likely tens of thousands more than in the prehistoric past. Within our children's lifetimes we look set to bid adieu to roughly half of all the ten million species that share this planet with us (though they might think we are not so hot at sharing). That would make for the biggest mass extinction since the demise of the dinosaurs and associated species 65 million years ago. Sure, evolution will one day generate replacement species to match today's in numbers and variety--but that will take several million years, maybe twenty times longer than humans have been humans.

That much is agreed. Not so clear is how to set conservation priorities. We do not have enough resources--funds, skills, etc.--to save all species under threat, and the problem is getting worse rapidly. So we must decide what comes first. One way is to focus on "biodiversity hotspots", being areas that (a) feature exceptional concentrations of endemic species (i.e. found nowhere else), and (b) face exceptional threat of habitat destruction. Some 25 hotspots contain the last remaining habitats of 35-45% of all species on land, in localities that have lost 88% of their original vegetation. Safeguarding the hotspots at an annual cost of $500 million (total conservation spending today, $6 billion per year) would knock a big hole in the mass extinction crisis. The amount raised for hotspots thus far is $650 million over twelve years, a long way from what is needed but the largest sum ever assigned to a single conservation activity.

4. Tropical Deforestation

Closely related to mass extinction is tropical deforestation. These forests are they the most exuberant celebration of nature that has ever graced the face of the planet. They occupy only 5% of Earth's land surface, about the same as the United States, yet they contain well over half of all species. They share another unqiue tribute: they are being eliminated faster than any other ecological zone. We have already lost half of these forests, and the rest are disappearing at a rate that may leave little within just a few decades.

Two thirds of deforestation is due to smallscale farmers who, finding themselves landless in e.g. southern and eastern Brazil, feel they have no alternative but to pick up machete and matchbox and head off towards Amazonia. The same applies in several other parts of Latin America, also in tropical Africa and Asia. To relieve the pressures from these displaced farmers, we need broad-scope measures such as population planning (see above), relief of poverty (see below), and a host of other measures on the part of the global community--again with leadership from the United States.

The forests' supply material goods that extend far beyond timber and other wood products. They include wild fruits, latexes, essential oils, exudates, waxes, tannins, dyes and medicinals, with an on-site worth of roughly $90 billion a year. The net present value of medicinal products, including anti-cancer drugs and improved contraceptives, is estimated at a minimum of $420 billion.

As for the forests' environmental services, the value of India's forest services just in regulating river flows are roughly assessed at $72 billion a year. To replace the carbon storage function of tropical forests with respect to global warming could cost as much as $3.7 trillion. When we consider all uses of the forests, both direct and indirect, Mexico's forests are worth $32 per hectare per year, Costa Rica's forests $60, and Panama's forests over $200.

5. Topsoil Loss

We are losing 25 billion tonnes of topsoil to erosion per year. To put the figure in perspective, consider that it is enough in principle to grow sufficient grain to make up the diets of malnourished people totalling 700 million (all hungry people total 820 million). Minimum economic costs, in terms of additional fertilizer needed to offset loss of natural plant nutrients, totals $400 billion per year (in the United States, at least $200 per person).

Key question: why isn't more done to tackle the problem? Part answer: it's case of farmers' perception. A cropfield losing 20 tonnes per hectare per year is losing half its fertility within 20 years, but only 5mm off the soil horizon. Which farmer is going to notice that?

By the year 2050 we may well have run out of oil supplies (if we haven't weaned ourselves off it already). By that time too, we may be near to running out of topsoil. We shall find other sources of energy, but nobody has yet devised an alternative to topsoil.

6. Water Shortages

Global water use tripled during the four decades 1950-1990, and demand is expected to double again during the two decades 1991-2010. At least half a billion people today are short of water, yet already we divert three fifths of all available freshwater runoff and most convenient supplies have been grossly over-used. In the United States, farmers are taking water from the Ogallala aquifer underlying the great wheat states at rates averaging forty times that of natural replenishment. By 2025 some three billion people worldwide are forecast to be living in water stressed areas.

In 90 developing countries with 40% of the world's population, the problem sorely limits their economic prospects. At least 80% of developing-nation disease, or four billion cases per year, is due to lack of clean water for household use, and six million deaths per year stem from water-related diseases such as malaria, cholera, schistosomiasis, yellow fever and especially diarrohea. When a person suffers diarrhoea, malaria or other disease, as much as one fifth of food intake is needed to offset the disease's impact on nutrition. All water-related diseases are estimated to levy a cost through workdays lost to sickness, of $125 billion a year. This contrasts with the cost of supplying both water and sanitation facilities, $50 billion a year; and it is two and a half times more than government subsidies that foster wasteful and inefficient use of water.

So pressing is the problem that it could eventually precipitate violent conflict, mainly because of water stocks that straddle international frontiers. Of 214 major river basins around the world, three-quarters are shared by two countries and one quarter by three to ten countries. Almost half of Earth's land surface is located within international river basins, supporting 40% of the world's population, and nearly 50 countries have more than three-quarters of their territory within such areas.

7. Over Consumption of Materials

Consider the amount of materials we use or waste in support of our lifestyles. Citizens of industrialized countries need huge volumes of bricks, cement, iron, oil, chemicals, paper and many other materials. They also generate vast quantities of pollutants and other waste, plus they cause similarly large quantities of materials to be excavated or moved around in their pursuit of valuable minerals. To produce one kilogramme of gold, for instance, somebody moves 350 tonnes of earth--and hence the gold ring on your finger effectively weighs three tonnes. In the United States the physical displacement of materials is about 80 tons per person per year, or over 1000 times a typical American's weight. In Japan with its more efficient economy, the amount is only one quarter as much--but five times more than it need be if the country were to deploy all efficiency technologies available. U.S. "outflows" (pollutants, eroded soil, waste water, etc.) amount to 25 tons per American per year, well over twice as much as in Japan.

All the rich nations, with one quarter of the world's population, consume three-quarters of the world's natural resources and generate three-quarters of its pollution and other wastes. The effective size of an average American family in terms of per-capita consumption of critical resources and pollution is the equivalent of 30 citizens of the developing world and 80 citizens of Nepal. And it's not always a case of sheer quantity. Some waste is harmful in small amounts, as is the case with many of the 70,000 synthetic chemicals that industry dumps into the environment after only minimal testing against only a few recognized diseases.

Again, the good news lies with how we could do better. Hey, reader, that envelope that brought you this magazine: have you put it in your recycling box--or is it full already? Remember that your country recycles hardly more than half as much paper as does Japan. Germany requires businesses to take back packing supplied with their products.

8. Poverty

Like population, this is not itself an environmental problem, but it is a major cause of deforestation, desertification, water shortages, soil erosion, and other planetary ills--which in turn are severe sources of poverty. The bad news is that there are still 1.3 billion people who subsist off less than $1 per day. The better news is that we have enabled more people to escape from poverty in the past fifty years than in the previous 500 years.

The 1.3 billion people have been bypassed by development processes, hence they are "marginal" in senses economic, political, social, whatever. They see no alternative but to scratch a living from marginal environments--those too wet (tropical forests), too dry (savannah grasslands) or too steep (upland areas) for normal sustainable agriculture. They are surely causing more destruction of forests, savannahs, montane areas and other critical ecoystems than all other developing-world people put together. They also have the biggest families by far. In environmental and population senses as well as humanitarian senses, developing-world poverty is a luxury we can no longer afford.

A highly productive way to reduce poverty, and hence its associated environmental problems, is demonstrated by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh with its loans to impoverished women--a case of supplying "bankability" to the otherwise "unbankable". Started in 1976, it is now a $2.5 billion business. It lends $35 million per month, with a repayment rate of 98% (a rate that would make commercial banks green with envy). As a result, two million women have been enabled to e.g. plant a new crop, to buy an extra cow, or to start a small business such as a grain mill--and to completely lift themselves out of poverty. As a further result and through spinoff benefits, Grameen women are generally healthier and have fewer children. So successful is the enterprise that micro-credit banks modelled on Grameen have spread to 58 countries, including Poland and even the United States.

Another solution to poverty is for rich nations to open their markets to exports from developing nations, just as much as they do to one another's exports. Developing-country revenues would soar by at least $100 billion per year, twice as much as all foreign aid. Moreover, cutting back on developing-country poverty would in turn boost developed-world economies because the formerly poor nations would open up many new markets.

Bottom line: we have the scientific understanding and the technological means to head us into a bright future. It will not cost the Earth to save the Earth; in many respects, e.g. through energy efficiency, it will actually save us money and boost our economies. We have the managerial know-how to turn our biggest problems into supersize opportunities. What is missing is the political will, driven by public opinion. According to numerous surveys, large numbers of people in large numbers of countries want more done to save our environments. All depends on political will, which is the most vital resource of all--and the resource in shortest supply. Will our political leaders kindly lead?

Norman Myers is an internationally renowned scientist and a Fellow of Oxford University. He is the author of numerous books, the most recent being "Perverse Subsidies: How Misused Tax Dollars Harm the Environment and the Economy". He was a Senior Advisor to the International Conference on Population and Development. He has worked on population issues with United Nations agencies, USAID, and many non-governmental organizations.