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Page added on February 21, 2012
UN: World cannot sustain increasing population growth
The United Nations has published a grim report warning that time is running out to ensure that there is enough food, water and energy to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population.
The UN High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, warns that the lives of up to 3 billion people could be at risk, and calls on governments to act now as a matter of urgency to tackle sustainable development. With the number of middle-class consumers expected to rise by a further 3 billion by 2040, as our global population swells to 9 billion, demand for global resources will rise exponentially.
“The current global development model is unsustainable,” states the UN report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing. “We can no longer assume that our collective actions will not trigger tipping points as environmental thresholds are breached, risking irreversible damage to both ecosystems and human communities. If we fail to resolve the sustainable development dilemma, we run the risk of condemning up to 3 billion members of our human family to a life of endemic poverty. Neither of these outcomes is acceptable, and we must find a new way forward.”
Despite absolute poverty being reduced to 27 percent today from 46 percent in 1990, as a consequence the improvement in quality of life and change in consumer habits has put natural resources under increasing strain. By 2030 we will need to supply the world with 50 percent more food, 30 percent more water and 45 percent more energy, the report states, a position that our natural environment will find impossible to sustain.
“Ecosystems are under stress. Economies are faltering,” says Ban Ki-moon. “The human appetite for resources keeps growing. We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet. Sustainable development offers our best chance to change course.”
The report outlines no fewer than 56 recommendations for sustainable development to be used in economic policy, which the panel explains would create a “new political economy” driven towards a more sustainable future.
“Today our planet and our world are experiencing the best of times, and the worst of times,” states the report. “The world is experiencing unprecedented prosperity, while the planet is under unprecedented stress.”
It adds that because of the array of overlapping challenges the world faces, it is more urgent than ever to take action to embrace the principles of the sustainable development agenda. “It is time that genuine global action is taken to enable people, markets and governments to make sustainable choices.”
“Let’s use the upcoming Rio+20 summit to kick off this global transition towards a sustainable growth model for the 21st century that the world so badly needs,” EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told Reuters in response to the report.
11 Comments on "UN: World cannot sustain increasing population growth"
dsula on Tue, 21st Feb 2012 7:50 pm
And the worst? Europe and america keeps on importing those high performance breeders instead of gracefully lowering their population.
Arthur on Tue, 21st Feb 2012 8:27 pm
@dsula – Ironically the German Army predicts a peakoil collapse of society in 10 years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyUe7w1gDZo
But surprisingly the areas with the highest risk of famine are… the US and EU:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/food-security.jpg
(this map appears in video at 3:22)
The place to be with the highest chance of survival is… Africa!! India and South-East Asia are fine as well. Looks like BillT made the right choice with the Philippines, at least as far as availability of food is concerned.
pinger on Tue, 21st Feb 2012 8:50 pm
One child policy in the developing world,it’s the only way whether you like it or not.
Arthur on Tue, 21st Feb 2012 9:19 pm
Moderators – please remove previous version of this post, where I mixed things up.
————————————-
@dsula – Ironically the German Army predicts a peakoil collapse of society in 10 years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyUe7w1gDZo
But unsurprisingly the areas with the highest risk of famine are Africa, India, South-East Asia:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/food-security.jpg
(this map appears in video at 3:22)
The place to be with the highest chance of survival is the West.
Kenz300 on Tue, 21st Feb 2012 10:03 pm
Quote — ” By 2030 we will need to supply the world with 50 percent more food, 30 percent more water and 45 percent more energy, the report states, a position that our natural environment will find impossible to sustain.”
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The ever growing population is not sustainable. Every country needs to balance its population, resources, jobs, water and energy. It is good to see the UN tackling sustainability.
Kenjamkov on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 2:18 am
“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality”
(any system where there are more than 1 class of people eg: dirt farmer, politician, banker, baker, will not bring about equality unless we are all paid the same amount)
“and economic growth while protecting our planet.” (utterly impossible to have economic growth without consuming our planet’s resources to nothing)
“Sustainable development offers our best chance to change course.” (if this is their idea of sustainability, then somehow I don’t think it’s gonna happen.)
Sustainability can only occur when the Earth renews the resources just as fast as we use them. So for oil we have a trillion barrels but have to spread them over the next 60 million years (about 17000 barrels a year). 🙂
BillT on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 4:19 am
Mother Nature / Natural law, will take care of the situation the same way it deals with any other living thing that exceeds its resources. Death until the population is under what the world can handle. That means that At least 6 billion of us will not be here in a few decades. And the pain will be great.
Arthur on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 9:34 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory
2 billion people in 2050.
Beery on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 12:09 pm
“By 2030 we will need to supply the world with 50 percent more food, 30 percent more water and 45 percent more energy…”
No, no NO! That’s the LAST thing we need to be doing. Don’t these people see that feeding us just encourages us to grow more? We need to find ways of reducing food, water and energy supplies, otherwise, the Jevons Paradox will make the problem even worse. The UN must ask itself this: does it want to see a billion people starve in the next ten years, or increase food, water and energy and ensure that 7 billion people starve in 30 years? Because the latter is what will happen if we keep increasing the supply of food and energy.
Kaitlynn on Thu, 3rd Sep 2015 3:04 pm
The problem is that we are a society of excess in the majority. We’re spending money, time, and resources on prisoners who should have been executed a long time ago, on transgender people having all these surgeries to change their biology, on the obese who eat themselves into disability and then have the government pay for their surgeries (and more often than not, these people revert back to an obese state). Then there are those who make no effort to control repopulation (the Duggars anyone? or the women who have children with several different men and are on welfare to feed them all). Then there are the liberal rich who think it’s necessary to own several cars and choose bulimia to enjoy calories without gaining weight. It’s these destructive practices that have arisen from a huge trend of entitlement that have put the world where it is. Meanwhile, there are orphans in Africa starving to emaciation and then death, or dying from lack of basic medical care. It’s sickening.
apneaman on Thu, 3rd Sep 2015 3:23 pm
Growth begets growth.
New Study Shows How Climate Change Is Already Reshaping The Earth
“A landmark study in the journal Nature documents an expansion of the world’s dry and semi-arid climate regions since 1950 — and attributes it to human-caused global warming.
This expansion of the world’s dry zones is a basic prediction of climate science. The fact it is so broadly observable now means we must take seriously the current projections of widespread global Dust-Bowlification in the coming decades on our current CO2 emissions pathway — including the U.S.’s own breadbasket.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/03/3697620/expanding-global-dry-semi-arid-zones/