Op
http://www.optimumpopulation.org vond ik deze interessante verwijzing naar
The Living Planet Report 2002 van het WWF.
http://www.panda.org/downloads/general/LPR_2002.pdf
Dit rapport leert je alles over de 'ecologische voetafdruk', een sleutelbegrip bij het bepalen of een land of regio al dan niet overbevolkt is.
The Living Planet Report is WWF's periodic update on the state of the world's ecosystems - as measured by the Living Planet Index - and the human pressures on them through the consumption of renewable natural resources - as measured by the Ecological Footprint. There is a cause- effect linkage between the two measures.
Figure 1 - Living Planet Index
The Living Planet Index (LPI) is derived from trends over the past 30 years in populations of hundreds of species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Between 1970 and 2000, it declined by about 35%. The LPI is the average of three ecosystem-based indices. The forest species population index declined by about 15%, the marine species population index fell by about 35%, while the freshwater species population index dropped 55% over the 30-year period. The stark trends indicated by the LPI are a quantitative confirmation that the world is currently undergoing a very rapid loss of biodiversity comparable with the great mass extinction events that have previously occurred only five or six times in the Earth's history.
The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a measure of the consumption of renewable natural resources by a human population, be it that of a country, a region or the whole world. A population's EF is the total area of productive land or sea required to produce all the crops, meat, seafood, wood and fibre it consumes, to sustain its energy consumption and to give space for its infrastructure. The EF can be compared with the biologically productive capacity of the land and sea available to that population.
Figure 2 - World Ecological Footprint
The Earth has about 11.4 billion hectares of productive land and sea space, after all unproductive areas of icecaps, desert and open ocean are discounted, or about a quarter of its surface area. Divided between the global population of six billion people, this total equates to just 1.9 hectares per person. While the EF of the average African or Asian consumer was less than 1.4 hectares per person in 1999, the average Western European's footprint was about 5.0 hectares, and the average North American's was about 9.6 hectares.
The EF of the world average consumer in 1999 was 2.3 hectares per person, or 20% above the earth's biological capacity of 1.90 hectares per person. In other words, humanity now exceeds the planet's capacity to sustain its consumption of renewable resources. We are able to maintain this global overdraft on a temporary basis by eating into the earth's capital stocks of forest, fish and fertile soils. We also dump our excess carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Neither of these two activities are sustainable in the long-term - the only sustainable solution is to live within the biological productive capacity of the earth.
However, current trends are moving humanity away from achieving this minimum requirement for sustainability, not towards it. The global ecological footprint has grown from about 70% of the planet's biological capacity in 1961 to about 120% of its biological capacity in 1999. Furthermore, future projections based on likely scenarios of population growth, economic development and technological change, show that humanity's footprint is likely to grow to about 180% to 220% of the Earth's biological capacity by the year 2050.
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Het onderste grafiekje is niet zo goed leesbaar, maar het komt er op neer dat alle mensen samen sinds ongeveer 1975 meer zijn beginnen te consumeren dan de aarde aankan. Sinds 1975 zijn we met zijn allen (arm en rijk samen) dus bezig roofbouw te plegen op de aarde. We zijn sinds 1975 bezig ons kapitaal op te verteren tenkoste van de generaties die na ons komen. Lang kan dit niet meer aanhouden.
[size=2]Adobe Reader (nodig voor PDF) kan je downloaden door hier op te klikken[/size]
[size=2]Het rapport is een bestand van 1MB dus het duurt eventjes om te downloaden.[/size]
