The Century Ahead.

Ever-Greater Problems or Ever-Wider Opportunities?

As we enter the new millennium, our environmental underpinnings are far more valuable in strictly economic terms than we had ever supposed. Because most environmental goods and services are not traded in the marketplace and hence have no price evaluations, they have been treated as not only "price-less" but "worth-less". For this reason, they have been misused and overused as if with impunity. Fortunately, we now have a surrogate evaluation of all environmental goods and services: $33 trillion per year worldwide, and thus larger than the global economy of $29 trillion. In short, global natural product is more valuable than global national product. Now that we have a firm grasp of the economic value of our environmental supports, they are more likely to receive proper care.

The clearer understanding of the vital role played by our environments means we may learn to benefit from them in ways that enhance our welfare in myriad ways. Thus we can embark on a shift from an approach that has over-exploited and under-utilized our environments to a strategy that derives full arid sustainable benefit from them. In this sense, we can look forward to a century ahead that is marked by an ecology and an economy of hope without precedent.

There is much evidence that the Earth's carrying capacity is already exceeded by the present 6 billion people and their lifestyles. Humans now account for 55 per cent of all available water run-off, and they co-opt almost 50 per cent of all plant growth. Greater amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are mobilized by humans in the form of crop fertilizer than by natural processes. Similarly, humans already harvest an amount of ocean fish that reflects fully one third of phytoplankton productivity in temperate continental shelves.

Finally, the current decline of the environmental resource base worldwide may prove to be minor compared to what could well ensue, given exploitation pressures ahead. Fortunately, there are many opportunities to relieve environmental pressures, both present and prospective, and through shifts in lifestyles and enhanced technologies, all of which can be promoted by a range of policy responses.

Certain economic sectors are engaging in "full cost pricing" in order to internalize environmental externalities. There is much scope to reform the tax system so that we no longer penalize productive activities, such as individual work and business profits, but shift the tax burden to negative activities, such as overuse of key natural resources or generation of pollutants among other wastes. All these initiatives help to safeguard our environments and make our economies more sustainably productive and efficient.

Expanding eco-technologies: Now that environmental resources are being degraded and depleted, we need to move toward economies that safeguard the environmental supports of our economic activities. Conventional economies are remarkably inefficient. In the United States, materials used by industry's metabolism amount to more than 20 times all Americans' weight per day. Yet only 1 per cent of the material flow ends up in products that are still in use six months after sale, the rest being junked. Better would be industrial parks where each manufacturer feeds upon the wastes of others until emissions are finally reduced to zero. In short, this "industrial ecology" eliminates not only waste but the very idea of waste itself, as is practised by nature with its closed-loop ecosystems.

Much can be done to promote eco-technologies for energy efficiency, recycling, closed-loop systems of manufacturing, and zero-emission industry. There is huge potential for clean and renewable sources of energy. Wind power has become a $3-billion-per-year industry that serves as a cornerstone of a new solar economy to replace fossil fuels. To achieve sustainable economies, we need to reduce our materials and energy intensity (the amount used per unit product) by 50 per cent worldwide. Given that developing countries will be reluctant, let alone able, to do so for a while to come, developed nations should aim to cut theirs by 90 percent. In short, we have hitherto sought to exploit the resources of the planet in support of the human cause. We need to exploit human resources, a.k.a. brain power, in support of the planetary cause-and thereby give ourselves an expanded prospect of securing the human cause as well.

Cutting perverse subsidies: Among policy openings, there can hardly be one with greater potential pay-off than "perverse" subsidies. These subsidies are harmful to both our economies and environments (Myers and Kent, 1998). A notable example lies with marine fisheries, which have left numerous fish species on the edge of commercial if not biological extinction. The fisheries catch-well above sustainable yield-costs more than $100 billion a year to bring to dockside, whereupon it is sold for around $80 billion, the shortfall being made up with government subsidies. The result is depletion of major fish stocks and endangerment of certain species, plus bankruptcy of fishing businesses and much unemployment. Perverse subsidies are prominent in six leading sectors: agriculture, fossil fuels/nuclear energy, road transportation, water, forestry and fisheries.

Curbing excessive consumption: The often extravagant and wasteful consumption of affluent communities constitutes an environmental constraint that is evermore constraining for rich and poor alike. Furthermore, the skewed consumption patterns between rich and poor may well mean the point is being approached when, contrary to much past experience, the poor are poor in part because the rich are rich. Worse, the rich/poor gap is growing. In 1970, it was 30:1; today it is 78:1. To this extent, the consumption problem is not only environmental but ethical as well.

The consumption problem centres on the way people live, and hence the amounts and kinds of resources they consume, whether directly or indirectly, plus the pollution and other wastes they generate. Since the middle of the last century, humankind has consumed more natural resources (and caused more pollution and waste) than in all previous human history. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with affluent communities consuming a large percentage of natural resources if those resources remain plentiful and can be recycled, as in the case of iron and steel.

The key question is whether consumption uses resources or uses them up. Current consumption patterns will change if only through factors of environmental constraints, which are becoming evermore forceful (as witness global warming, to cite just the most prominent of a multitude of constraints). That is to say, consumption will change by design or default.

Role of the United Nations system: Much of the above places a premium on action at international level, and often at supranational or global level. There is no better body to undertake this work than the United Nations system, with its agencies plus the system's multiple networks to civic society, the business community and the media, among other major actors in global governance. Already there is a huge number of UN initiatives expressed through legal measures alone in the form of conventions and treaties.

At the same time, the United Nations system supplies our principle mode for the international community to come together and address those diverse challenges that affect many or all nations, and cannot be resolved except through collective action. Obvious examples include ozone layer depletion, marine issues and global warming. The system possesses comparative advantage without parallel to pursue its work via partnerships among nation-States, international organizations, commercial bodies, and civil society actors. The United Nations also features exceptional capacity for research and other scientific endeavours, primarily through the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo, with its associated bodies, such as the Institute for Advanced Studies. The next century will surely throw up an entire agenda of new environmental problems. What better body to undertake the exploratory research than the UNU?

A key factor is that the environmental cause often saves us money right away: what supports the environment supports the economy. The development cause is different in that it usually entails outlays with no pay-off for lengthy periods. Fortunately, the costs of a paradigm shift to sustainable development need not be so costly at all. Just as it will not cost the Earth to save the Earth, so our efforts to safeguard our world and our global community will demand no great expenditures. The vital question is not "how can we afford to do the necessary?" It is "how can we afford not to do it?" The biggest cost will not be to our pocketbooks, it will be to our philosophies.

Dr. Norman Myers is one of the world's leading thinkers on environmental economics. He is a Fellow of Green College, Oxford, and a foreign member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. This article is an excerpt from a paper he presented to the United Nations University conference on global governance in the new millennium.

Cost
Cosmetics (United States             $8 billion
Ice Cream (Europe)                  $11 billion
Pet food (Europe and United States) $17 billion
Over-nutrition                      $40 billion
Spent
Basic education                      $6 billion
Water and sanitation                 $9 billion
Basic health for all                $13 billion
Eliminating famine                  $40 billion
Chart by UN Chroside based on author's deta.

PROFESSOR MYERS ON PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL SECTOR

ENERGY

Energy plays a primary part in virtually all human activities and notably in those that are environmentally adverse. During the past 10,000 years, per capita consumption of energy has increased roughly 1,000 times, and human numbers the same. So total energy consumption has increased 1 million times. Today, the industrialized nations consume 70 per cent of all commercial energy, though the developing nations' share is expected to rise by 40 per cent during the period 1993-2010. We derive 85 per cent of our commercial energy from fossil fuels, which have great capacity to harm the environment through pollution and global warming.

Surely within 100 years, and hopefully within just a few decades, we shall achieve the transition from the highly polluting fossil fuels that dominate our energy systems today to an array of clean and renewable energy sources. Indeed, there are strong signs that the transition is well under way already, as witness the solar- and wind-power investments of British Petroleum, Shell and Arco as they shift from being oil businesses into energy enterprises.

WATER

Humans withdraw water from rivers, lakes and other freshwater bodies for three main uses: household, industrial and agricultural (mainly irrigation--65 per cent of all consumption). We need to produce twice as much food during the next 30 years simply to keep up with the projected rise in human numbers and human nutrition. Since at least half of this increase is scheduled to come from irrigated croplands, this places a premium on more efficient use of water. But there will be no good water management when subsidies are munificently dispensed to rich and poor alike, encouraging waste. The hard-scrabble rice farmer should not have to pay the same amount for his water as the car manufacturer, the chemicals producer, the swimming-pool owner and the golf player, who do not pay the full cost of their water. As a measure of what can be done, note that Israel--the most water-efficient nation in the world--enjoys a renewable per capita water supply of only one quarter as much as many other nations, but it encourages efficiency of water use by keeping subsidies low.

Water is a renewable resource. It is available for repeated recyclings and thus it contrasts strongly with other natural resources such as topsoil and fossil fuels. But from the United States and Britain to Mexico and India, water is misused and overused in major measure because of government subsidies that discourage people from making improvements. Fortunately, and primarily through slashing of subsidies, developing countries--where water shortages are likely to become most pronounced--could eliminate almost two thirds of their present water losses due to wasteful use of water. This would be equivalent to increasing their actual water supplies by fully one quarter.

Water is becoming scarce in many parts of the world. Global consumption has tripled during the four decades 1950-1990, and demand is expected to double again during the two decades 1991-2010. The number of people experiencing water shortages is already 500 million, or almost 1 in 10 of humankind, and it is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2025, or 3 persons in 10.

DIVERSITY

The environmental problem with longest-term repercussions (millions of years before the damage can be restored) is the mass extinction of species under way. We are well advanced into a mass extinction of species. During the past half century, we may well have eliminated at least 300,000 out of a putative planetary total of 10 million species. If we carry on with "business as usual", we are likely to lose at least half of all species within the next century. This would constitute a greater mass extinction than any since the demise of the dinosaurs and associated species 65 million years ago; in certain respects, it would be the greatest extinction spasm in the 4 billion years of life's history. All in all, the present mass extinction implicitly represents the biggest "decision" that has ever been taken by one human generation on the unconsulted behalf of future generations (seepage 12).

UNFORSEEN

Finally, let us look at what may well turn out to be the biggest environmental challenge of all, being the problems we have not even identified as yet. These "surprise phenomena" could prove to be so potent that they could cause the environmental crisis to gather pace until it overwhelms the planetary ecosystem even more rapidly than is usually supposed. Such surprises include, notably, environmental discontinuities with their ecological synergisms. In this marked respect, the future may prove to be far from a simple extension of the past. We should anticipate that environmental discontinuities will become a prominent feature of the future, many of them arising from synergistic interactions between two or more environmental problems.

Hope--A Precious Resource

There is much cause for hope--often the scarcest resource of all. To hearten us on our way as we seek to live in better accord with our environments and with each other, here are some recent success stories:

* In Brazil's Curitiba city, low-cost bus services have cut car traffic by 30 per cent even while population has doubled.

* In China, both good and bad environmental practices are publicized through a television programme reaching tens of millions of viewers.

* In Colombia, new toilets cut water consumption by over half.

* In Denmark, a waste tax has led to a 30-per cent increase in reuse and recycling.

* In Germany, the anti-packaging project has caused a 17-per cent reduction, while the Blue Angel Eco-Label has been awarded to almost 1,000 manufacturers for 4,100 products.

* In Japan, the Green Purchasing Network promotes sustainable goods and services, e.g. copiers, computers and refrigerators.

* In South Korea, the Waste Collection Charge has cut waste by 20 per cent in just three years.

* In the United Kingdom, the Sustainable Timber Buyers' Group has 80 members, accounting for 18 per cent of wood products.

* In the United States, the Energy Star programme sets an energy-efficiency standard met by two thirds of computers and monitors and all laser printers.

* Worldwide, fluorescent light-bulb sales have now topped 1 billion, cutting electricity demands by the equivalent of 100 coal-fired power stations.