Here's your report card
You know, sometimes I think we've already blown it.
Quote of note:
Walter Reid, director of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, said over the past 50 years humans had changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than any comparable period in human history."These changes have resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss to the biological diversity of the planet," Reid said.
U.N. Study: Earth's Health Deteriorating
- By CATHERINE McALOON, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, March 31, 2005
(03-31) 02:48 PST LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --
Growing populations and expanding economic activity have strained the planet's ecosystems over the past half century, a trend that threatens international efforts to combat poverty and disease, a U.N.-sponsored study of the Earth's health warned on Wednesday.
The four-year, $24 million Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found humans have caused heavy damage or depleted portions of the world's farmlands, forests and watercourses.
Unless nations adopt more eco-friendly policies, increased human demands for food, clean water and fuels could speed the disappearance of forests, fish and fresh water reserves and lead to more frequent disease outbreaks over the next 50 years, it warned.
"This report is essentially an audit of nature's economy and the audit shows that we have driven most of the accounts into the red," Jonathan Lash, a member of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment board, said in London.
The report said degradation of ecosystems was a barrier to achieving development goals adopted at the U.N. Millennium Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2000: halving the proportion of people without access to clean water and basic sanitation by 2015 and improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
