ST.

XAVIERS COLLEGE KOLKATA

PROJECT ON ENVIRONVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE TOPIC: WHO WILL PAY THE SINS OF OUR RICH
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ROOM NO: 36

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IMPACT OF DEVELOPED COUNTRIES OVER ENVIRONMENT

At any level of development, human impact on the environment is a function of population size, per capita consumption and the environmental damage caused by the technology used to produce what is consumed. People in developed countries have the greatest impact on the global environment. The 20 per cent of the worlds people living in the highest income countries are responsible for 86 per cent of total private consumption compared with the poorest 20 per cent, who account for a mere 1.3 per cent. The richest fifth account for 53 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions, the poorest fifth, 3 per cent. A child born in the industrial world adds more to consumption and pollution levels in one lifetime than do 30-50 children born in developing countries. As living standards rise in developing countries, the environmental consequences of population growth will be amplified with ever increasing numbers of people aspiring, justifiably, to "live better." Rather than assign blame in the debate over environmental challenges, both current and new

consumers need to realize and address the consequences of their levels of consumption. The difficulty in facing these questions is that the answers are neither simple nor complete. The most obvious environmental impacts are usually local, such as the disappearance of forests and associated watersheds, soil erosion or desertification or the brown haze hovering over cities. Less obvious are phenomena such as the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the global decline of fish catches or the pollution of land and water resources with industrial and hazardous wastes. Further complicating the issue is the lack of data to help researchers determine trends and accurately measure what is happening, a reflection of the relative youth of the environmental sciences, disciplines that require expertise across research areas. Some trends are already obvious, however, particularly with regard to the three "renewable" resources on which human life depends: land, water and air. Each year, an estimated 5 to 7 million hectares of agricultural lands are lost to accelerating land degradation and rapid urbanization. A sixth of the worlds land area nearly 2 billion hectares is now degraded as a result of overgrazing and poor farming practices. Another 16 to 20 million hectares of tropical forests and woodlands are lost each year. Water is a finite resource. There is no more water on earth now than there was 2,000 years ago when the population was less than 3 per cent of its current size. During this century, while world population has tripled, water withdrawals have increased by over six times. Today, with water scarcity defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres per person per year, 458 million people in 31 countries face water shortages. By 2025, close to 3 billion people in 48 countries will be affected by critical water shortages for all or part of the year. The pollution and increasing scarcity of renewable fresh water supplies also threaten human health and welfare. An estimated 1.1 billion people were without access to clean drinking water in 1994; 2.8 billion people lacked access to sanitation services. Waterborne

diseases infect some 250 million people each year, about 10 million of whom die. The poor are most exposed to fumes and polluted rivers and least able to protect themselves. Of the estimated 2.7 million deaths each year from air pollution, 2.2 million are from indoor pollution and 80 per cent of the victims are rural poor in developing countries. Today, climate experts worry that continued increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 already 28 per cent higher than pre-industrial levels could result in sufficient temperature increases to raise sea levels around the world and seriously disrupt agricultural production. The impact of population growth in rural areas can push communities into unsustainable practices, such as the burning and razing of tropical forests in order to plant crops, over cropping and subsequent depletion of fragile arable land and over pumping of groundwater. For the past 50 years, food production has kept ahead of rising demand. Today, in a world where two-thirds of the people depend on rice, wheat and or maize as their staple food, 80 countries cannot produce enough food to feed their own populations from existing land and water resources. According to FAO, world food production will have to double in order to provide food security for 7.8 billion people expected by 2025. Compounding the environmental challenges facing us all are the needs of more than roughly 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty. Without higher standards of living, one-fifth of the worlds people and their children will continue to suffer malnutrition, disease and illiteracy. The gradual slowing of population growth already under way is part of the answer to this environmental dilemma. With slower growth rates, countries will have more time to prepare for the still inevitable, if smaller, population increases to come time to build schools, dig sewers and lay water pipes

North south cooperation is vital to success in ending absolute poverty, a further element in the ongoing environmental dilemma. For those eking out a living, environmentally sound practices are luxuries, not a choice. Developed countries need to develop technologies which minimize damage to natural systems and make these new technologies more widely available to developing countries. For both North and South the ultimate goal should be sustainability in all areas of economic activity, including agriculture, industry, forestry, fisheries, transportation and tourism. A favorable international economic climate, featuring improved and reliable access to developed country markets, debt reduction and an increased flow of financial resources from North to South, by way of both foreign direct investment and aid for development, is vital to the success of efforts to alleviate poverty. Education, basic health care including family planning and reproductive health care and access to land, credit and employment are all important to poverty alleviation and, therefore, crucial to long-term economic and environmental sustainability. Above all, however, ensuring sustainability will require people to make changes, in both the way they think about their environment and how they live in it. In particular, the high consumption, high-waste lifestyle of the top earning fifth of the worlds population, most of who live in the North, cannot continue without imperiling the right of the lowest earning fifth of the worlds population to satisfy their basic needs.

The environmental damage caused to developing nations by the world's richest countries amounts to more than the entire third world debt of $1.8 trillion, according to the first systematic global analysis of the ecological damage imposed by rich countries. The study found that there are huge disparities in the ecological footprint inflicted by rich and poor countries on the rest of the world because of differences in consumption. The authors say that the west's high living standards are maintained in part through the huge unrecognized ecological debts it has built up with developing countries. "At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor and, in effect, there is a debt to the poor," said Prof Richard Norgaard, an ecological economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. "That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor. You don't see it until you do the kind of accounting that we do here."

Using data from the World Bank and the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the researchers examined socalled "environmental externalities" or costs that are not included in the prices paid for goods but which cover ecological damage linked to their consumption. They focused on six areas: greenhouse gas emissions, ozone layer depletion, agriculture, deforestation, over fishing and converting mangrove swamps into shrimp farms. The team calculated the costs of consumption in low, medium and high income countries, both within their borders and outside, from 1961 to 2000. The team used UN definitions for countries in different income categories. Low income countries included Pakistan, Nigeria and Vietnam, and middle income nations included Brazil and China. Rich countries in the study included the UK, US and Japan.
Striking disparities

The magnitude of effects outside the home country was different for each category of consumption. For example, deforestation and agricultural intensification primarily affect the host country, while the impacts from climate change and ozone depletion show up the disparity between rich and poor most strikingly. Greenhouse emissions from low-income countries have imposed $740 billion of damage on rich countries, while in return rich countries have imposed $2.3 trillion of damage. This damage includes, for example, flooding from more severe storms as a result of climate change. Likewise, CFC emissions from rich countries have inflicted between $25 billion and 57 billion of damage to the poorest countries. Increased ultraviolet levels from the ozone hole have led to higher healthcare costs from skin cancer and eye problems. The converse figure is between $0.58 and $1.3 billion. The team publish their results today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We know already that climate change is a huge injustice inflicted on the poor," said Dr Neil Adger at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, who was not involved in the research, "This paper is actually the first systematic quantification to produce a map of that ecological debt. Not only for climate change but also for these other areas." "This is an accounting tool that allows you to say how much the high-income world owes the low-income world for the environmental externalities we impose on them," he said. The team confined its calculations to areas in which the costs of environmental damage, for example in terms of lost services from ecosystems, are well understood. That meant leaving out damage from excessive freshwater withdrawals, destruction of coral reefs, biodiversity loss, invasive species and war. So the researchers believe the figures represent a minimum estimate of the true cost.

Do rich Nations OWE poor ones for Eco- Damage?

Environmental damage caused by rich nations disproportionately harms poor ones and costs them more than their total foreign debt of $1.8 trillion, researchers say. So concludes a study billed as the first global accounting in dollar terms of nations toll on the environments At least to some extent, rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor in effect, there is a debt to the poor, said Richard B. Norgaard, an ecological economist at the University of California-Berkeley, one of the researchers. That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor. There will be much controversy, he admitted, about whether you can even do this kind of study and whether we did it right. Niggard said hed like to offer a challenge to any researchers who may doubt its findings: do [the study] yourself and do it better. This first one, he added, is mainly meant to get people thinking.

The calculations drew on more than a decade of assessments by environmental economists who have tried to attach monetary figures to environmental damage, plus data from the recent U.N. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and World Bank reports. To simplify the monumental task, researchers focused on just six types of environmental damage: farming intensification and expansion, deforestation, overfishing, loss of mangrove swamps and forests, ozone depletion and climate change. Other types of damage seen as harder to appraise were ignored, such as industrial pollution and loss of habitat and biodiversity.