19-May-2013
Bonn Declaration issued by ‘Water in the Anthropocene’ science conference: A majority on Earth face severe self-inflicted water handicap within two generations
A conference of leading water scientists from around the world today issued a stark warning that, without major reforms, “in the short span of one or two generations, the majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will be living under the handicap of severe pressure on fresh water, an absolutely essential natural resource for which there is no substitute. This handicap will be self-inflicted and is, we believe, entirely avoidable.”
The scientists bluntly pointed to chronic underlying problems led by mismanagement and sent a prescription to policy makers in a 1,000-word declaration issued at the end of a four-day meeting in Bonn, Germany, “Water in the Anthropocene,” organized by the Global Water System Project and detailed in a pre-conference release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/gwsp-sig051413.php.
The full text of The Bonn Declaration, click here
“Water in the Anthopocene” data visualization video, click here
Example coverage by
Agence France Presse (France), click here
The Guardian (UK), click here
Agencia EFE (Spain), click here
Asian News International (India), click here
ANSA (Italy), click here
Reuters AlertNet / SciDev (UK), click here
BBC Brazil, click here
Bloomberg News, click here
InterPress Service (USA), click here (English), here (Chinese) and here (Dutch)
Voice of America, click here
Coverage summary, click here
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Earth System Science Partnership, Paris
28-Mar-2012
Brazil and India pay a high price for rapid economic growth, according to experts speaking at a major international meeting in London, Planet Under Pressure.
Between 1990 and 2008, the wealth of these two countries as measured by GDP per capita rose 34% and 120% respectively. But a myopic focus on economic capital is flawed, scientists and economists at the conference argue. Natural capital, the sum of a country’s assets, from forests to fossil fuels and minerals, declined 46% in Brazil and 31% in India, according to a new “Inclusive Wealth Indicator” designed to augment GDP as a measure of economic progress.
When measures of natural, human and manufactured capital are considered together to obtain a more comprehensive value, Brazil’s “Inclusive Wealth” rose just 3% and India’s rose 9% over that time.
“The work on Brazil and India illustrates why Gross Domestic Product is inadequate and misleading as an index of economic progress from a long-term perspective,” says Professor Anantha Duraiappah, Executive Director of UNU-IHDP.
“A country could completely exhaust all its natural resources while posting positive GDP growth. We need an indicator that estimates the wealth of nations – natural, human and manufactured and ideally even the social and ecological constituents of human well-being.”
The first Inclusive Wealth Report, to debut in full at a joint UNU-IHDP and United Nations Environment Programme event at June’s UN “Rio+20” summit in Brazil, will describe the “inclusive wealth” of 20 nations: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, USA, United Kingdom and Venezuela. The 20 nations featured in the report represent 72% of world GDP and 56% of global population.
Authored by 17 specialists from the UK, USA, Chile, Malaysia, India, Germany and Australia, the Inclusive Wealth Indicator is undertaken by UNU-IHDP with UNEP support and in collaboration with the UN-Water Decade Programme on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC) and the Natural Capital Project of Stanford University.
News release in full, click here
Example coverage, by Reuters, click here
Coverage summary, click here
Additional coverage of the Planet Under Pressure conference by the New York Times, 1) here, 2) here, 3) here
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Earth System Science Partnership, Paris
26-Mar-2012
Time is running out to minimize the risk of setting in motion irreversible and long-term climate change and other dramatic changes to Earth’s life support system, according to scientists speaking at the Planet Under Pressure conference, which began in London today.
The unequivocal warning is delivered on the first day of the four-day conference opening with the latest readings of Earth’s vital signs.
In subsequent days at the meeting, nearly 3,000 experts spanning the spectrum of interconnected scientific interests, will examine solutions, hurdles and ways to break down the barriers to progress. The conference is the largest gathering of experts in development and global environmental changes in advance of June’s UN “Rio+20” summit in Brazil.
“The last 50 years have without doubt seen one of the most rapid transformations of the human relationship with the natural world,” says speaker Will Steffen, a global change expert from the Australian National University.
News release in full, click here
“Welcome to the Anthroposcene” video, click here
Example coverage, by the Agence France Presse, click here, by the New York Times, click here
Coverage summary, click here
]]>29 Sep 2009
The world’s rivers are in a crisis of ominous proportions, according to a new global analysis to be published Sept. 30 in the journal Nature.
The report is the first to simultaneously account for the effects on the health of the world’s rivers of such things as pollution, dam building, agricultural runoff, the conversion of wetlands and the introduction of exotic species. The resulting portrait is grim, revealing that nearly 80 percent of humans live in areas where river waters are highly threatened, posing major problems to both human water security and aquatic environments where thousands of species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.
The report was authored by an international team led by Charles J. Vörösmarty of the City University of New York, an expert on global water resources, and Peter B. McIntyre, a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology and an expert on freshwater biodiversity.
The work underpinning the study was funded by the Earth System Science Partnership, an international scientific consortium that supports research on global environmental change; the Bonn-based Global Water System Project, an interdisciplinary research effort to articulate human-water interactions; and Paris-based DIVERSITAS, an international collaborative whose mission includes providing accurate scientific information related to issues of biodiversity. The work was also supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Global Environmental Facility, and the Society for Conservation Biology’s Smith Fellowship Program.
Full news release, click here
Coverage summary, click here
Sample coverage, by Reuters, click here, by the BBC Online, click here
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A growing international consensus to formally recognize and protect people uprooted by environmental problems is expected to accelerate at a major conference in Bonn, Germany Oct. 9 to 11.Coverage summary: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRwdzmg01IrRnJ6KA8hKiCg
Example coverage, by Reuters, click here
]]>United Nations University
Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee’.
Full text: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/unu-ro100405.php
Example coverage:
The Guardian, click here
BBC, click here
Environment News Service, click here
The Associated Press, click here
]]>5 March, 2003
First UN system-wide evaluation of global water resources
Faced with “inertia at the leadership level”, the global water crisis will reach unprecedented levels in the years ahead with “growing per capita scarcity of water in many parts of the developing world”, according to a United Nations report made public today. Water resources will steadily decline because of population growth, pollution and expected climate change.
The World Water Development Report – Water for People, Water for Life – is the most comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the state of the resource. Presented on the eve of the Third World Water Forum (Kyoto, Japan, March 16 – 23), it represents the single most important intellectual contribution to the Forum and the International Year of Freshwater (www.wateryear2003.org), which is being led by UNESCO and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
To compile the report, every UN agency and commission dealing with water has for the first time worked jointly to monitor progress against water-related targets in such fields as health, food, ecosystems, cities, industry, energy, risk management, economic evaluation, resource sharing and governance. The 23 UN partners constitute the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP), whose secretariat is hosted by UNESCO.
New release in full, click here
Example coverage (UNU’s Ralph Daley quoted in Canadian media):
CBC Television, The National, click here
National Post, click here
Hamilton Spectator, click here
The Canadian Press, click here
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