Yahoo News 9 Jun 08;
China is now consuming more than twice as much as what its ecosystems can supply sustainably, having doubled its needs since the 1960s, a new WWF report said Tuesday.
China now utilises 15 percent of the world's total biological capacity, said the report, which is published jointly by the WWF and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
The report found that the Chinese had an average ecological footprint of 1.6 hectares in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available.
This means that each person needs 1.6 hectares of biologically productive land to support their lifestyle demands.
While this is still lower than the world average of 2.2 global hectares per person, it "nonetheless presents challenges, considering China's large population and the robust economic development," said the report.
"If China were to follow the lead of the United States, where each person demands nearly 10 hectares of productive area, China would demand the available capacity of the entire planet.
"This is likely to be a physical impossibility for China, and for the other nations of the world," said the report.
If on the other hand China could, in its development, also balance environmental needs, it could "lead the way for the world as a whole," the report added.
"It's a critical period in the coming 20 years for China to realise its sustainable development, which is determined by important indicators including the balance between the utilization efficiency of natural resources and the Earth's regeneration capacity improvement," said Zhu Guangyao, secretary general of the Chinese council.
China using up natural resources fast: report
Robert Evans, Reuters 9 Jun 08;
GENEVA (Reuters) - China is drawing on natural resources such as farm land, timber and water twice as fast as they can be renewed in its drive for development, a report from Chinese and international environmentalists said on Tuesday.
The report said the next 20 years would be critical to correct the situation and put the Asian giant's burgeoning economy, with a rapidly growing population, on to a sustainable path.
"China's average ecological footprint has doubled since the 1960s and now demands more than two times what the country's ecosystems can sustainably supply," said a summary of the report, issued by the Swiss-based WWF International.
It said China's "footprint" -- a measure of how much productive land and inland water resources are used up to satisfy the average current lifestyle of each member of the population -- was running at 1.6 hectares per person.
This suggested that for China's current 1.2 billion people -- one sixth of the world population -- to sustain this rate, it would need to either double the land and water area it uses or cut back to nearer the available 0.8 hectares per person.
The report was commissioned jointly by the WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) in Beijing.
CHINESE EXPERTS
It was drawn up with the help of Chinese experts by a U.S.-based group, the Global Footprint Network, which works with the WWF to produce reports on the global, regional and national ecological impact of use of resources.
The Network reported with the WWF on Monday that many African countries were running down their natural resources in the drive for development as their populations grow, but were still using only 1.1 hectares per head, compared with the 1.3 hectares available.
It said the global average footprint was 2.2 hectares per head -- significantly more than the 1.8 hectares available.
By 2050, the whole world's current rate of drawing on natural resources and disposing of waste will require an entire extra planet, Monday's report said.
CCICED Secretary General Zhu Guangyao, an author of the later study, "Report on Ecological Footprint in China", was quoted by WWF as saying the next 20 years would be "a critical period ... for China to realize sustainable development".
WWF said the report presented two strategies to tackle the Chinese problem, starting with "easy" and "slow" measures that would be simple, cheap and popular, such as investing in clean technology and changing to energy-efficient light bulbs.
After that, it said, China could implement a wider approach focusing on compact urban development, individual action, reducing hidden waste flows, carbon reduction strategies, land management and efficiency increases.
(Editing by Kevin Liffey)
