Two Earth Planets for the Humanity at 2030

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PARIS (AFP) — At its current pace, humanity, to meet their needs in the early 2030, will need to have at its disposal two planets, says the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

The ecological footprint of humanity, which assesses its consumption of natural resources, has already exceeded 30% of the planet's capacity to regenerate, says the WWF's Living Planet Report 2008.

The pressure of humanity on the planet has doubled in the past 45 years for two reasons, by population growth and the increase of individual consumption, says the report.

This is over-depleting ecosystems and waste accumulate in the air, land and water, said. As a result, deforestation, water shortages, the decline of biodiversity and climate chaos, caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, "placed increasingly at risk the welfare and development of all nations," explains WWF.

The "Living Planet Index", a calibrated instrument to measure the evolution of global biodiversity, and that includes 1686 species of vertebrates in all regions of the world, has decreased almost 30% over the past 35 years, states the report.

In view of the decline of this index, "it appears increasingly unlikely that we will reach the goal, however modest, pointing to the Rio Convention on Biodiversity: to reduce the erosion of global biodiversity by 2010", the inference WWF.

In addition to the global ecological footprint and the Living Planet Index, the report presents a third measuring instrument, "the footprint of water", which assesses the resulting pressure of consumerism on the water resources at national, regional and global levels.

The problem is that water is distributed unevenly across the world. Thus, some 50 countries are currently facing a moderate or severe water stress, stresses the WWF. And the number of people suffering from shortages of water, either all year or seasonally, will increase due to climate change, he adds.

(Comment from Oscar Granda)

Urgent measures must be adopted around the world, between others ... more birth control, more resource-saving, more efficient, more education ... less pollution, less waste, less pets (seriously), less inequality ... to achieve a sustainable planet.