Unspoilt land totalling an area larger than North America is likely to be damaged by human activity in the next 30 years, according to a new UN assessment of global environmental decline launched on Wednesday.
By the year 2032, more than 70 per cent of the Earth’s land surface is likely to be “destroyed, fragmented or disturbed” by cities, roads, mines and other infrastructure of human civilisation. This would be an increase from about 50 per cent today, says the Global Environment Outlook-3 (GEO-3), published by the UN Environment Programme.
Despite some positive signs, such as declining water and air pollution in some rich countries, the UN reports “a steady decline in the environment, especially across large parts of the developing world”.
The hardest hit region is likely to be Latin America and the Caribbean, home to four of the top 10 megacities, where more than 80 per cent of the land will be damaged by 2032. This echoes recent pessimistic assessments of the fate of the Amazon rainforest, the continent’s largest natural asset.
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Pros and cons
The report also repeats an assessment first made three years ago in a predecessor report, GEO-2000, that the spread of human activity threatens a quarter of the world’s mammals with extinction.
The spread of infrastructure has brought some benefits, even to the poorest. The proportion of the world’s population with access to safe drinking water has risen four-fifths in the last report to five-sixths today.
And though 900 million fewer people now live without sanitation, the bad news is that much of their sewage is ending up, untreated, in rivers and oceans. One result of this is an estimated 2.5 million cases of infectious hepatitis caused annually by people eating contaminated shellfish.
The report says the worst effects of environmental decline can be avoided if action is taken now. “We now have hundreds of declarations, agreements, guidelines and legally-binding treaties. Let us now find the political courage and the innovative financing needed to implement these deals,” said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Töpfer.
