http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0826-01.htm
Published on Monday,
August 26, 2002 by the Guardian of London
Ecological Decline 'Far Worse' Than Official
Estimates
Leaked paper - OECD's grim warning on climate
change
by John Vidal in Johannesburg
The real level of world
inequality and environmental
degradation may be far worse than official estimates,
according to a leaked document prepared for the world's
richest countries and seen by the Guardian.
It includes new estimates
that the world lost almost
10% of its forests in the past 10 years; that carbon
dioxide emissions leading to global warming are expected
to rise by 33% in rich countries and 100% in the rest
of the world in the next 18 years; and that more than
30% more fresh water will be needed by 2020.
The background paper
for last month's Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development pre-Johannesburg
meeting on sustainable development draws on many
previously unseen UN, World Bank, World Trade
Organization, and academic papers.
Although the governments
of the world's 22 richest
nations who make up the OECD have seen the document,
many of the calculations are new and considerably
different from their own.
It calculates that
less than 0.1% of of the average
income of the 22 members of the OECD actually finds
its way to the world's low income countries and just
0.05% went to the least developed countries. Recent
US and EU initiatives, it says, "will not meet targets
at any time soon".
Donor assistance for
environmental protection and
basic social services has declined to less than
15% of all aid compared with 35% at the time of
the last earth summit in 1992.
The OECD paper calculates
that rich countries now
subsidize their industries by up to $1,000m a year,
including more than $300bn in agriculture. This,
it says, is having increasing effects on the
development of poor countries. and on environmental
degradation. If unrestricted market access were
given to just the four richest economies in the
world, it would increase per capita incomes of
more than 2 billion people in the world's most
populated countries by 4% a year.
Meanwhile, the paper
finds that foreign assistance
from western European countries, including private
funding and direct investment encouraged through
national policies, was more globally oriented in
1900 than it is today.
It says that if the
EU, Canada, Japan and the
US allowed migrants to make up 4% of their workforce,
the returns to poor countries could be $160bn to
200bn a year - far more than any debt relief could
provide.
The paper's calculations
of environmental degradation
suggest the many conventions, treaties and intergovernmental
agreements signed in the past decade have had little or
no effect on stopping the rush for timber and mineral
resources in the developing world and that extinction
of species is now reaching 11% of birds, 18%-24% of
mammals, 5% of fish, and 8% of plants.
Over the next 18 years,
says the report, global energy
use is expected to expand by more than 50%, and by more
than 100% in China, east Asia and the former Soviet
Union. Transport is by then expected to account for
more than half of global oil demand.
"The non-renewable
fossil fuel resource base is
expected to be sufficient to meet demand to 2020
though problems beyond that point are foreseen for
natural gas and possibly oil," the report says.
It adds that OECD countries
subsidize the emission
of global warming gases by $57bn - almost exactly
what the report estimates it would cost to meet
international targets. The paper suggests that
investing the money in reducing climate change
emissions would have next to no effect on the
global economy. "Through the provision of subsidies
on fossil fuels governments are effectively subsidizing
pollution and global warming as more than 60% of all
subsidies flow to oil, coal and gas."
Environment and development
groups yesterday reacted
to the report with horror.
"The rich world
knows this is happening," said the
chair of Friends of the Earth International, Ricardo
Navarrez. "We in poor countries have always known the
climate is changing, aid does not come, and the poor
are getting poorer. The richest countries are here
in Johannesburg to keep the system going."
Depleted resources:
Key facts from OECD report
Fisheries
· Nearly 50%
of all fish stocks are fully exploited,
20% are overexploited
· Only 2% of
global fisheries is recovering from overfishing
Forests
· On current
trends by 2025 15% of all forest species
will be extinct
Development
· 60% of the
world's population lives in ecologically
vulnerable areas
· 3 million
people die each year due to air pollution and
5 million due to unsafe water
Foreign investment
· 80% of global
finance flows went to rich countries in 2000,
with the entire African continent receiving less than 1% of
direct foreign investment
· In 1914 40%
of western European investment went to Africa,
Latin America and Asia. In 1990 less than 20% went to those regions
Water
· Global water
withdrawals are expected to rise 31% by 2020
· Most groundwater
resources are being replenished at a rate of
between 0.1% and 0.5%
© Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2002
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