2012 Living Planet Report calls for better choices

WWF

We’re taking more than our planet has to give.  That’s the primary finding of WWF’s 2012 Living Planet Report, released this week.  The report, which looks at the decline in biodiversity and the growth in human footprint, illustrates some dangerous trends.  As growing populations, combined with high per capita consumption rates and lack of efficiency places increasing pressure on our natural capital – the biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services that are essential to our lives and livelihoods – we’re eating into our resources.  Resources that we need, and that the Earth has little chance to replenish.

 
Since 1970, biodiversity has declined by 30 per cent, while our ecological footprint – the demand we place on the planet’s resources – has more than doubled.
Canada is one of the top offenders, with the 8th largest footprint per capita.  Our footprint is 2.5 times the global average, and 3.5 times what the planet can sustain.  This means that we’d need 3.5 planets to meet our demand if everyone on earth lived as the average Canadian does – which really isn’t a possibility (as far as we know).
What does all this mean?  That human activity is taking a serious toll on nature, the basis of our well-being and prosperity.  That we need to make better choices if we want our children to inherit a healthy planet – and we need to make them now.  We need to properly value and account for natural capital – the resources and services that nature provides us.
Here at WWF, we believe that all this is possible.  We believe that making better choices can lead to a healthier planet, and that we know today what these are – we just have to choose them.

In Canada, this could include:

  • –Putting a price on carbon, and probably increasing prices for water
  • –Analysis of water risk, leading not just to efficiencies, but companies becoming water stewards interested in governance with other stakeholders at the watershed level
  • –Increasing the efficiency of how we develop and consume natural capital

 
This is the future we choose for Canada: more renewable energy; better protection for our watersheds and oceans; sustainable development of the Arctic; restoring damaged ecosystems.  As a country with vast natural resources, we can sometimes take them for granted – instead, we need to become better stewards of our natural capital and our country’s future.