European Environment
Agency Launches "The European Environment - State and Outlook
2005"
The European
Environment Agency (EEA) released its much awaited report The
European Environment - State and Outlook 2005, featuring the
Ecological Footprint, which shows that it takes 2.1 times the
biological capacity of Europe to support Europe.
"In
formulating policy today, Europe ...has an obligation to look
beyond ... its own borders," states Jacqueline McGlade,
Executive Director, European Environment Agency. "Europe
cannot continue down the path of achieving its short-term
objectives by impacting disproportionately on the rest of the
world's environment through its Ecological Footprint."
EEA commissioned Global Footprint Network and its
partners, Stockholm Environment Institute, New Economics
Foundation and WWF International to prepare a special
subreport on Europe's interaction with the global environment,
which in turn informed the State and Outlook 2005 report.
Michael Meacher, MP and former UK Minister of Environment,
emphasizes the importance of this analysis, stating that
"Understanding our ecological demand and its reach beyond
national boundaries allows us to get prepared for the future.
It is not that different from our financial expenditures. If
we don't track them, we waste them; if we overdraw our
'ecological accounts,' we are undermining our
future."
Europe's well-being and economic performance
depend on healthy ecosystems. Europe's stewardship of its own
lands has been relatively stable for the past 40 years, and
the large rise in European consumption has been fed mainly by
non-domestic resources. In 1961, Europe's consumption exceeded
its own biocapacity by just a few per cent; by 2002, Europe
was using more than twice its own biocapacity.
Georgina
M. Mace, Director of Science, Zoological Society of London
summarizes it this way: "In a global economy, wealthy urban
centres get much of their supply from far away. They depend on
ecosystems they have never seen. Hence, overused and failing
ecosystems, even if distant, become a threat to the well-being
of these very urban centres."
Europe (defined as the 25
EU countries plus Switzerland) is the largest economy in world
history, and its consumption has never been greater. In her
speech, Jacqueline McGlade said, "Europeans' consumption may
be half of that of people living in the USA, but it is double
that of people living in Brazil, India and China."
In 1961, the population of European nations made up over 12
percent of world population with a demand on global ecological
capacity of just under 10 percent. By 2002, Europe's
population comprised only 7 percent of the world total but its
demand on global ecological capacity doubled, to nearly 20
percent.
What are the opportunities for Europe today?McGlade
explained that "Many of our envrionmental problems are rooted
in the way we use our land, the way we trade and the way we
consume." The report lays out an economic policy framework for
addressing these issues focusing on:
shifting taxes away from labor and investment and toward
pollution and the inefficient use of materials and land;
economic reforms shifing subsidies that are applied to
transport, housing and agriculture; and
subsidies encouraging sustainable practices and
efficienty technologies.
Similarly, Ernst Ulrich von
Weizsäcker, Chairman of the German Bundestag Environment
Committee and author of the book Factor Four says "It helps to
look into the truth mirror. But what can we do to stop
exporting Footprints that devastate the outside world? Well,
technologies and habits are available to reduce the size of
our Footprints by a factor of two or even four without
jeopardising the quality of our European life."
To
download the State and Outlook 2005 report, go here.
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Natural disasters have
always happened. And they will continue to. Partly we cannot
prevent them from happening. Yet some of them seem to be
seriously related to the effects of our own conduct. Those
events do increase in numbers, we know now. 
iNSnet was rewarded Best Environmental
Directory by Brussels Free University in November
2004.
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2005-12-05 Canada
