How munch?
The rich eat away at the Earth. The poor
suffer with the rotten environment
| We all need to eat a certain amount to
stay alive. We need to consume natural resources to produce goods that help us to lead a
‘good life’. But how much is enough before our planet starts to scream enough?
For the past five years, the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been publishing an annual Human
Development Report (HDR) which assesses how countries have progressed and developed.
This year’s report focusses on the consumption of goods and services and looks at how
this can help or hinder human development. This issue of GT tries to examine how runaway
consumption affects the environment.
Ice-creams, air-conditioners,hamburgers,
cars, swimming pools...now don’t we all want to live life kingsize! But who foots the
‘ecological bill’? Does more necessarily mean better? As the HDR points out,
that need not always be so. |
The Human
Development Report says that 86% of the of money spent on personal
consumption in the world is spent by just 20% of the world’s people. People are
consuming more in food, energy, education, transportation, communication and entertainment
than ever before. Yet, all this progress is unevenly distributed.
4.4 billion people in the world live in developing countries like India. Among them,
three-fifth live in communities without basic sanitation; one-third are without safe
drinking water; a quarter lack proper housing; one-fifth of children do not get as far as
Grade 5 in school, and an equal percentage are undernourished.
There is a big gap between the rich and poor. The Report notes that the wealthiest
one-fifth, the richest of the world’s people:
- eat up 45% of all the
meat and fish produced in the world, whereas the poorest fifth eat less than 5%.
- consume 58% of total energy while
the poorest fifth use less than 4%.
-
consume 84% of all paper produced, while the poorest fifth use 1.1%. The average
industrialised country consumes 78.2 tonnes of paper per 1000, while the average for the
poorest countries is 0.4 tonnes per 1,000.
- have 74% of all telephone lines. The poorest fifth have 1.5%. Sweden,
Switzerland and the United States have more than 600 telephones per 1,000 people.
Afghanistan, Cambodia and Chad have 1 telephone per 1,000.
- own 87% of the world’s
vehicles, while the poorest one-fifth own less than 1%.
 The Report notes that
modern industrialised countries are the main consumers, but people in the world’s
poorest countries suffer much more because of the resulting pollution and degradation of
land, forests, rivers and oceans that support their livelihoods.
FLOODS —The poorest one-fifth of the world’s people, who are responsible for
just 3% of carbon dioxide emissions live in low-lying regions that are threatened by
rising sea-levels due to global warming. With a 1 metre rise in sea-level, Bangladesh
would lose 17% of its land area while Egypt would lose 12%. Small island nations, such as
Maldives will disappear.
FOOD — Fish is the main source of protein for almost one billion people in
developing countries. Over-fishing by rich countries has made fish too expensive for the
poor to afford any more.
FUEL — The high cost and shortage of modern fuels like LPG in poor households
forces many millions of people, mostly women, to cook their food over smokey fires fuelled
by wood and animal dung. About 2.1 million poor people die world wide due to air pollution
caused by indoor smoke and fumes. Most of the people who die each year from air and water
pollution are poor people in developing countries.
FORESTS — The Report observes that although deforestation occurs mostly in
developing countries, more than half the wood and nearly three-quarters of the resulting
paper is used by the rich industrialised countries.
Obviously, the vehicle of progress has been going full steam ahead. The sad truth is
that it has bypassed many millions, and has steam-rollered over the environment. |
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A
Down To Earth Supplement
