Millennium Ecosystem Assessment/ United Nations

1. Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively over the past 50 years than in any comparable period in history.

2. Between 1960 and 2000 the world population doubled.

3. Over the same period, food production increased by 250 per cent, water use doubled, wood pulp and paper harvests tripled, hydropower doubled, and timber production rose by more than a half.

4. The amount of water impounded behind dams has quadrupled since 1960, and up to six times more water is now held in reservoirs than in rivers.
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5. It is estimated that one quarter of the world’s coral reefs and about 35 per cent of its mangroves were destroyed or badly degraded in the last decade of the 20th century.

6. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer eve used was applied after 1985.

7. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by almost a third since 1750; 60 per cent of that increase has happened since 1959.

8. A quarter of commercially important fish stocks are over-harvested.

9. Up to 35 per cent of irrigation withdrawals could exceed replenishment rates.

10. More than a billion people survive on less than $1 a day.

11. Approximately 856 million people are under-nourished.

12. Up to 2 billion people are affected by water scarcity.

13. Approximately 1.8 million people still die annually due to inadequate hygiene, sanitation or water supply.

Source: The Ecologist, May 2005, p. 12.

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Also see:

Earth on Edge/PBS
http://www.pbs.org/earthonedge/

Earth Trends/World Resources Institute
http://earthtrends.wri.org

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment/UN
http://www.millenniumassessment.org

WorldWatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org

Ehrlich, Paul, and Anne Ehrlich, 2004, One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future, Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Rees, Martin, 2003, Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in this Century - On Earth and Beyond, New York, NY: Basic Books.

Wilson, Edward O., 2003, The Future of Life, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

World Resources Institute, 2000, World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems, The Fraying Web of Life, Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute.

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