- LONDON (Reuters) - People
are plundering the planet at an unprecedented and unsustainable rate that
needs to be curbed quickly to avoid worldwide disaster, the United Nations
said Wednesday.
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- "More people are using more resources with more
intensity than at any point in human history," the United Nations
said in its annual world population report for 2001.
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- "The costs of delaying action will increase rapidly
over time. ... By 2050, 4.2 billion people (over 45 percent of the global
total) will be living in countries that cannot meet the daily requirement
of 50 liters (11 gallons) of water per person to meet basic needs."
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- The population, which has doubled to 6.1 billion in the
past 40 years, is projected to surge 50 percent to 9.3 billion within another
half century -- with all the growth in developing countries whose resources
are already overstretched.
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- The report said water was being used and polluted at
catastrophic rates.
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- WATER CONSUMPTION SURGES
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- Currently, 54 percent of available freshwater supplies
are being used annually -- two-thirds for agriculture.
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- That figure is set to surge to 70 percent by 2025 due
to population growth alone, and 90 percent if consumption in the developing
countries reached the levels in the developed world.
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- Water is already being used at unsustainable rates in
many countries, with water tables under some Chinese, Latin American and
South Asian cities dropping by more than 3 feet a year and water from seas
and rivers being diverted with occasionally disastrous results.
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- The report said 1.1 billion people already did not have
access to clean water, and in developing nations up to 95 percent of sewage
and 70 percent of industrial waste were simply being dumped untreated into
water courses.
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- Vital rain forests are being destroyed at the highest
rate in history, taking with them crucial sources of biodiversity and contributing
to climate warming, thereby boosting already rising sea levels.
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- SEAS OVEREXPLOITED
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- The seas continue to be massively overexploited and erosion
is taking a rising toll of plant species -- one-quarter of which could
be lost forever by 2025.
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- The United Nations said food production would have to
double and distribution would have to improve to feed the exploding population,
with most of the increase coming from higher yielding varieties that needed
more environmentally dangerous chemicals to grow.
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- It said the globalization of commerce had increased global
wealth but at the same time added to global inequalities, with the hordes
of the world's forgotten poor forced to plunder their scarce natural resources
simply to survive from day to day.
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- The global HIV/AIDS epidemic had spiraled out of control
and far too little money was being made available to stem it and treat
it and its related tide of orphans and outcasts.
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- A crucial key lay in giving women -- who played a major
and largely unsung role in rural communities across the globe -- a far
greater say in society and, equally important, in setting the size of their
desired families.
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- "It is clear that providing full access to reproductive
health services would be far less costly in the long run than the environmental
consequences of the population growth that will result if reproductive
health needs are not met," the report said.
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- http://news.excite.com/news/r/011106/21/science-un-population-dc
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