Imagine being stranded with a handful of people on a small island in the middle of the Pacific. The island is endowed with everything you need to survive: fruit, fish, wildlife for hunting, fresh water, firewood, and timber to enable you to build a shelter and perhaps even a means of escape. Assuming you have the tools, you begin cultivating a garden for food.
The island’s natural resources appear to be infinite but over time you and your growing community start to need more firewood, more timber, more animals to hunt, and a bigger area for food gardens. You experience dry spells, so you irrigate your crops, but freshwater supplies are limited. With decreasing forest cover and increasing irrigation needs, your water resources regenerate more slowly, and groundwater resources dry up. The forest starts to die.
Your actions are driven by your needs – not by the island’s ability to provide you with goods and services. Constant exploitation disrupts the integrity of the ecosystem, making it less and less able to meet your demands. That’s when the trouble starts.
Pacific Ocean countries are beginning to fish tuna more sustainably Photo credit: Global commons
This island scenario is an ominous metaphor for our world today.
“A growing number of humans are all clamouring for more space and a greater share of dwindling resources… This is clearly not viable. We are sleepwalking towards a world where what we need to survive and thrive is in short supply,” says UN Environment Executive Director Erik Solheim.
Water, food and timber are all renewable, but those resources rely on healthy ecosystems. An over-exploited ecosphere is not able to provide so many benefits.
With the world’s population forecast to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050, and with incomes rising rapidly in many developing countries, the outlook for reduced consumption appears bleak. In the last two decades alone, the number of middle-income consumers has doubled to 2.4 billion. Their unprecedented appetite for goods is placing an even heavier burden on the world's natural resources.
“We extract provisioning ecosystem services such as food, wood, or clean water out of the natural system. We benefit from regulation services like flood or pest control. We enjoy cultural services in an aesthetic, recreational, and maybe even spiritual way. But we give back, among other things, pollution, waste, land degradation, species extinction and ecosystem destruction. This is not sustainable,” says UN Environment ecosystems expert Niklas Hagelberg.
We need to balance our needs with what the planet can provide. The good news is that the latest science can help us find a way forward. We also have powerful frameworks for action in the form of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement, among other international accords.
For more information contact Niklas Hagelberg: Niklas.Hagelberg[at]unep.org
Media enquiries: unepnewsdesk[at]unep.org
