State of the World 2003
View Chapter Summaries
Washington, D.C.—Despite
little action on many critical issues at the recent World Summit
for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the New Year reveals
fresh evidence of humanity’s capacity to respond rapidly
to unprecedented environmental and social threats. According to
the Worldwatch Institute’s annual report State of the
World 2003, scaling up recent successes in curbing infectious
disease, increasing the income of the poor, and advancing the
use of renewable energy, among others, would soon put the world’s
economy on a more sustainable path.
“Building a world where we meet our own needs without denying
future generations a healthy society is not impossible, as some
would assert,” says Worldwatch Institute President Christopher
Flavin. “The question is where societies choose to put
their creative efforts. If we can build spacecraft powered by
clean
fuel cells, we can build cars that run the same way. If we can
mine copper and other metals from the Earth, we can mine them
from landfills and abandoned buildings. And if we can protect
tourists from contracting malaria, we can do it for people who
live with the threat everyday.”
The challenge now, reports the 20th edition of State of the
World, is to mobilize governments, businesses, and civil
society to construct economies that are healthy for both people
and the planet.
The report’s expert research team documents a host of successes
that prove humanity is capable of reinventing the world so that
the needs of all are met with minimal harm to the Earth or to
future generations. For example:
| • The use of solar energy and wind power have grown by more than 30 percent annually over the past five years (compared to 1-2 percent annual growth for fossil fuels) in countries such as Germany, Japan, and Spain thanks to policies that have encouraged their use. |
| • A concerted global effort to reduce the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) has led to an 81 percent decline in production during the 1990s, and a marked slowing in the growth of the Antarctic ozone hole, which is expected to soon begin healing. |
| • The World Health Organization’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative has reduced polio cases globally from some 350,000 in 1988 to 480 in 2001. |
Hot on the tail of these important achievements are emerging successes
that could usher in a new era of economic progress that is much
less damaging to the world’s ecosystems and to human health.
The Netherlands has achieved an 86 percent recycling rate for
cars, and Denmark has put a total ban on aluminum cans in favor
of reusable glass bottles, putting into practice a greater vision
where recycling replaces today’s heavy dependence on virgin
materials.
Some of the most dramatic changes are occurring in the poorest
communities. Micro loans of as little as $50 have helped people
as poor as the wastepickers of the Payatas landfill near Manila
to secure loans for small businesses, land, and housing. And the
Community Reinvestment Act has helped push lending in poor U.S.
neighborhoods from an average of roughly $3 billion per year in
the 1980s to $43 billion in 1997.
Throughout 2001, rapid change was also seen at the national and
state levels. Brazil and Germany announced major new commitments
to the development of renewable energy, while the State of California
defied U.S. government policy by announcing the world’s
first mandatory limits on global warming emissions from cars.
These success stories offer hope that we can address the serious
global threats still undermining societies and ecosystems around
the world. Among those discussed in State of the World 2003:
| • Malaria claims 7,000 lives every day, and affects human development more profoundly than any other disease. |
| • Bird extinctions are running at some 50 times the natural rate due to habitat loss and other consequences of human activity. |
| • 5,500 children die each day from diseases linked to polluted food, air, and water. |
| • The global rate of ice melt has more than doubled since 1988 and could raise sea levels 27 centimeters (nearly 11 inches) by 2100. |
In the aftermath of the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg, it seems more likely that sustainable economic
growth will emerge from the combined efforts of
businesses, citizens’ groups, and local governments than
via consensus-based global agreements, according to State
of the World 2003. The World Summit itself yielded roughly
280 partnership agreements among businesses and non-governmental
groups, including collaboration among the U.N., national governments,
NGOs, and the private sector to produce cleaner vehicles, and
a “Water for Life” project that will provide clean
water and sanitation to the poor in Africa and Central Asia.
The report also notes that disparate communities can be brought
together in the service of sustainability to great effect. It
documents how environmentalists and religious people are joining
forces in an alliance for environmental health and social justice,
from the efforts of Buddhist monks in Thailand to combat deforestation,
to the climate change campaign of the World Council of Churches.
“We have seen many times in human history that societies
are able to learn quickly from experience, and to then act,” says State of the World 2003 project
director Gary Gardner. “The growing interest in sustainability
among diverse sectors of society could provide the energy needed
to boost pilot innovations
to a global scale.”
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State of the World 2003 Chapter Summaries
| Chapter 1: | A History of Our Future |
| Chapter 2: | Watching Birds Disappear |
| Chapter 3: | Linking Population, Women, and Biodiversity |
| Chapter 4: | Combating Malaria |
| Chapter 5: | Charting a New Energy Future |
| Chapter 6: | Scrapping Mining Dependence |
| Chapter 7: | Uniting Divided Cities |
| Chapter 8: | Engaging Religion in the Quest for a Sustainable World |
Chapter 1: A History of Our Future, Chris
Bright
The environmental and social challenges we face today—from
population to pollution to ecological decline—are enormous,
but not intractable. As history demonstrates, people are capable
of fundamental change for the better.
A barrier to change is that damage assessments often have an air
of unreality because they bear little obvious relation to life
as we ordinarily live it. A great deal of environmental degradation
cannot be seen. Large economies tend to displace the ill effects
of behavior from the behavior itself. Few of us ever encounter
the toxic waste, soil degradation, or unsustainable mining and
logging that support our collective consumption patterns.
It is not that hard, however, to envision the paths that reform
will have to take. For example, in the energy economy, the path
to reform leads away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy
sources, and in materials production, away from primary reliance
on mining and more on recycling.
Despite the obvious need for change, and despite our obvious technical
competence, it can still be hard to believe that real, fundamental
change is possible. And yet such change does occur, even though
it can be difficult to appreciate because it is so readily taken
for granted. For example, who today remembers the campaign to
eradicate smallpox?
Chapter 2: Watching Birds Disappear, Howard Youth
Prominent scientists consider the world to be in the midst of
the biggest wave of animal extinctions since the dinosaurs disappeared
65 million years ago. This phenomenon is clearly reflected in
the extinction of birds, which is now topping 50 times the natural
rate of loss. Over the past 500 years 128 bird species have vanished
and 103 of these have been lost since 1800.
These disappearances mark not only the loss of unique species,
but also the unraveling of delicate natural balances. Besides
providing invaluable goods and services within their habitats,
birds serve as valuable indicators of environmental change as
well. Their population declines often reflect environmental degradation.
An array of phenomena accelerates the endangerment and extinction
of bird species: habitat loss, manmade disasters, disease, the
spread of exotic plant and animal species, hunting, illegal trade,
pesticides, power lines, skyscrapers, and temperature change.
Biodiversity protection must rank high among development priorities
such as housing, sanitation, and municipal water supply as part
of a sustainable land use strategy. Furthermore, it must be worked
into and be compatible with rural, suburban, and urban planning
efforts that improve the prospects for the world's poor while
making our cities and industries safer for all living beings.
Only then will the future of the world's 9,800 bird species be
secure.
Chapter 3: Linking Population, Women, and Biodiversity,
Mia MacDonald & Danielle
Nierenberg
The interplay among population growth, biodiversity loss, and
gender roles is complex. But at the core, gender inequity tends
to exacerbate population growth, and population increases tend
to put pressure on the natural environment, including biological
resources.
Over the past decade, several global agreements have acknowledged
the need to include population realities in sustainable development
planning. These agreements have also noted the central role that
increasing women's status plays in lowering fertility and ensuring
the sound management of natural resources.
Yet large scale or significant progress toward goals set at such
conferences has been slow due to deficiencies in promised funding
or political will. In the developing world, women are often the
first to feel the effects of environmental degradation since they
are the ones who rely on trees, grasses, water, and a variety
of plants to meet daily household needs.
In order to head off future collisions between population, consumption,
and biodiversity, swift and sure action will be needed in a number
of areas, and at policy and program levels. These include targeting
areas of high biodiversity for larger-scale improvements in reproductive
health, education, and women’s rights and abilities to
participate in natural resource management. Also important are
encouraging
decision-makers and program managers to work across distinct
sectors like health and environment, and development of national
policies
and public information programs aimed at better aligning consumption
patterns and biodiversity conservation. Policy innovations, too,
could support the scaling up of current programs to maximize
their
reach and impact.
Chapter 4: Combating Malaria, Anne
Platt McGinn
Malaria, one of humanity’s oldest scourges, is making a
strong global comeback, killing up to 7,000 people a day (more
than AIDS)_primarily children in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria
has
become resistant to most anti-malarial drugs, making treatment
vastly more complicated and expensive. Poverty, war, and civil
strife make it hard for governments to implement preventive and
curative measures. And people are not making use of safe, effective,
and affordable ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the
disease.
Bringing this disease under control will require creative strategies
and far more resources than are currently available. (Malaria
is a disease of poor countries and thus tends to be under-researched:
between 1979 and 1999, only four of the 1,393 new drugs developed
worldwide were anti-malarials.) Despite the largely global phase-out
of DDT, the insecticide remains an important tool for malaria
control in epidemics in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
On the front lines in Africa, governments are reducing the incidence
of malaria by helping people acquire bednets treated with insecticides
less toxic than DDT. Sleeping under a bednet radically reduces
the number of infective mosquito bites a person suffers. The
Mexican
government has mounted a sophisticated program against malaria
that combines community involvement, widespread prevention, locally
tailored treatments, and the use of the least toxic option first.
Through programs like the UN’s Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis & Malaria, the developed world has begun to
provide the much-needed increase in financial resources.
Chapter 5: Charting a New Energy Future, Janet
Sawin
Renewable energy technologies have the potential to meet world
energy demand many times over and are now ready for use on a
large
scale. The transition from today’s mix of fossil fuels,
nuclear, and big hydropower to renewables would significantly
reduce the threats that today’s fuel sources pose to the
environment, public health and welfare, and international political
stability.
The fossil fuel industry and governments of most oil-producing
nations and major fossil fuel users like the United States have
long argued that renewables were not a credible alternative. But
it is difficult to claim that something is impossible once it
has already occurred.
From Germany to rural China, renewable energy, especially wind
power and solar (photovoltaic) power, has come of age. After more
than a decade of double-digit growth, renewable energy is a multibillion-dollar
global business. Wind power is leading the way in many nations,
generating more than 20 percent of the electricity needs in some
regions and countries, and is cost-competitive with many conventional
energy technologies. Solar cells are already the most affordable
option for getting modern energy services to hundreds of millions
of people in developing countries.
Chapter 6: Scrapping Mining Dependence, Payal Sampat
If an accountant were to weigh the costs and benefits of extracting
minerals from the Earth and then processing and refining them,
the balance sheet would reveal this: an industry that consumes
close to 10 percent of world energy, spews almost half of all
toxic emissions in some countries, and threatens nearly 40 percent
of the world's undeveloped tracts of forest. Mining is also the
world's most deadly occupation: on average, 40 mine workers are
killed on the job each day and many more are injured.
Today, minerals are extracted and consumed in enormous quantities:
in 1999, some 9.6 billion tons of marketable minerals were dug
out of the Earth, nearly twice as much as in 1970. The amount
of wastes generated in order to extract these minerals is even
more imposing. On average, producing a single gold ring, for example,
generates about 3 tons of wastes at a minesite.
Fortunately, the world doesn't need to obtain minerals in a way
that uses so much energy and generates so much pollution. Through
improved design of cities, transport, homes, and products, societies
can find ways to use the existing stock of minerals far more
efficiently—and
to use smaller amounts of materials overall—dramatically
reducing the need to mine underground ores.
Metals, for instance, are eminently recyclable. Used copper or
aluminum can be transformed back into the same amount of metal
with very little additional supplement of new metal. It takes
95 percent less energy to produce aluminum from recycled materials
than from bauxite ore. Recycling copper takes between five and
seven times less energy than processing ore, while recycled steel
uses two to three-and-a-half times less. Modern products ranging
from computers to cars can_ and are_ being designed to be disassembled
for repair, reuse, and ultimately, recycling.
Recycling's potential is poorly realized, however, mainly because
of government policies that heavily favor extraction. Had the
7 million tons of cans thrown away by Americans between 1990 and
2000 been recycled, they would have yielded enough aluminum to
make 316,000 Boeing 737 planes--which is about 25 times the size
of the world's entire commercial air fleet. Another untapped lode
of metal is the above-ground stock of gold. Currently, three times
more gold sits in bank vaults, in jewelry boxes, and with private
investors, than is identified in underground reserves.
Chapter 7: Uniting Divided Cities, Molly
O’Meara Sheehan
Unable to afford “formal” dwellings, as many as 1
billion people worldwide seek shelter in “informal” settlements,
often in the most precarious places_ on steep hillsides or floodplains,
in garbage dumps, or downstream from industrial
polluters_ living not only with the constant threat of possible
eviction but also the risks of natural disasters and disease
from
lack of water and toilets.
While cities of the industrial North claimed all slots in the
list of the 10 largest cities in 1900, by 2001 only Tokyo and
New York remained on that list. Urban centers in the developing
South now dominate the ranks of the world’s largest cities.
Demographers expect that by 2015, Los Angeles and Shanghai will
be bumped from the 10, as Karachi and Jakarta move up.
Governments could do much more to help their poorest citizens
feel secure in their own homes, make a living, and improve their
environment. And in doing so, the world’s relatively poorer
cities could well leapfrog their wealthier counterparts to create
an urban development model that values both people and nature.
Worldwide, poor people's voices are rising in various political
arenas. From Bombay to Buenos Aires, slum residents are organizing
to fight for greater rights and better lives.
Chapter 8: Engaging Religion in the Quest for a Sustainable
World, Gary
Gardner
Spiritual traditions_ from large, centralized religions to local
tribal spiritual authorities_ are beginning to devote energy to
building just and environmentally healthy societies. Worldwide,
the major faiths are issuing declarations, advocating for new
national policies, and designing educational activities in support
of a sustainable world_ sometimes in partnership with the secular
environmental community.
Religious institutions bring at least five strong assets to the
effort to build a sustainable world: the capacity to shape worldviews,
moral authority, a large base of adherents, significant material
resources, and community building capacity.
While the religious and scientific communities have historically
diverged and have been suspicious of each other, issues like deforestation,
climate change, and poverty have led religious and environmental
communities to appreciate their common interest in combating such
problems. This trend is hopeful and could represent the budding
emergence of a powerful new alliance for sustainability.
As many religions begin to show interest in building a sustainable
world, secular advocates of sustainability are becoming somewhat
more receptive to spiritual appeals. This openness could reintroduce
a passionate voice to the environmental movement that would build
a spiritual/emotional connection between the public and the natural
environment.