Worldwatch Reports and Papers

Worldwatch Paper #162: The Anatomy of Resource Wars

In several countries around the developing world, abundant natural resources help fuel conflict, either by attracting predatory groups seeking to control them or by financing wars that were initially caused by other factors. Prominent examples include Sierra Leone, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Afghanistan. Conflict has also erupted in several countries where the benefits of mining and logging projects—oil in Columbia and Nigeria, timber and natural gas in Indonesia, and copper in Bougainville/Papua New Guinea—accrue to a small elite while the social and environmental burdens are borne by local communities.

Worldwatch Paper #161: Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women's Welfare, And The Environment

At international conferences throughout the 1990's--in Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, Cairo, and Beijing--a new vision of women's health, welfare, and rights was created. This vision acknowledged the deep connections between support for educational, economic, social, and political opportunity for women on the one hand, and progress in stabilizing population growth, protecting the environment, and improving human health on the other.

Worldwatch Paper #160: Reading the Weathervane: Climate Policy from Rio To Johannesburg

The world is on the brink of bringing into force one of the most far-reaching environmental treaties of all time, the Kyoto Protocol. And even without the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States, on board, signatories of the Protocol are setting the stage for a new generation of policymaking worldwide, reports a new study-the first ten-year review of global climate policy since the Rio Earth Summit

Worldwatch Paper #159: Traveling Light: New Paths for International Tourism

In today's rapidly shrinking world, travelers are trading in over-commercialized mass tourism for more exotic destinations-most of which are in the developing world. From South America to Asia, countries are rushing to capitalize on a wealth of cultural and biological attractions in order to meet this demand.

Worldwatch Paper #158: Unnatural Disasters

In the 1990s, natural catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, and fires caused over $608 billion in economic losses worldwide, an amount greater than during the previous four decades combined. But a growing share of this devastation is not 'natural' at all: the effects of a disaster are magnified by ecologically destructive practices, like degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate. And at the same time, continuing human migration to cities and coastal areas is putting more and more people and infrastructure at risk. The projected effects of climate change and sea level rise can only heighten coastal risks.

Worldwatch Paper #157: Hydrogen Futures: Toward a Sustainable Energy System

Fueled by concerns about urban air pollution, energy security, and climate change, the notion of a “hydrogen economy” is moving beyond the realm of scientists and engineers and into the lexicon of political and business leaders. Interest in hydrogen, the simplest and most abundant element in the universe, is also rising due to technical advances in fuel cells – the potential successors to batteries in portable electronics, power plants, and the internal combustion engine.

Worldwatch Paper #156: City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl

Today, every world region suffers from sprawling, car-choked urban areas. Accidents and pollution-related illness take lives, while traffic delays sap human productivity and waste fuel. Part of the reason that Americans now guzzle 43 percent of the world’s gasoline is to wheel around expansive metropolises. Transportation, spurred by road traffic, is now the fastest-growing contributor to climate change.

Worldwatch Paper #155: Still Waiting for the Jubilee: Pragmatic Solutions for the Third World Debt Crisis

Since the end of World War II, the richest countries have lent the poorest ones hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it in the name of democracy, freedom, and development. Yet scores of the borrowing countries are now mired in debt and poverty—some 47, according to World Bank benchmarks, all but 10 of them African. Together, they owe $422 billion, or $380 per person—a substantial sum for them, but just 11 months of military spending for western governments.

Worldwatch Paper #154: Deep Trouble: The Hidden Threat of Groundwater Pollution

A Global Sampler of Groundwater Pollution

India's Central Pollution Control Board surveyed 22 major industrial zones in the late-1990s and found that groundwater in every one of them was unfit for drinking. (p. 32)

In the northern Chinese provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and Shandong, nitrate concentrations in groundwater exceeded the health guideline in more than half of the locations studied in 1995. (p. 19)

Worldwatch Paper #153: Why Poison Ourselves? A Precautionary Approach to Synthetic Chemicals

There are today between 50,000 and 100,000 synthetic chemicals in commercial production, and new synthetics are entering the market at an average rate of three per day. Most synthetics probably pose little risk for the environment or human health, but some are poisonous even in minute quantities. Recent research on certain highly toxic synthetics has linked them to serious human health effects in the parts per trillion range. Ecological research is uncovering extensive wildlife damage as well.