World is facing a natural resources crisis worse than financial crunch | Environment | ... - 1 views
www.guardian.co.uk/...imatechange-endangeredhabitats
environment resources climate change sustainability food energy
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humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species
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populations and consumption keep growing faster than technology finds new ways of expanding what can be produced from the natural world
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Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific adviser, said: "We all need to agree that there's a crisis of understanding, that we're removing the planet's biodiverse resources at a rate which is as fast if not faster than the world's last great extinction."
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27 countries are "importing" more than half the water they consume - in the form of water used to produce goods from wheat to cotton - including the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and the Netherlands.
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A person's footprint ranges vastly across the globe, from eight or more "global hectares" (20 acres or more) for the biggest consumers in the United Arab Emirates, the US, Kuwait and Denmark, to half a hectare in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Afghanistan and Malawi.
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The global average consumption was 2.7 hectares a person, compared with a notional sustainable capacity of 2.1 hectares.