A United Nations report said that humanity’s current path is not sustainable, pointing out the decline in fish stock, forests, and a soaring demand for water and food.
The Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) report was published on Wednesday, two weeks ahead of the Rio+20 summit in Brazil, considered the largest environmental meeting in decades.
The report, published by the U.N. Environment Programme, found that of 90 of the most important environmental goals and objectives, significant progress has only been made on four of them. Some progress was made in around 40 goals, including the expansion of national parks and forests, while little to no progress was made in 24 objectives.
“If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and ‘decoupled’, then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation,” Achim Steiner, head of the Environment Programme, said in a release accompanying the release of the report.
If humanity does not significantly change its ways in the near future, critical thresholds will be surpassed and will cause irrecoverable changes “to the life-support functions of the planet,” according to a release from the Environment Programme.
“The scientific evidence, built over decades, is overwhelming and leaves little room for doubt” that humanity and world governments need to take a more sustainable approach, Steiner said. “The moment has come to put away the paralysis of indecision, acknowledge the facts and face up to the common humanity that unites all peoples,” he added.
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