By Eleanor Momberg
Environmentalists can draw lessons from the global financial crisis to deal with the looming ecological credit crunch, says Chief Emeka Anyoaku, the president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International.
"It is important that the extent of the ecological crisis that the planet faces is fully appreciated," he said.
The former leader of the Commonwealth was in South Africa this week for the 40th anniversary of WWF-South Africa. He also met senior ANC officials, impressing on them the importance of tackling environmental challenges.
"A good many [politicians] are beginning to accept and realise that saving the planet is as important as saving the economy," Anyoaku said.
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His visit came a week after the release of WWF's launch of the Living Planet Report 2008 which noted that the recent downturn in the global economy was a stark reminder of the consequences of living beyond our means, and that the possibility of a recession paled in comparison to ecological collapse.
Morne du Plessis, the chief executive officer of WWF-SA, had emphasised that, if nothing was done, two planets would be needed by 2030 to keep up with humanity's demand for goods and services.
Drawing the parallel between the global financial and ecological crises, Anyoaku said it would be extremely foolish to continue living beyond one's means. While governments had been able to bail out ailing financial institutions in the economic crunch, the same could not be done for nature.
"People were crying that the financial crisis caused $26-billion in losses in stocks and shares, but they do not talk about the cost of what is destroyed in ecological capital annually. That loss is between $4-trillion and $4,5-trillion every year."
According to the Living Planet Report, ecological footprint analysis show that, while global biocapacity - the area available to produce our resources and capture our emissions - is 2,1 global hectares per person, the average individual footprint worldwide is 2,7 global hectares. Thus, the Earth's carrying capacity is being exceeded by about 30 percent on average.
The average individual footprint of South Africans is 2,1 global hectares per person.
The challenge in bridging the gap between the poor who aspired to live a better life and the government's ability to deliver is to pursue that goal in line with environmentally friendly policies.
"Unless human beings live in harmony with nature we will destroy to planet," he said.
Du Plessis said people needed to become proactive and try to turn the situation around. "If you run out of electricity, you can always produce more. If you run out of water, you cannot just go and produce more. We have to take action now to prevent an Eskom-type crisis."
The report, he said, had suggested some key strategies which could stabilise and reverse the slide into ecological debt by reducing the gap between humanity's footprint and the Earth's available biocapacity.
- This article was originally published on page 4 of Sunday Independent on November 16, 2008
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