Australia in 'top 10' unsustainable list

October 24, 2006 06:35pm

Article from AAP

AUSTRALIA has been lambasted in a new environment report that ranks it in the top ten countries living unsustainably.

Conservation group WWF-Australia said if the rest of the world copied Australians' lifestyles more than three planets would be needed to provide the resources and absorb the waste.

Australians still have one of the biggest so-called ecological footprints in the world, and produce more greenhouse gases per person than most other countries on the planet.

The Living Planet Report 2006, the international WWF's biennial statement on the state of the natural world, said that on current projections, humanity would be using two planets worth of natural resources by 2050.

It said Australia's ecological footprint - the amount of land and water area a human population uses to support its lifestyle - was currently at 6.6 global hectares per person per year.

That ranks Australia behind countries such as the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Kuwait, but above the United Kingdom, Russia, China and Japan.

The report identified Australia as having the sixth biggest ecological footprint out of the 147 countries studied.

"The report confirms why it is that we are experiencing the kinds of problems we are right now, such as critical water shortages, the unprecedented decline of species, stressed fisheries and land degradation,'' WWF-Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said.

"If the rest of the world led the kind of lifestyles we do here in Australia, we would require three and a half planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste we create.''

The report said carbon dioxide continued to be the single largest component, accounting for about 51 per cent of Australia's ecological footprint.

"Cutting carbon dioxide emissions and setting targets for greenhouse gas reductions are essential if Australia is to reduce its ecological footprint to sustainable levels,'' Mr Bourne said.

The report comes as the Federal Government is set to announce major allocations of funding towards alternative energy technologies, principally for clean coal.

WWF called on the government to set a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 30 per cent by 2030, which would put Australia on the path for a 60 per cent reduction by 2050, as recommended by the world's leading climate scientists.

The group also called for an end to land clearing in Australia, which it said was the number one threat to biodiversity, and for the implementation of a system of ecological accounting along the same lines as Australia's national accounts.