杏吧原创

WITHIN just 30 years, almost three-quarters of the planet鈥檚 natural land surface will be carved up by human activity. Roads, mines, cities and farms will have obliterated and fragmented the rainforests of the Amazon and central Africa, filled Asian air with smogs, and stifled coastal waters poisoned by toxic red tides.

But it doesn鈥檛 have to be like that. This week the UN has released a pioneering report that attempts to map out the environmental choices facing the planet in the early 21st century. If we stopped putting market forces first, and instead pursued a more environmentally based route to economic development, the figure could be cut to 55 per cent. And in places, the call of the wild could return to the suburbs.

The report implicitly attacks the stance of the US and the World Trade Organization, which claim markets will generate the wealth to solve environmental ills. A bad environment is an economic millstone, it says.

Klaus T枚pfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, launched the report, saying: 鈥淲e now have hundreds of declarations and treaties designed to address environmental problems. Now let鈥檚 find the political courage and innovating financing needed to implement them.鈥�

The report, by UNEP scientists, presents a stark choice. Staying with a 鈥渕arkets first鈥� approach will keep us burning ever more coal and oil, and raise emissions of carbon dioxide from the current 6.5 billion tonnes a year to 16 billion tonnes by 2032. Global warming will accelerate fast. But moving onto a 鈥渟ustainability first鈥� path could harness wind and solar power to keep emissions down to 8 billion tonnes, with the climate set to stabilise by mid-century.

Putting markets first would also mean almost 3 per cent of the land would be covered in concrete, as the world becomes ever more suburbanised. The figure would reach 5 per cent across Asia. But building more compact cities and encouraging people to live closer to their work could keep it below 2 per cent.

If markets let rip, says the report, we can kiss goodbye to most of the planet鈥檚 surviving wild places, and say hello to a huge increase in natural disasters triggered by extreme weather and deforested hillsides. Some 85 per cent of Latin America will be carved up by development鈥攖he highest figure for any continent and a death knell for the Amazon rainforest. The rapidly melting Arctic will be peppered with mines and hydropower plants.

Take the greener road, however, and everything changes. The report paints a picture of a Europe full of train-riding, waste-recycling, telecommuting vegetarians where the suburbs and fields are given back to nature.

A quarter of all preventable illnesses are down to dirty water and air, says the report. In India alone, urban air pollution costs a billion dollars a year in disease and lost crops. Water pollution costs another $6 billion and soil erosion deprives the country of $2 billion in lost productivity. The poor, says the report, need the environment the most, not the least.