Planet Earth on cusp of disaster, say leading scientists

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st Century, a major new report says.

This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who later today will publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two thirds of the delicately balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.

The dryland regions of the world, which account from some 41 per cent of the Earth's land surface, have been particularly badly damaged and yet this is where the human population has grown most rapidly during the 1990s.

Slow degradation is one thing but sudden and irreversible decline is another.

The report identifies half a dozen potential "tipping points" that could abruptly change things for the worse with little hope of recovery on a human timescale.

Even if slow and inexorable degradation does not lead to total environmental collapse, the poorest people of the world are still going to suffer the most, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which drew on 22 national science academies from around the world.

Walt Reid, the leader of the report's core authors, warned that, unless the international community takes decisive action, the future looks bleak for the next generation.

"The bottom line of this assessment is that we are spending Earth's natural capital, putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," Dr Reid said.

"At the same time, the assessment shows that the future really is in our hands. We can reverse the degradation of many ecosystem services over the next 50 years, but the changes in policy and practice required are substantial and not currently underway."

The assessment was carried out over the past three years and has been likened to the prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - set up to investigate global warming - for its expertise in the many specialisms that make up the broad church of environmental science.

In summary, the scientists concluded that the planet has been substantially "re-engineered" in the latter half of the 20th Century because of the pressure placed on the Earth's natural resources due to the growing demands of an increasing human population.

"Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than at any time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, freshwater, timber and fibre," the reports says.

Roger Higman of Friends of the Earth said: "We cannot maintain high standards of living, let alone relieve poverty, if we don't look after the Earth's life-support systems."

- INDEPENDENT