By Rich Bowden:
Australia ranks in the top ten of the world’s worst environmental performers, according to a new study.
The research, led by the University of Adelaide‘s Environment Institute’s Director of Ecological Modelling Professor Corey Bradshaw, uses “…seven indicators of environmental degradation to form two rankings – a proportional environmental impact index, where impact is measured against total resource availability, and an absolute environmental impact index measuring total environmental degradation at a global scale,” according to a university news release.
The report found:
The world’s 10 worst environmental performers according to the proportional environmental impact index (relative to resource availability) are: Singapore, Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Bahrain, Malaysia, Philippines and Netherlands.
In absolute global terms, the 10 countries with the worst environmental impact are (in order, worst first): Brazil, USA, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.
The indicators used in the research were natural forest loss, habitat conversion, fisheries and other marine captures, fertiliser use, water pollution, carbon emissions from land use and species threat.
Professor Bradshaw said the study, which was carried out with the National University of Singapore and Princeton University and published in the science journal PloS One, showed that human consumption was driving the world environmental crisis.
“The environmental crises currently gripping the planet are the corollary of excessive human consumption of natural resources,” said Professor Bradshaw. “There is considerable and mounting evidence that elevated degradation and loss of habitats and species are compromising ecosystems that sustain the quality of life for billions of people worldwide.”
The study, found that the total wealth of a country was the most important driver of environmental impact and found increased wealth did not result in a plateauing of environmental degradation due to better access to clean technology.
“We correlated rankings against three socio-economic variables (human population size, gross national income and governance quality) and found that total wealth was the most important explanatory variable – the richer a country, the greater its average environmental impact,” Professor Bradshaw said.
There was no evidence to support the popular idea that environmental degradation plateaus or declines past a certain threshold of per capital wealth (known as the Kuznets curve hypothesis).
“There is a theory that as wealth increases, nations have more access to clean technology and become more environmentally aware so that the environmental impact starts to decline. This wasn’t supported,” he added.
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Good story!! Will take a decent amount of time to entertain this writing=)
The top 10 ranking is not being helped by the fundamentally flawed concept of an emissions trading scheme, which in reality is a poorly disguised tax grab.
Wew should be preventing excessive pollution, not just swapping entitlements do more of the same.
There is no reason Australia cannot implement high performance energy supply systems like hydro, solar and wind and dispense with old-hat polluters like coal.
The relative wealth factor can be compensated for by mandatory recycling programs and by council driven self-sufficiency plans to encourage people to grow their own food and thereby eliminate the massive packaging waste issue associated with supermarket bought food.
Solutions abound, but people need incentives to implement them, or they simply won’t do it.
Excellent comment thanks Rodney, appreciate your interest.
Rich
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