VARIOUS: Shocking climate change report calls for new restrictions on world-wide carbon emissions

The fourth report in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4) assessment series has been launched in London. The report provides a detailed overview of the state of the environment and called for governments and businesses across the globe to lead the fight against climate change. The GEO-4 report, which was released in London on Thursday (October 25), concludes that evidence of sustainable development is scarce and that in most areas the global environment has been seriously degraded. Marion Cheatle, deputy director of UNEP, said: "We've used the best scientific evidence we've got available and the best information and we've found that although there are many problems that we've known about for years and years, they tended not to get better, in many cases to get worse, so that's a very depressing issue." The report points out that with some issues the problems are so serious they threaten the future of the planet. David Nussbaum, CEO of the World Wildlife Fund, said businesses should consider the vast environmental problems as a positive challenge. He said: "The challenge then is how to get coherent government policies and governments setting a framework within which business can be changing and taking advantage of the opportunities that this is going to present." According to the report, limiting the impacts of climate change to a manageable level will require GHG emissions to fall by up to 50 per cent by 2050, compared with their 1990 levels. It says that 60 percent of the ecosystem services that have been assessed, such as those supplying fresh water to hundreds of millions in towns and cities, are degraded or used unsustainably. In addition, species are becoming extinct a hundred times faster than the rate shown in the fossil record.

ITN Source | October 26, 2007

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