The UN report, Global Environment Outlook-5: Environment for the future we want, documents serious environmental change occurring in various global regions, as well as providing suggestions for policy approaches which could address these. Experts have said a paradigm shift is necessary in government and industry’s view of the natural environment in order to meet the problems of climate change, poverty and increasing global populations head on.

However, although the UNEP authors suggest that progress is being made in Europe towards more sustainable lifestyles, they suggest consumption patterns need to change in order to avoid irreversible damage to the environment. The report’s release coincides with the final push towards the Rio+20 Summit to be held at the end of the month, where thousands of delegates will discuss the problems of poverty and climate change over two days.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said on the report’s release, “In a world with a growing population, glaring inequality and a precarious environmental base, it is imperative that Governments collaborate to balance the economic, social and environmental strands of sustainable development.”

Despite the secretary general’s optimistic words, which focused on the power to change, the GEO-5 report, released last week, paints a bleak picture of current efforts being made to meet climate change targets and the preoccupation with perpetual growth that has led to this juncture. Achim Steiner, Director General of the UN Environment Programme which produced GEO-5, reiterated that the report’s findings are “sobering” and that the document serves as a stark warning, at the threshold of the Anthropocene, a new geological era wherein environmental change is principally dictated by human actions.  

Perhaps most perturbing, the report reveals that, despite the passing of 40 years since the first UN Earth Summit, which took place in Stockholm, there has been little action to address the damage; the report reveals that “Out of 90 goals and objectives assessed, significant progress could only be shown for four.”

Amongst the identified problems are those associated with food production, through the use of damaging fertilisers on existing agricultural land, to the effects of land use change as areas are deforested when agricultural operations shift or expand and the pollution caused by unsustainable dietary patterns; for example, the report reveals that of the top 20 sources of industrial pollution in the United States, eight are slaughterhouses and CAFOs, mega-farms, in the United States produced three times the amount of waste as the country’s human population in 2007.

The report also raises concerns over the use of chemicals and the effects of corporate livestock operations and chemical inputs on nitrate pollution, which is further affecting water pollution. Although nitrate pollution has been curbed slightly in Europe and North America, it continues to have a marked effect on water resources.

In addition to the risk of pollution, agriculture accounts for a high percentage of water use; 60–80 per cent of water used globally is dedicated to irrigation, rising to nearly 90 per cent in some low-rainfall areas, according to the UN report.

The report’s authors also warn that consumption patterns have led healthy foods to increase in price compared to the products of more industrialised agriculture; in the United States, 74 per cent of arable land is given over to production of eight crops, all grains or oilseeds. The UN authors state that this is affecting prices of fresh fruit, vegetables and foods produced more sustainably and reducing access to grains for those living in poverty, as grains increasingly go to produce meat for those who can afford it.

They conclude that development should not come at an environmental cost which would preclude future generations from prospering. The authors call on global governments to act before irreversible changes to the Earth systems which support life on the planet are irreversibly damaged.

UNEP suggests that, amongst the immediate goals to address the challenges and environmental degradation catalogued in the report, improving gender equality and access to education are paramount, as achieving these goals has correlated with improved welfare, incomes and resulted in populations being more aware of environmental concerns and more able to act on them.

The GEO-5 report calls on leaders meeting later this month to commit to solutions which have specific, measurable ends, such as bans on ozone pollutants, lead in petrol and persistent organic pollutants, which have both been successfully addressed. It also demands ecosystem services and natural regions be given equal consideration in forthcoming policy decisions, to prevent their loss for short-term economic gain.

The report states “Many terrestrial ecosystems are being seriously degraded because land-use decisions often fail to recognize noneconomic ecosystem functions and biophysical limits to productivity. For example, deforestation and forest degradation alone are likely to cost the global economy more than the losses of the 2008 financial crises.”

UNEP Executive Director Steiner called on nations to act last week, saying, "The moment has come to put away the paralysis of indecision, acknowledge the facts and face up to the common humanity that unites all peoples."

The full report can be read here.

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