From ipaunep@gn.apc.org Thu Aug  4 14:35:42 MET DST 1994
>From ipaunep@gn.apc.org  Thu Aug  4 14:35:35 1994
Received: by gn.apc.org (4.1/Revision: 1.10 )
	id AA02753; Thu, 4 Aug 94 13:35:31 BST
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 94 13:35:31 BST
From: UNEP Information <ipaunep@gn.apc.org>
Message-Id: <9408041235.AA02753@gn.apc.org>
To: infoterra, lalamaziwa@igc.apc.org, sjhayward@igc.apc.org,
        una@mcr1.geonet.de
Subject: UNEP ENV.ECONOMICS MEETINGS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

USING ECONOMICS TO IMPROVE THE ENVIRONMENT

NAIROBI, 4 August 1994 -- More than 40 of the world's leading
environmental economists will be participating here, from 8 to 12
August, in two expert-level meetings organized by the Environment
and Economics Unit of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP).

The first of the two meetings is on the "Valuation of Environmental
and Natural Resources", which will review existing valuation
methods and propose practical ways of increasing their use to
improve the environment.

In particular, the meeting will focus on calculating the costs and
benefits of programmes to reduce environmental problems relating to
freshwater resources, oceans, terrestrial ecosystems including
soils, forests and biodiversity, desertification control and
climate.

The second expert group meeting, which will begin on Wednesday
afternoon, 10 August, will review the use and practical application
of economic policy instruments for environmental management and
sustainable development.  The emphasis will be on their use in
developing countries for addressing environmental problems relating
to freshwater resources, oceans, terrestrial ecosystems including
soils, forests and biodiversity, desertification control and
hazardous wastes.

Lead papers to initiate the discussions have been prepared by David
Pearce, Director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on
the Global Environment, and Theodore Panayotou, of the Harvard
Institute for International Development.  It is intended that the
collective efforts of such experts will lead to practical
suggestions on using economics to reduce environmental damage and
resource depletion, particularly in developing countries and
countries in transition to market economies.

The need to clarify what the concept of environmentally sound and
sustainable socio-economic development means and to develop
methodologies for its implementation has been stressed in numerous
international conferences.  Within UNEP, environmentally sound and
sustainable development has always been an important element of its
programmes.  Initially, focus was on clarifying the linkage between
environment and development and the role economics played in this
linkage.  UNEP then began work on environmental impact assessment
and natural resource accounting.  Lately, attention has been
devoted to the impact of international economic relations on the
environment, with particular emphasis on trade.

In 1991, UNEP's Governing Council decided that particular attention
should be paid by UNEP to the integration of environment and
economics in its activities and in the follow-up to the
recommendations of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED).  This was followed, in 1993, by the
endorsement of UNEP's Action Programme on Environment and Economics
by the 17th session of the Governing Council.

The Action Programme covers five substantive areas:  environment
and natural resource accounting; valuation of environmental goods
and services; economic policy instruments; environmental impact
assessment; and trade and the environment.   Next week's two expert
meetings address two of these five sub-programmes.


                                     * * *

For more information, please contact:

Mr. Jim Sniffen, UNEP Information Officer
Tel:  (254-2) 623084; Fax: (254-2) 623692
E-Mail: ipaunep@gn.apc.org

Mr. Hussein Abaza, Chief,
UNEP Environment and Economics Unit
Tel:  (254-2) 623372; Fax:  (254-2) 624268

UNEP News Release 1994/29
ling weeds and insect pests and
for harvesting, processing, shipping, packing, storing and selling
foods.  So does industrialized forestry for timber and paper
production.

Paying the price
Incidents such as Chernobyl and oil spills are among the
environmental prices paid for mobilizing commercial energy -- and
soil erosion, desertification, acid rain, global warming,
destruction of the ozone layer and the toxification of the entire
planet are among the costs of using it.

In all, humanity's high-energy activities amount to a large-scale
attack on the integrity of Earth's ecosystems and the critical
services they provide.  These include control of the mix of gases
in the atmosphere (and thus of the climate); running of the
hydrologic cycle which brings us dependable flows of fresh water;
generation and maintenance of fertile soils; disposal of wastes;
recycling of the nutrients essential to agriculture and forestry;
control of the vast majority of potential crop pests; pollination
of many crops; provision of food from the sea; and maintenance of
a vast genetic library from which humanity has already withdrawn
the very basis of civilization in the form of crops and domestic
animals.

The relative impact
The average rich-nation citizen used 7.4 kilowatts (kW) of energy
in 1990 -- a continuous flow of energy equivalent to that powering
74 100-watt lightbulbs.  The average citizen of a poor nation, by
contrast, used only 1 kW.  There were 1.2 billion people in the
rich nations, so their total environmental impact, as measured by
energy use, was 1.2 billion x 7.4 kW, or 8.9 terawatts (TW) -- 8.9
trillion watts.  Some 4.1 billion people lived in poor nations in
1990, hence their total impact (at 1 kW a head) was 4.1 TW.

The relatively small population of rich people therefore accounts
for roughly two-thirds of global environmental destruction, as
measured by energy use.  From this perspective, the most important
population problem is overpopulation in the industrialized nations.

The United States poses the most serious threat of all to human
life support systems.  It has a gigantic population, the third
largest on Earth, more than a quarter of a billion people. 
Americans are superconsumers, and use inefficient technologies to
feed their appetites.  Each, on average, uses 11 kW of energy,
twice as much as the average Japanese, more than three times as
much as the average Spaniard, and over 100 times as much as an
average Bangladeshi.  Clearly, achieving an average family size of
1.5 children in the United States (which would still be larger than
the 1.3 child average in Spain) would benefit the world much more
than a similar success in Bangladesh.

Closing the gap
Professor John P. Holdren of the University of California has
generated an "optimistic" scenario for solving the population-
resource-environment predicament.  This envisages population growth
halted at 10 billion a century from now, and rich nations reducing
their energy consumption to 3 kW a head.  His population target is
feasible with modest effort, 
and the reduction in energy consumption could be achieved with
technologies already in hand -- given the necessary political will
-- and would produce an increase in the quality of life.  This
would provide room for needed economic growth in poor nations,
which could triple their per-person energy use to 3 kW.  Thus the
gap between rich and poor nations would be closed, while the total
world impact would increase from 13 TW to 30 TW (10 billion x 
3 kW).

Will the environment a century hence be able to support 2.3 times
as much activity as today?  It's questionable, but perhaps with
care it could, at least temporarily.  Success would require a
degree of cooperation, care for our fellow human beings, and
respect for the environment that are nowhere evident now.  But
society has shown it can change rapidly when the time is ripe; let
us hope that the United Nations International Conference on
Population and Development will help ripen the time.

* * *

*  The relationship is summarized in the classic I=PAT identity:
Impact is equal to Population size, multiplied by per capita
consumption (Affluence), in turn multiplied by a measure of the
damage done by the Technologies chosen to supply each unit of
consumption.

Mr. Paul R. Ehrlich is Bing Professor of Population Studies and
Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University in the
United States.  His most recent books, both co-authored with his
wife Anne, are "The Population Explosion" (Simon and Schuster,
1990) and "Healing the Planet" (Addison-Wesley, 1991).  The feature
originally appeared in Vol. 6, No.3, 1994 of "Our Planet".  The
views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of UNEP.

UNEP Feature 1994/8
