Australia ranks 8th in top 10 unsustainable countries
15 Oct 2010
According to a new report Australia ranks among the top 10 most unsustainable countries in the world.
The WWF-commissioned study, measured the amount of natural resources consumed in sustaining a person's lifestyle, including energy, transport, food and infrastructure.
Australia comes in at No 8 according to the study. Countries that have a heavier footprint than Australia are the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, the United States, Estonia and Canada.
According to WWF spokesman Dermot O'Gorman the average Australian requires around seven hectares to maintain his lifestyle.
He said the report looked at the ecological footprint of individuals which was measured in the report in global hectares, a reflection of how much food, transport and urban infrastructure are required for our lifestyles.
According to the report the earth has lost about a third of biodiversity since 1970.
The report points out that Australia has an ''unrivalled'' rate of mammal extinction even as species like the red-tailed black cockatoo and the western swamp tortoise are on the verge of being wiped out.
Mike Archer, biology professor at the university of New South Wales says 18 native mammals species had been lost.
He goes on to say that Australians would need to ask the hard question as to what they are doing in the way that they are using the land that is different from what the indigenous Australians did. What is the reason that the country is not so unsustainably managed when for 60,000 years it was doing fine?
According to professor Archer, national parks was one part of the solution, but he added that covering just 11 per cent of the nation was not enough to stem the current species loss.
The parks are a great beginning but demonstrably too small at this point, given that climate change would make every animal and plant shift southwards, either 100 kilometres for every degree rise in temperature, or one kilometre up a mountain.
He added that there were not too many of those mountains and bigger parks were needed to restore the resilience back to the biota that we have taken away.
He said that due to the parceling out of the land in little patches it could not respond the way it had done in the past.
