Press release from Business Wire India
Source: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Monday, September 26, 2011 04:00 PM IST (10:30 AM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest, Economy, Environment, People, Social issues; Business: Energy companies, Media & entertainment, Water
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A Joint Report by UNEP, CSIRO (Australia), TERI, IGES (Japan) and Chinese Academy of Sciences highlights the need and urgency of Transition for Asia-Pacific to a 'Green Economy'
Big Resource Efficiency Gains Key Opportunity for 21st Century Prosperity for Asia and the Pacific
New Delhi, Delhi, India, Monday, September 26, 2011 -- (Business Wire India) -- A new 'green' industrial revolution is needed in the Asia-Pacific region that catalyzes dramatic improvements in resource efficiency if the countries and communities there are to prosper in the 21st century. A new report launched by UNEP estimates that per capita resource consumption of 'materials' in the region, such as construction minerals and fuels, needs to be around 80 per cent less than today if sustainable development is to be achieved.
The report, jointly prepared by the UN Environment Program (UNEP), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), CSIRO (Australia), IGES (Japan) and Chinese Academy of Sciences, says Asia Pacific's dynamic growth of the past few decades has reduced poverty and increased wealth and per capita incomes.
But that has come at a price that is "exacting a high -current and future--environmental cost. Problems include pollution including greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deteriorating ecosystems and rapid resource depletion". Total materials consumed in 2005 alone - including biomass, fossil fuels, metals and industrial and construction materials - amounted to around 32 billion tonnes according to the report: Resource Efficiency-Economics and Outlook for Asia and the Pacific.
Asia Pacific currently accounts for more than half of the world's total resource use-in large part because it also accounts for over half the world's population and nearly 30 per cent of the world's GDP. Without a decoupling of GDP growth from resource use, Asia Pacific is likely to be using 80 billion tonnes materials by 2050.
Without world-wide action global resource consumption could triple by mid-century to 140 billion tonnes according to a previous report by UNEP's International Resource Panel launched earlier this year.
The report underlines that Asia Pacific has however enormous opportunities to dramatically boost resource efficiency and in doing so boost economic growth, generate new kinds of clean tech industries and reduce, if not overturn, losses linked with environmental degradation.
It calls for a region-wide effort on improved efficiency backed up by smart public policy measures including fiscal policies such as ecological taxes and budget reforms. 'What is required is a new industrial revolution that provides food, housing, mobility, energy and water with only about 20 per cent of the per-capita resource use and emissions found in current systems," concludes the study.
For India, the REEO Report comes at a time when economy is growing fast and there are increasing concerns about the implications of such growth for sustainable development goals. The report categorizes India as a high population density developing country and traces its consumption of resources - materials, water, land, emissions and waste - over the past decades of development and presents the projections for the future under three scenarios. For the Asia-Pacific region, a comparison across 10 countries related to domestic material consumption shows that over the past three decades of growth China has become the largest consumer of materials followed by India and Indonesia. The report estimates that in 2005, 60% of all materials consumed in Asia-Pacific region were used in China and 20% in India. Over the same period and on the positive side India's energy intensity is not only improved but the rate of improvement has been accelerating in recent times. The major concerns, however, are related to the rate at which water and land resources are being used in the region. With a growing urbanization the problem of solid waste is going to be a major challenge for Indian cities. While according to the report India is labeled as a water stressed country, there again seems to be a positive dimension to the use of land resources for which the land use efficiency figures shows an improving trend. As per the REEO Report estimates gap between 1917-2005 India's total managed land use efficiency improved from 10.4 m2/US$ GDP to 4.5 m2/US$ GDP.
Given the demands of high economic growth and growing aspirations for the future, India's policy makers need to respond to the challenge of sustainable use of resources in their choice of policy instruments. The report presents a comparison of national policies in the Asia-Pacific region to promote resource efficiency and some of India's progressive policies are given a specific reference.
According to Dr. Arabinda Mishra, Director, Earth Science and Climate Change Division, TERI, "It becomes obvious from the report that there still exist key policy gaps which need to be addressed at the earliest if India is aiming to achieve a successful transition to a green economy."
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "These new findings come some nine months before the Rio+20 conference where the world needs to get back into the business of actioning a truly transformational sustainability agenda".
"The remarkable changes that occurred in the intervening years are perhaps nowhere more visibly illustrated than in Asia and the Pacific where breathtaking economic growth has lifted more than half a billion people out of poverty-but with profound social and environmental consequences," he added.
"This new report highlights the challenges, but also the opportunities for a transition to a low carbon and far more resource efficient Green Economy, not as an alternative to sustainable development but as a means of implementing it," said Mr Steiner.
"The analysis, innovative modeling and scenarios outlined in this new report provide a path for Asia Pacific that can be taken forward to Rio+20 next year and beyond-one that continues its dynamism and accelerates the investments and transformations in areas such as renewable energies and forests already occurring in this region and across the globe," he added.
In the coming decades, the region could be the most important driver of global resource use and related environmental impacts, including resource scarcity, pollution and climate change, unless the patterns of natural resources use are reversed.
The speed and magnitude of new infrastructure development and productive capacity in the region represents both a huge challenge and a great opportunity for innovation and technological 'leap-frogging'.
Further Highlights from Asia Pacific and Key Findings
At the beginning of the 21st century, the Asia-Pacific region has overtaken the rest of the world to become the single largest user of natural resources.
Materials-the region's hare of world domestic material consumption grew from just under 25 percent in 1975 to over 53 per cent by 2005, accounting for nearly 85 percent of global total growth over a three decade period.
Material efficiency in Asia Pacific stood at around 2.4 kg per USD of GDP in 1990-by 2005 it was requiring 3.1 kg of materials per USD of GDP.
-- By 2005, 60 percent of all materials consumed in the Asia-Pacific region were used in China and 20 percent in India
-- This is due to shifts in economic activity from very material efficiency producers such as Japan to less efficient ones such as China, India and countries in South East Asia.
Energy-Use in Asia Pacific has grown since 1970 at a compounding annual growth rate of 3.9 per cent-in the rest of the world the growth rate was 1.4 per cent.
-- The region's share of total primary energy supply grew from 19 per cent of the world total to over 35 per cent and will reach 50 per cent by 2028 on current trends
-- Consumption of coal by Asia-Pacific countries has more than tripled from 1970 to 2005
-- Energy intensity-energy consumption relative to GDP--has decreased from 18 to 12 mega-joules for the rest of the world between 1970 and 2005: Asia-Pacific has remained at around 18 mega-joules
Water-Many countries in the region are extracting water at unsustainable rates with the situation deemed serious in Central Asia and in particular in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
The report flags concern over the rate of water withdrawals in China, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka too.
-- Over the period 1985 to 2000 total water withdrawals increased by around 25 per cent in the region
-- Scenarios suggest that rising water extraction will put many river basins under severe stress by 2025 and that groundwater levels will continue to fall
Land-use of land is spotlighted as one area where efficiency is improving although the report does note that urbanization trends in the region are in their infancy.
-- Urban land area in Asia-Pacific is estimated to be 2 to 3 per cent but there is urgent need for better data
-- Agricultural land has been expanding faster in this region than the rest of the world increasing by some 6 per cent from 1970 to 2007 versus a one per cent growth elsewhere
-- Afforestation efforts in China have offset larger deforestation rates in other areas of the region
Emissions and Waste-Greenhouse gas emissions in the region increased from 10 billion tonnes to 16 billion tonnes between 1990 and 2005-a compound growth rate of 3.2 per cent.
The report points out that the emissions growth of the region can be linked in part to a shifting of industrial production from other parts of the world to the Asia Pacific region.
-- Nevertheless carbon dioxide intensity -- a measure of how much greenhouse gas emissions are produced relative to GDP-deteriorated in the region over the period 1970 to 2005 by around 0.65 per cent
-- In the rest of the world there was a compound annual increase in efficiency in terms of carbon dioxide intensity of around 1.2 per cent.
Notes to Editors
-- The report: Resource Efficiency-Economics and Outlook for Asia and the Pacific, is available at http://www.unep.org/ROAP
-- Further Resources:
-- Resource Efficiency Report for Latin America (Report)
http://www.pnuma.org/reeo/
-- Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth (Report)
http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/Publications/Decoupling/tabid/56048/Default.aspx
-- Humanity Can and Must Do More with Less: UNEP Report (Press Release)
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=2641&ArticleID=8734
-- International Resource Panel http://www.unep.fr/scp/rpanel/
-- The Energy and Resources Institute, India (www.teriin.org)
CONTACT DETAILS
Nick Nuttall,Acting Director of Communication and Spokesperson, UNEP, +254 733 632 755, nick.nuttall@unep.org
Anna Stabrawa,Coordinator for Early Warning & Assessment, Asia-Pacific region, UNEP, +66 (0)83 123 6744, Anna.Stabrawa@unep.org
Rajiv Chhibber,Manager Corporate Communications, TERI, (011) 24682100 2462, rajivc@teri.res.in
KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, ECONOMY, ENVIRONMENT, PEOPLE, SOCIAL, ENERGY, MEDIA, WATER
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