Population growth, urbanization, and consumption are set to inflict irreversible damage on the planet, the United Nations said on Wednesday, calling for urgent agreement on new green targets to save the environment. The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) stated the warnings in its fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) report, published two weeks before the Rio+20 summit in Brazil, one of the biggest environment meetings in years. The June 20-22 meeting is expected to attract more than 50,000 participants from governments, companies, and environmental and lobby groups, and attempt to set new goals across seven core themes including food security, water, and energy. Time was running very short, U.N. Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, as the planet heads for 9 billion people by 2050 and the global economy consumes ever larger amounts of natural resources. “If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and ‘decoupled', then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation,” Steiner said in a statement. Of the 90 most important environmental goals in existence, only four are making significant progress, the report said. Some of the successful goals included those to prevent ozone depletion and providing access to clean water supplies. But it detected little or no progress in 24 goals, such as those aiming to address climate change, depleting fish stocks, and expanding desertification. UNEP called on governments to focus their policies on the key drivers behind climate change, notably population growth and urbanization, fossil fuel-based energy consumption, and globalization.
