20 September 2011 | Linton Nightingale
Climate Change, Asia

 

UNEP is urging the Asia-Pacific region to double its efforts in the use of renewable resources.

If the Asia-Pacific region is to move forward in the 21st century then it has to embrace and utilise renewable resources, according to a new report published by the United Nations Environment Programme.

The report specifies that the world’s most populous territory needs to reduce its consumption of minerals and fossil fuels by as much as 80 percent to ensure a sustainable future. Dynamic growth in the Asia-Pacific region has resulted in a fall in poverty and increased wealth. However, this economic success has come at a heavy environmental price, with a rapid rise in the emission of  "greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, deteriorating ecosystems and rapid resource depletion,” the report warns.

"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,” says UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner.

In 2005 the Asia-Pacific region consumed 32 billion tonnes of biomass, fossil fuels, metals and industrial and construction materials. The report, Resource Efficiency-Economics and Outlook for Asia and the Pacific, forecasts that this figure will rise to nearly 80 billion tonnes by 2050, accounting for more than half of the total globally consumed resources.

The UNEP report, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, identifies the opportunities the Asia-Pacific region has to further resource efficiency that will not only achieve economic growth, but help promote green industry and reverse environmental degradation.

“This new report spotlights the challenges but also the opportunities for a transition to a low carbon, far more resource efficient Green Economy not as an alternative to sustainable development but as a means of implementing it,” added Mr Steiner. “The analysis, innovative modelling 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.”

To move forward the report highlights the importance of a region-wide effort to improve resource efficiency and champion sustainable development in all walks of life. “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,” the study concludes.

The Asia-Pacific report is part of the series, the Resource Efficiency: Economics and Outlook for Latin America, which was launched in July this year.

 

Image 01: Ariel Steiner | Wikimedia Commons

Image 02: Blue Plover | Wikimedia Commons

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