News from the CEPA e-mail list

Hot off the press - well nearly! (25/10/04)

Good afternoon everyone:

Well not quite hot off the press, but almost! At the end of last week WWF launched its Living Planet Report 2004. This is WWF's periodic update on the state of the world's ecosystems - as measured by the Living Planet Index - and the human pressures on them through the consumption of renewable natural resources - as measured by the Ecological Footprint. It's available for download from WWFs web site here www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/general/livingplanet/index.cfm.

It is based on two key indicators. The first, the Living Planet Index (LPI), measures overall trends in populations of wild species around the world. It examines the planet's natural wealth of vertebrate species over time, providing an indicator of the state of the world's natural environment. The LPI looked at forest, marine and freshwater ecosystems and here's the bad news - while the forest species population index declined by about 15% and the marine index fell by about 35%, the freshwater index dropped by a whopping 55% over the 30-year period.

The second indicator, the Ecological Footprint, is a measure of environmental sustainability, and weighs humanity's past and present demand on the Earth's renewable natural resources. The global ecological footprint has grown from about 70% of the planet's biological capacity in 1961 to about 120% of its biological capacity in 1999.

WWF believes these two indicators give us vital information about the state of the world's ecosystems and the human pressures affecting them, and leave us in no doubt that we no longer live within the sustainable limits of the planet.

WWF exhorts us all to take action - by calculating your own Ecological Footprint at www.ecofoot.org and find out how the Ecological Footprint is making life easier for people around the world at www.footprintnetwork.org.

All good stuff for your awareness-raising activities, and also, quite simply, for your own edification!

Best regards, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat

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Sandra Hails, CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176; Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
CEPA mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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