Pressure on Resources...

China driving up pressure on resources

China has emerged as a global force that is driving consumption and production of almost everything through the roof, according to the latest publication from the Worldwatch Institute.

It says growth in China last year helped boost incomes in many nations, but also drove up consumption of natural resources, increased the prices of raw materials, and pushed up pollution levels. According to Vital Signs 2005, surging economic growth in China pushed world steel production up by one third in the last five years, exceeding the billion-ton threshold for the first time in 2004.

Wrong priorities

“Trends illuminated in Vital Signs underscore the reality that current global funding priorities may be misdirected,” said Lisa Mastny, Vital Signs 2005 project director.

“If just a portion of the money spent on defence globally were spent on development, we’d likely see a starkly different picture.”

Although rapidly industrialising nations with growing populations will increasingly leave their mark, industrialised countries with relatively small populations but sky-high consumption patterns remain a major threat to the global environment.

Although the US population increases by only about three million a year and India’s by nearly 16 million, for example, the United States has a significantly larger “ecological footprint", with 15.7 million tons of US carbon outputs released into the atmosphere each year compared to India’s 4.9 million tons.