UAE, U.S. Top List of Pressures on Nature, WWF Finds

[nam78_two]

I had posted another study via BBC a week or so back regarding ecological footprints of different nations. Interestingly that list was quite a bit different from this one-that list was I think : US, Britain, Australia, China, India or something like that.
The methodologies followed must be significantly different-I don't remember what parameters they used now.


http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11510



ENN FULL STORY
UAE, U.S. Top List of Pressures on Nature, WWF Finds

October 24, 2006 — By Reuters
Following is a ranking issued by the WWF conservation group on Tuesday of the 10 nations whose inhabitants place most demands per capita on the world's natural resources.

It said in a report that humans were stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and would need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends.

Nations with the biggest per capita "ecological footprints" were: 1. United Arab Emirates 2. United States 3. Finland 4. Canada 5. Kuwait 6. Australia 7. Estonia 8. Sweden 9. New Zealand 10. Norway

People in the United Arab Emirates, for instance, needed the equivalent of almost 12 hectares (29.65 acres) per person of productive land or seas in 2003 to provide natural resources they used and to re-absorb their waste.

The global average demand was 2.2 hectares, far above the available supply of 1.8 hectares per person.

The "ecological footprints", calculated by the WWF, comprise use of fossil fuels, nuclear power, cropland, grazing land, built-up land, fishing grounds, forests. For the top nations, emissions from using fossil fuels were the main component.

Source: Reuters

[hunter]

1. Link to report:

http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/key_publications/living_planet_report/index.cfm

Finland gets docked 2 hectares for it's forest industries, 3 for it's fossil fuel use, and 1 for nuclear.

The final score is UAE 11.9, USA 9.6, Finland 7.6, Canada 7.6 hectares per person, so the simple ranking in the Reuters report is a little bit deceptive. Canada and Finland are doing significantly better than the United States.