Bookshelf
- Serious challenges remain if the global environment is to be saved
Human use and pollution of water, soils, forests, fisheries and urban air is depleting these renewable resources faster than they can naturally recover, according to the new Global Environment Outlook (GEO-1) released by UNEP. "If we allow these trends to continue, we will ultimately run out of essential ingredients for life on this planet. We may not know when, but it is clear we are on an unsustainable trajectory," said UNEP Executive Director, Ms. Elisabeth Dowdeswell at the launch of the report in Nairobi, Kenya. Among its findings, the GEO-1 cites greenhouse gas emissions as still being far in excess of internationally agreed targets, biological diversity as still vanishing at alarming rates, and hazardous chemicals continuing to contaminate the environment and damage human health. An estimated one quarter of the world's population will suffer from chronic water shortages in the beginning of the next century, says the report. The GEO-1, which approaches environmental problems from a regional perspective, is the first in a series of reports on the global environment that will be published by UNEP on a biennial basis. It concludes with an exploration, based on model analysis, of what we might expect in the future for a selected number of environmental issues if no major policy reforms are initiated. (E-mail: orders@oup-usa.org. Also available on Internet).
The Environmental Challenge for Central European Economies in Transition
by Jurg Klarer and Bedrich Moldan
Published by John Wiley and Sons
ISBN: 0 471 96609 6
292 pages
The environmental consequences of the profound economic, social and political changes of Central and East European (CEE) countries since 1989 are the focus of The Environmental Challenge for Central European Economies in Transition. Edited by Jurg Klarer of the REC and former Czech Minister of Environment Bedrich Moldan, the book contrasts the environmental legacies of past Communist regimes, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and the Slovak Republic, with the initial expectations that came after the recent democratic revolutions, and examines subsequent achievements in environmental protection through to the present day. Environmental challenges encountered during the transition period are analyzed, as are important processes on the international and European level affecting environmental protection, including the "Environment for Europe" process and the implications for environmental policy of accession to the European Union. Domestic and international financing for environmental protection, and the roles of sustainability and human values, the general public, NGOs, and the business sector are also examined. With texts written by a number of nationally and internationally respected experts, The Environmental Challenge is of interest to policy-makers and experts in the areas of environmental studies, environmental economics, geography and political science.
More than $500 billion a year of consumers' and taxpayers' money is spent by governments to subsidize deforestation, overfishing, and other environmentally destructive activities, notes a new Worldwatch Institute report, Paying the Piper: Subsidies, Politics, and the Environment, by David Malin Roodman. Eliminating these subsidies would make it possible to effectively cut the global tax burden of $7.5 trillion a year by some seven percent, encourage job creation and investment, and also reduce the economic damage caused by these subsidies - ranging from hospital bills for lung disease, to the contamination of valuable water supplies. Examples of subsidies world-wide that are archaic, inefficient, politically influenced or misdirected are presented, as well as some halting steps toward reform usually in response to budget pressures. The report adds thar fiscal crises in the former Eastern bloc and in many debt-hobbled developing countries have led to major cuts in energy and fertilizer subsidies in the 1990s. Roodman concludes, "Conservative and liberal politicians should be able to agree that it's time to get government out of the business of paying the polluter." (E-mail: worldwatch@worldwatch.org)
REC * PUBLICATIONS * THE BULLETIN * SPRING 1997
