9
using current technologies, levels of efficiency, and production techniques, everyone in the
world will not be able to come to embrace the same standard of material living that people in the
United States and other wealthy countries now enjoy. Unless there are revolutionary changes in
technologies that go well beyond the incremental, steady improvements in efficiency that
characterize the past few decades, it seems inevitable that resource shortages and rising pollution
will eventually overwhelm any effort to expand consumption, for several reasons.
The combination of population growth and resource consumption means that the world in
which the industrialization of the South occurs is much different than that in which the North
industrialized. Consumption and population growth combine in important ways to produce
environmental impacts. Those impacts (I) are a function of population (P), affluence (A), and
technology (T); the formula I=PxAxT captures the relationship. Population growth itself may
not have a major impact on environment conditions if affluence and technology are ecologically
sustainable. But developed nations do not share their cleanest, most efficient technologies with
their competitors in the developing world who already enjoy considerable comparative
advantages due to cheaper labor. The colonialism that allowed the North to extract raw material
at low cost and with few environmental protections is not a viable model for developing nations
today. As globalization continues, pressures on natural resources and ecosystems will only
increase. The presumption underlying globalization is that there is one model of development
and modernization, as the terms developed and developing countries themselves suggest a
continuum, with the industrialized, wealthy, high-consumption societies at one end and those
less industrialized, less wealthy, and lower-consumption at the other. But it is quite unlikely that
everyone in the world can come to enjoy the same standard of material living that people in the
United States and other wealthy countries now enjoy; resource shortages and pollution will likely
overwhelm such efforts
The ability of the atmosphere to absorb wastes from growing industrialization does not
appear to be as great now as it has in the past. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC)—the authoritative scientific voice on climate change—without active
efforts to reduce emissions, the planet is expected to warm by an unprecedented 2.5 to 10
degrees F during the 21st century. This rate of warming is much larger than the observed
changes during the 20th century and is very likely to be without precedent during at least the last
10,000 years.
32
Global emissions of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, grew by
8.9 percent between 1990 and 1999.
33
As emissions increase, the likelihood decreases that the
industrialized world will be able to achieve the goal to which it committed in 1992, to stabilize
the earth’s concentration of greenhouse gases at a safe level.
Assuming that current water consumption patterns continue unabated, projections show
that at least 3.5 billion people—or 48 percent of the world's projected population—will live in
water-stressed (areas subject to frequent shortages) river basins in 2025. Even regions where per
capita water availability appears sufficient when averaged over the year may actually face water
shortages in the dry season.
34
The World Commission on Water predicts that water use will
increase by 50 percent over the coming 30 years and that 4 billion people—half of the world's
population—will live under conditions of severe water stress in 2025.
35
One third of the world's
population lives in countries already experiencing moderate to high water stress, and that number
Convention