Posted on October, 22 2006

Vienna – Bulgaria and Romania are following other EU member states in living well beyond the carrying capacity of the earth’s environment, says the 2006 Living Planet Report just released by WWF, the global conservation organisation. Urgent steps must be taken to balance both countries' environmental accounts.

The EU’s newest member states countries still have a greater store of natural wealth than their Western European neighbours. Nevertheless, and despite income levels less than the EU average, Bulgarians and Romanians are using significantly more resources and creating more waste than can be naturally replaced or absorbed – they are not only living at the expense of future generations, but also of other places and people around the world.

“WWF’s 2006 Living Planet Report emphasises the importance of wisely investing the billions of Euro in development aid that will become available to Romania and Bulgaria as new EU member states. Investment must improve living standards for people while decreasing use of resources and waste,” said Michael Baltzer, Director of the WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme.

There is significant scope for improving living standards while decreasing resource use. Intensity of energy use in Romania and Bulgaria remains roughly double that in Western Europe – a legacy of Communist-era energy extravagance which can be turned back not only with investment in more efficient production technology but also e.g. energy efficient buildings.

Use of water also has considerable room for improvement. According to the WWF report, Bulgaria is causing severe stress on water supplies by withdrawing 49% of available water resources, with the largest share of this going toward industrial use.

The importance of current decisions on investment is underlined by the fact that infrastructure put in place today will determine resource consumption for decades to come. The life span of coal-powered power stations is between 30 and 75 years, and of motorways between 20 and 50 years.

At a global level, WWF’s Living Planet Report 2006 says that on current projections humanity will be using two planets’ worth of natural resources by 2050 – if those resources have not run out by then. It also confirms the trend of biodiversity loss seen in previous Living Planet reports.

Already resources are depleting, with the report showing that vertebrate species populations have declined by about one-third in the 33 years from 1970 to 2003. At the same time, humanity’s Ecological Footprint – the demand people place upon the natural world – has increased to the point where the Earth is unable to keep up in the struggle to regenerate.

"We are in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the Earth can replace them," WWF’s Director General, James Leape, said. “The consequences of this are predictable and dire."

Further information:
Andreas Beckmann, abeckmann@wwfdcp.org, Mobile: +43 676 84 27 28 216.

End notes:

• According to the 2006 Living Planet Report, in 2003 Bulgaria and Romania have total ecological footprints of 3.1 and 2.4, respectively, versus a total biocapacity of 2.1 and 2.3, respectively.
• The biennial Living Planet Report for 2006, the sixth in a series of publications, is produced by WWF, the Zoological Society of London, and the Global Footprint Network. As in previous years, the report describes the changing state of global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere arising from human consumption of natural resources. It is built around two indicators: the Living Planet Index, which reflects the health of the planet’s ecosystems; and the Ecological Footprint, which shows the extent of human demand on these ecosystems. The report can be downloaded at www.panda.org/livingplanet.
• The Living Planet Index measures trends in the Earth’s biological diversity. It tracks populations of 1,313 vertebrate species – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals – from all around the world. Separate indices are produced for the terrestrial, marine and freshwater species, and the three trends are then averaged to create an aggregated index.
• The Ecological Footprint tracks human consumption of natural resources in terms of the area of biologically productive land and water needed to provide ecological resources and services – food, fibre and timber, land on which to build, and land to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning fossil fuels.