Posted on 01 July 2009

Humanity's demands exceed our planet's capacity to sustain us

The Living Planet Report is WWF's periodic update on the state of the world's ecosystems. This is its 2008 edition. It 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. These measures are tracked over several decades to reveal past trends, then three scenarios explore what might lie ahead.

The scenarios show how the choices we make might lead to a sustainable society living in harmony with robust ecosystems, or to the collapse of these same ecosystems, resulting in a permanent loss of biodiversity and erosion of the planet’s ability to support people.