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By WERNER FORNOS WASHINGTON -- Compelling new evidence effectively contradicting premature pronouncements that the world-population crisis is over can hardly be shrugged off as sky-is-falling clucking by hysterical Chicken Littles. A recently released $24 million four-year United Nations-sponsored Millennium Ecosystems Assessment spells out the havoc wreaked by pressures on the planet to feed and provide finite resources for its more than 6 billion inhabitants. Compiled by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries, the report is the product of their examination of 16,000 photographs from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as analyses of prodigious volumes of statistical data and other information from scientific journals and other relevant documents. The largest study ever undertaken to determine the consequences of human industriousness and indulgence on Earth's natural bounty verifies the memorable summation of environmental decline enunciated by the brilliant cartoonist Walt Kelly, of Pogo fame: "We have met the enemy and he is us!" The most unsettling finding is that over the past 50 years, as world population has doubled, human activity has depleted 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers and lakes. The scientists in this study reached the consensus that in the absence of serious application of sound environmental policies over the next 50 years _ when population is projected to soar from the current 6.5 billion to over 9 billion _ increased demands for food, clean water and fuel could hasten the loss of forests, fish and freshwater reserves, and lead to more frequent disease outbreaks. The assessment is also the first attempt to place monetary value on the world's forests, wetlands, coral reefs and other ecosystems. In so doing, it forges a powerful link between ecosystem health, the alleviation of poverty and ensuring sustainable development. In 2000, the U.N. Millennium Summit in Johannesburg established goals that included improving the lives of 100 million people then in abject poverty by 2020, and halving the proportion of people lacking clean water and basic sanitation by 2015. Ecosystem damage and destruction clearly stand as a formidable barrier to achieving these targets. Some 1.1 billion people still do not have reliable access to potable drinking water, and 3 million to 4 million die each year of waterborne diseases. The new study observes that a fifth of the world's coral reefs and a third of its mangrove forests have been destroyed in recent decades, and that a sharp decline in the diversity of animal and plant species now places fully one-third of all species at risk of extinction. In addition, the assessment shows that disease outbreaks, floods and fires have been more frequent, and levels of the greenhouse-gas carbon dioxide have soared, mostly in the past 40 years. According to the study, an intact wetland _ important both as habitat for fish, birds and plants and as a natural pollution filter and water-storage facilities _ is worth $6,000 a hectare (2.471 acres) in Canada, while one that has been cleared for agriculture is worth only about $2,000. An intact mangrove area _ important for building land in tropical areas _ was estimated to be worth $1,000 a hectare in Thailand, against about $200 a hectare when cleared for aquaculture. The report takes into account the supplemental costs of degradation of ecosystems. For example, the early-1990s collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery, due to overfishing, put tens of thousands of people out of work; the cost for income support and retraining ran about $2 billion. In the late 1990s, the burning of 10 million hectares of Indonesia's forests cost an estimated $9 billion in increased health care, lost production, and lost tourism revenues. Ecosystem decline jeopardizes human security, the report contends, asserting that the severity and frequency of fires and floods have been intensified by damage to the earth's "natural capital." It argues that canalization of rivers and other natural water bodies was responsible for more than 100,000 deaths in the 1990s, due to floods that caused $243 billion in damage. Because Thomas Malthus's theory that population growth would inevitably outpace food production remains unproven, he continues to be maligned as the quintessential false prophet more than 170 years after his death. It's true that though parts of the world have endured heartrending starvation, his prediction of worldwide population decline has not materialized. But advocates of population stabilization maintain that while Malthus's timeframe may have been miscalculated, he had his science right. The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, however, is not a forecast based on theories; it is a scientific judgment rendered by a close study of data by a wide range of experts from all regions of the world. Their report makes it abundantly clear that the world community must do whatever it takes to preserve its natural capital _ or else face environmental bankruptcy that would challenge all aspects of life on earth. These efforts cannot succeed without ensuring universal access to family planning, which provides voluntary safe and effective checks on human growth. Allowing grave warnings based on the best scientific information to go unheeded would amount to unparalleled and inexcusable human folly _ with the very real possibility of placing Homo sapiens at the top of the 21st Century's endangered-species list.
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