Special Report: Yearender
2008
by He Jing, Yang Jun
BEIJING, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- The year 2008 has
witnessed a fluctuation in global oil prices, grave food supply problems,
natural catastrophes, continued deterioration of environment and the unfolding
global financial crisis.
The cascade of crises has posed severe challenges for
sustainable development and has topped the agenda of nearly all high-level
meetings in 2008, from the World Economic Forum in Dovas in January, the Group
of Eight (G8) Summit in Hokkaido, Japan, to the 7th Asian-European Meeting in
Beijing.
FROM FOOD TO LIVING
The intractable issue of climate change showed no
signs of easing in 2008 as a major snow storm wrecked southern China, tropical
storm Erin lashed Texas, the United States, Hurricane Felix struck Central
America and a cyclone claimed 70,000 lives in Myanmar.
The number of natural calamities in the world, due
partly to global warming, has quadrupled in the past two decades, a UN study
said.
The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per
year in the early 1980s, compared with the current figure of about 500.
WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan said at this
year's World Health Day that climate change endangers health in fundamental
ways.
In the long run, climate change can also have
consequences such as water shortages, a deterioration in living conditions, an
increase in economic losses, and a sea level rise.
Climate change has also taken a toll on the global
food supply, triggering a continued increase in the number of hungry people
across the world. The number of people plagued by hunger increased to 925
million from the 850 million last year, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
said.
Some 37 countries currently face a food crisis,
sparking tensions and social conflicts. Riots and demonstrations first broke out
in Latin America and then spread to the African continent and Southeast Asia.
According to a confidential World Bank report
obtained by the British Guardian newspaper, plant fuels have played a
"significant" part in pushing food prices to record levels.
The "Strategy for Biofuels" adopted by Europe and the
United States to boost significantly the production of fuels from agricultural
raw materials diverted enormous amounts of grains into fuel and drove up food
prices around the world.
Carbon dioxide emissions in industrialized countries
that partly contributed to climate changes were also blamed for the grain output
reduction.
OVERCONSUMPTION TRIGGERS ENVIRONMENTAL
CRISIS
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said
human activity is a major causal factor of global climate change.
Ever since the industrial revolution, human
activities, especially the massive consumption of energy and resources by
developed countries, have increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse
gases, produced conspicuous impacts on the natural ecosystems of the Earth and
endangered the survival and development of human society.
America, though accounting for only 5 percent of the
world's population, consumes 26 percent of the world's energy and serves as a
typical example of over consumption.
"The human population is now so large that the amount
of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available," the United Nations
Environment Program said in its Global Environment Outlook report.
The endeavor to ensure sustainable development was
also dampened by the ongoing global financial slump, which delayed some green
energy projects and stoked fears that a shortage of investment money would lead
to cheap and dirty decisions on new power plants, said Yvo de Boer, executive
secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change,
Investors, however, should see the crisis as "an
opportunity for green growth" as they replace up to 40 percent of the world's
power generation over the next decade, de Boer said.
In general, major threats to the planet such as climate change, the rate of extinction of species and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the many that remain unresolved, and all of them put humanity at risk.
