Did you know?

Pressures on the planet have built up tremendously over the past 30 years: * The world population has risen by 60 percent, increasing demands on the environment, extending built-up areas and creating more pollution and waste. * Freshwater use has increased by more than 50 percent * Global energy consumption has grown by 60 percent

Our daily demands are increasing. We are leaving an ever larger, and more destructive footprint of human activity on the world. * At least 80 countries are suffering severe water shortages, and the number is growing. * 6,000 people, mostly the poor, die every day from water-related diseases. * Air quality has deteriorated, especially in the cities of many developing countries. Approximately 5 percent of all deaths and diseases are attributable to air pollution. * Almost half of the world's wetlands were lost during the last century. * In the 1990s, around 16 million hectares of forest were lost every year -- an area two-thirds the size of the United Kingdom.

A final backward glance at those 30 years shows that we have devised an array of policies that work but we have not done enough to prevent large scale environmental damage and we have become more vulnerable as a result.

Unless we alter our course now, we will be left with little of value. The challenge is to take the right route toward a more sustainable future.

Source: UNEP's third Global Environmental Outlook