The UAE had the world's highest per capita environmental footprint for the third time in a row, according to a report released yesterday by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The Living Planet report, conducted with the Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London, put the UAE's per capita environmental footprint higher than those of Qatar, Denmark, Belgium and the United States.
The environmental footprint ultimately measures the territory - be it cropland, grazing land, forest or fishing grounds - required to produce the food, fibre and wood a country consumes, in addition to the land on which necessary infrastructure will be built and that is needed to absorb the waste and carbon dioxide (CO2) released by a community. The burning of fossil fuels accounts for the largest portion of the footprint.
And scale matters: while the UAE has the highest per-capita footprint, 10.68 hectares per person, it represents only 0.3 per cent of humanity's total ecological footprint. Half of the countries studied in the report are living beyond their environmental means.
Overall, developed countries topped the study's ranking, while some of the world's poorest countries are ranked at the bottom, with Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, coming in last.
The report mentions the Yellow River in China, the Murray River in Australia and the Rio Grande, on the border between the US and Mexico, as examples of rivers running dry because of over-extraction. Water pollution, especially in the developing world, is also mentioned as an issue; an estimated two million tonnes of sewage and other pollutants draining into the world's waters every day, according to the report.
http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/environment/uae-has-worlds-largest-environmental-footprint
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