WASHINGTON: Pressures on the world’s natural systems have worsened in the 10 years since the international environmental conference known as the Earth Summit was held, a leading environmental think tank said Thursday.

These pressures range from global warming to the degradation of fisheries and fresh water, according to the Worldwatch Institute’s latest ‘State of the World’ report.

The report acknowledged a few social and environmental advances since the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. These included the phasing out of ozone-depleting chemicals in industrialized nations and declining deaths from pneumonia, diarrhoea, and tuberculosis.

Nevertheless, “we are still far from ending the economic and environmental marginalization that afflict billions of people,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Washington-based organization. Steps in the 1990s since the Summit toward a more just and ecologically resilient world, however, were too small, too slow, or too poorly rooted, said the 265-page report.

Global emissions of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which most scientists believe causes global warming, have climbed more than nine per cent in the past 10 years.

While the protection of the world’s biological diversity was highlighted at the Summit, ongoing species extinctions since then demonstrate an urgent need to step up protection. The largest threat to flora and fauna was loss of habitat a byproduct of human activities including farming, ranching, mining, logging, and urban expansion. The world’s forests, a key habitat for threatened species, continued to disappear in the 1990s, said the report. According to the Forest Resources Assessment 2000 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, forest area worldwide decreased by 2.2 per cent since 1990.

Coral reefs, a crucial habitat for marine species, were also worse off since the Rio conference. About twenty-seven per cent of the world’s coral reefs { suffering from pollution, warming sea water, mining and fishing - are now severely damaged, up from 10 per cent at the time of the Earth Summit.

The report blamed the under-funding of environmental initiatives, the stagnation in foreign aid spending, and the indebtedness of developing nations, for impeding environmental and social progress. —Dawn/InterPress Service