Warn of the "Rio +20" Summit: UN experts on eco-collapse

Science and techno world topic: Climate change

It is an indictment on 525 pages. Two weeks before the summit "Rio +20" in Brazil to warn UN experts strongly that the international environment makes little progress.

Rio de Janeiro - Experts from the United Nations has issued the world's environmental policy a damning testimony. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warns in his new report, "Geo-5”, one-third of 90 major environmental goals have been achieved over the past five years, no progress. At 40 there was some improvement.

Drought in Kenya

Significant advances have given it only in four areas. Specifically, there

·         less ozone-damaging gas in the atmosphere ,

·         less pollution of the seas,

·         less lead in fuels,

·         more people with access to clean water.

The bad news is however, far more numerous, so warn the authors of the study of a collapse of ecosystems. "This is an indictment," the UNEP chief Achim Steiner said at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro. "We live in an age of irresponsibility, which is documented in this report." A change is possible, however. Steiner called for urgent measures to stop the exploitation of the environment.

"While the human pressure on the earth, there are several critical global, regional and local limits already reached or exceeded," says the report. "If they are exceeded, it is likely to be abrupt and potentially irreversible changes in the life-sustaining functions of the planet."

At 525 pages, the experts draw a gloomy picture of the organization of our planet. Such a threatened including the melting of polar ice caps, the spread of deserts in Africa and the deforestation of tropical forests to life on Earth. Already, 20 percent of vertebrates are threatened with extinction, the coral reefs had shrunk by 38 percent since 1980, and greenhouse gas emissions could double in the next 50 years.

"Will see if the trend continues like this and the behavior of production and consumption of natural resources can not be reversed, then the government an unprecedented dimension of damages and losses," Steiner warned.

In just over two weeks there in Brazil, the United Nations Earth Summit "Rio+20" instead. The name commemorates the UN Earth Summit in 1992.Developed from this meeting, including the Climate Change Convention and later the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

So far could the industrialized countries and developing countries can not agree, however, about the goals of the "Rio +20". UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon acknowledged that negotiations on a final document be difficult. He was, however, is "cautiously optimistic" that the 193 UN members could agree on an agreement.

Environmental organizations such as WWF warned however against a failure. There were two likely scenarios, WWF Director General Jim Leape said the "Guardian": either adopted the conference was a soft diaper and empty document - or they fail altogether.