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    Vital Signs 2003: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future
    Vital Signs 2003: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future
    Vital Signs 2003: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future
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    Vital Signs 2003: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

    By The Worldwatch Institute

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    With Vital Signs 2003, you’ll have the cogent analysis you need to prepare for tomorrow’s challenges.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIsland Press
    Release dateMar 19, 2015
    ISBN9781610916646
    Vital Signs 2003: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

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      Book preview

      Vital Signs 2003 - The Worldwatch Institute

      WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE

      Michael Renner, Project Director

      Molly O. Sheehan, Associate Project Director

      Erik Assadourian

      Arunima Dhar

      Gary Gardner

      Brian Halweil

      Nicholas Lenssen

      Lisa Mastny

      Danielle Nierenberg

      Radhika Sarin

      Janet Sawin

      David Taylor

      Howard Youth

      Linda Starke, Editor

      Lyle Rosbotham, Designer

      W · W · Norton & Company

      New York London

      Copyright © 2003 by Worldwatch Institute

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America

      First Edition

      VITAL SIGNS and WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE trademarks are registered in the U.S. Patent and

      Trademark Office.

      The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Worldwatch Institute; of its directors, officers, or staff; of the United Nations Environment Programme; or of any funders.

      The text of this book is composed in ITC Berkeley Oldstyle with the display set in Quadraat Sans.

      Composition by the Worldwatch Institute; manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.

      Book design by Elizabeth Doherty and Lyle Rosbotham.

      ISBN 0-393-32440-0 (pbk)

      W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

      500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

      W.W. Norton & Company Ltd.

      75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

      1234567890

      Worldwatch Institute Board of Directors

      Øystein Dahle

      Chairman

      NORWAY

      Thomas Crain

      Treasurer

      UNITED STATES

      Larry Minear

      Secretary

      UNITED STATES

      Christopher Flavin

      President

      UNITED STATES

      Adam Albright

      UNITED STATES

      Cathy Crain

      UNITED STATES

      James Dehlsen

      UNITED STATES

      Lynne Gallagher

      UNITED STATES

      John McBride

      UNITED STATES

      Akio Morishima

      JAPAN

      Izaak van Melle

      THE NETHERLANDS

      Wren Wirth

      UNITED STATES

      James Lee Witt

      UNITED STATES

      Emeritus:

      Abderrahman Khene

      ALGERIA

      Andrew E. Rice

      UNITED STATES

      Worldwatch Institute Staff

      Erik Assadourian

      Staff Researcher

      Ed Ayres

      Editorial Director Editor, World Watch

      Chris Bright

      Senior Researcher

      Lori A. Brown

      Research Librarian

      Cyndi Cramer

      Development Associate

      Barbara Fallin

      Director of Finance and Administration

      Susan Finkelpearl

      Media Coordinator

      Christopher Flavin

      President

      Hilary French

      Director, Global

      Governance Project

      Gary Gardner

      Director of Research

      Joseph Gravely

      Mail & Publications Fulfillment

      Adrianne Greenlees

      Vice President for Development

      Brian Halweil

      Senior Researcher

      Lisa Mastny

      Research Associate

      Anne Platt McGinn

      Senior Researcher

      Leanne Mitchell

      Director of Communications

      Danielle Nierenberg

      Staff Researcher

      Elizabeth A. Nolan

      Vice President for Business Development

      Kevin Parker

      Director of Foundation Relations

      Tom Prugh

      Senior Editor

      Mary Redfern

      Development Associate

      Michael Renner

      Senior Researcher

      Lyle Rosbotham

      Art Director

      Radhika Sarin

      Staff Researcher

      Janet Sawin

      Research Associate

      Patrick Settle

      IT Systems Administrator

      Molly O. Sheehan

      Senior Researcher

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Preface

      Overview: Poverty and Inequality Block Progress

      A Growing Economic Divide

      Diseases of Poverty and Wealth

      Poverty and Armed Conflict

      The Inequities of Climate Change

      Communication Gaps

      Standing Apart: The United States and Africa

      Bridging the Divides

      PART ONE: Key Indicators

      Food Trends

      Grain Production Drops

      Meat Production and Consumption Grow

      Energy and Atmosphere Trends

      Fossil Fuel Use Up

      Nuclear Power Rises

      Wind Power’s Rapid Growth Continues

      Carbon Emissions and Temperature Climb

      Economic Trends

      Economic Growth Inches Up

      Foreign Debt Declines

      Advertising Spending Stays Nearly Flat

      Tourism Growing But Still Shaky

      World Heritage Sites Rising Steadily

      Transportation and Communications Trends

      Vehicle Production Inches Up

      Bicycle Production Seesaws

      Communications Networks Expand

      Semiconductor Sales Rebound Slightly

      Health and Social Trends

      Population Growth Slows

      HIV/AIDS Pandemic Spreads Further

      Cigarette Production Dips Slightly

      Military Trends

      Violent Conflicts Continue to Decline

      Peacekeeping Expenditures Down Slightly

      PART TWO: Special Features

      Environment Features

      Birds in Decline

      Small Islands Threatened by Sea Level Rise

      Economy Features

      Rich-Poor Divide Growing

      Gap in CEO-Worker Pay Widens

      Severe Weather Events on the Rise

      Resource Economics Features

      High Farm Subsidies Persist

      Harvesting of Illegal Drugs Remains High

      Health and Social Features

      Number of Refugees Drops

      Alternative Medicine Gains Popularity

      Maternal Deaths Reflect Inequities

      Consumption Patterns Contribute to Mortality

      Orphans Increase Due to AIDS Deaths

      Military and Governance Features

      Corruption Thwarts Development

      International Criminal Court Starts Work

      Military Expenditures on the Rise

      Resource Wars Plague Developing World

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      B ooks are like imprisoned souls, wrote British author Samuel Butler, till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them. We owe a debt of gratitude to you, our readers, for freeing the information contained in Vital Signs in imaginative ways. From educators to activists, journalists to government officials, readers of this volume have written to tell us how they have brought Vital Signs to life—in the United States and Canada, many countries in Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Senegal, South Africa, Pakistan, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan.

      A psychology professor, for instance, was motivated by Vital Signs to design a graduate course on human behavior and the environment, while a clinical psychologist uses the book in educational presentations to physicians, linking the health of the planet to human health. In Australia, Vital Signs is a must have among those who train advocates and educators for a national environmental organization. An environmental advisor to a major oil company wrote to let us know that he depends on the book to grasp the larger picture. Print, radio, and television journalists in Argentina, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Senegal, and Pakistan rely on Vital Signs as a reference and research tool.

      Well before the book is published, we depend on a wide range of experts who donate their time to critique drafts or provide key data. For their honest reviews, useful comments, and other help this year, we thank Sarah Joy Albrecht, Cornia Andrea, Alyssa Becker, Stan Bernstein, Joseph Chamie, Claudine Chapeau, Roberta Cohen, Nigel J. Collar, Colin Couch-man, Seth Dunn, Emilio Escudero, Majid Ezzati, Katya Fay, Michael Flynn, David Fridley, Christian Friesendorf, Satoshi Fujino, Don Hinrichsen, Alvin Hutchinson, Ragupathy Kannan, Tim Kelly, Philippe LeBillon, Wilfrid Legg, Wayne Lo, Birger Madsen, Tim McGirk, Dan McMeekin, Corin Millais, Robert Nicholls, David Roodman, Martha Rosen, Michael Ross, Hiram Ruiz, Henry Saffer, Payal Sampat, Wolfgang Schreiber, Courtney Ann Shaw, Vladimir Slivyak, Adam Smith, Alison J. Stattersfield, Victor Strasburger, Shiyun Sung, Stefanie Teggemann, Arnella Trent, Mathis Wackernagel, John Washburn, Timothy Whorf, Angelika Wirtz, and Jennifer Woofer.

      This is the third year in which the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has cooperated with Worldwatch to produce Vital Signs. We have greatly enjoyed working with UNEP’s Marion Cheatle, who helped us overcome the barrier of distance between World-watch’s office in Washington and UNEP’s headquarters in Nairobi for this team effort. And we thank Munyaradzi Chenje and So-Young Lee for their careful reviews. Our colleague Hilary French acted as a bridge between the two organizations.

      After outside experts and UNEP colleagues review the text and graphs, we send the completed Vital Signs manuscript to our longtime publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, in New York. We rely on the considerable talents of Norton’s Amy Cherry, Lucinda Bartley, Bill Rusin, Leo Wiegman, and Andrew Marasia to speed the manuscript through production and into bookstores and classrooms across the United States.

      We are also indebted to our international partners who publish Vital Signs in many languages outside the United States. For their tireless efforts on last year’s Vital Signs, we thank Soki Oda of Worldwatch Japan, Anna Bruno Ventre of Edizioni Ambiente in Italy, Gianfranco Bologna of WWF Italy, Sang Baek Lee and Jung Yu Jin of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, Lluis Garcia Petit and Sergi Rovira at Centro UNESCO de Catalunya in Spain, Marisa Mercado at Fundación Hogar del Empleado in Spain, Eduardo Athayde of UMA–Universidade Livre da Mata Atlantica in Brazil, Eilon Schwartz of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel, and Hamid Taravati in Iran.

      Many contributions to this annual book stem from Worldwatch’s general research program, which is backed by a roster of philanthropic organizations. We thank the following foundations for their generous support over the last year: the Aria Foundation, the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, The George Gund Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Frances Lear Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, the Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, Nalith, Inc., the NIB Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Shared Earth Foundation, The Shenandoah Foundation, Turner Foundation, Inc., the Wallace Global Fund, the Weeden Foundation, and The Winslow Foundation.

      We also greatly appreciate the support we receive from thousands of Friends of World-watch, and give special thanks to our Council of Sponsors: Adam and Rachel Albright, Tom and Cathy Crain, John and Laurie McBride and Kate McBride Puckett, and Robert Wallace and Raisa Scriabine. We were saddened in October 2002 by the death of Bob Wallace, a longtime friend of Worldwatch who inspired countless people through his work to build a better world. In recent years Worldwatch’s Board of Directors has stepped up its commitment to strengthen the Institute. We thank this exceptional group of people for their inspired leadership over the last year in guiding the Institute through a challenging period of political and economic uncertainty in the world.

      Bolstered by this tremendous network of colleagues, donors, and friends, Worldwatch staffers bring a high level of enthusiasm to Vital Signs. Elizabeth Nolan, in charge of business development, coordinates our efforts with Norton and our international partners. Our development team of Adrianne Greenlees, Kevin Parker, Mary Redfern, and Cyndi Cramer continues to expand Worldwatch’s broad base of support, while our communications team—Leanne Mitchell, Susan Finkelpearl, and Susanne Martikke—brings Vital Signs to ever larger audiences. Integral to these efforts are Barbara Fallin, our Director of Administration, in-house Internet and technology experts Patrick Settle and Steve Conklin, and Joseph Gravely in our mailroom.

      To cover the diverse topics in Vital Signs, we draw on the work of many researchers, from former staffers to recent hires. Worldwatch alumni Howard Youth and Nick Lenssen served as authors this year, while Seth Dunn, David Roodman, and Payal Sampat provided guidance on early drafts. Research librarian Lori Brown helped authors find crucial reports and data sets. Senior Researcher Chris Bright provided particularly helpful reviews, as did Senior Researcher Janet Sawin, who also spent hours calculating carbon emissions in addition to writing her own pieces. The contributions this year of Staff Researchers Erik Assadourian and Radhika Sarin were especially useful in uniting the book around the themes of poverty and inequality. The research staff also relied heavily on interns-turned-authors Arunima Dhar and David Taylor, and on Anand Rao, who joined the intern staff just in time to jump into assembling data for Vital Signs.

      Each year, the responsibility of transforming a multitude of contributions into a coherent book—under deadline pressure—falls to our editor and our art director. As always, independent editor Linda Starke transformed drafts into polished prose with unparalleled speed. This year marked Art Director Lyle Rosbotham’s first foray into Vital Signs, and he added his own personal touch to many design elements. Several of the photos Lyle chose for the opening pages of sections are from Photoshare, the online database of the Media/Materials Clearinghouse at the Johns Hopkins University Population Information Program at <www.jhuccp.org/mmc>.

      We hope that our readers will continue to bring this book to life. The data used to prepare all of the figures in this book are on our CD-ROM, Signposts 2003 (see p. 155). Please let us know if you have ideas of trends to be covered in future editions. You can reach us by e-mail ([email protected]), fax (202-2967365), or regular mail.

      Michael Renner and Molly O. Sheehan

      March 2003

      Worldwatch Institute

      1776 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.

      Washington, DC 20036

      Preface

      The past year was marked by frequent, graphic reminders of the human costs of environmental disruption. In May and June, South Asia was hit with a dangerous heat wave, and temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius led to the deaths of more than 1,200 Indians in a single week. A month later, heavy monsoon rains led to mudslides and flooding in parts of India, killing another 300 people and disrupting the lives of more than 10 million. Other areas of India were cruelly neglected by the year’s monsoon, causing the most severe drought in 15 years.

      Statistics published in Vital Signs 2003 show that economic losses from weather-related disasters worldwide totaled $53 billion in 2002. Although this figure is short of the record $100 billion in losses in 1999, it suggests that the unprecedented losses from weather-related disasters that hit the world in the 1990s are continuing into this new decade.

      Weather-related economic losses were highest in industrial countries in 2002—August floods in central Europe cost the region $18.5 billion—but the human toll was far higher in developing countries. Heavy rains in Kenya displaced 150,000 people, while 800,000 people in northern China suffered from a severe drought.

      These statistics reflect the intersection of two powerful global forces—growing environmental degradation and stubbornly high levels of poverty. Poor people living in precarious conditions are the most vulnerable to storms and floods, which are made worse by deforestation, soil erosion, and climate change.

      The human tragedies behind the statistics are a compelling reminder that environmental and social progress are not luxuries that can be set aside when the world is experiencing economic and political problems. Rather, they are central to human well-being. Unless the world can make better headway in improving environmental and social health in the years ahead, the toll of weather-related disasters will continue to rise.

      Vital Signs 2003 reports many ways in which the benefits of a growing global economy are still not reaching billions of people. These are reflected most starkly in global health statistics. For example, infectious diseases kill over 14 million people each year, most of them in developing countries.

      Environmental ills are also amply documented in this year’s Vital Signs: in 2002, the global average temperature reached the second highest level ever recorded, sustaining a warming trend that climate scientists believe is linked to the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. And ornithologists are documenting the decline of birds: some 12 percent of the world’s 9,800 bird species are threatened with extinction in this century, largely because human activities are destroying their habitat.

      Just as poverty and environmental decline come together to exacerbate the effects of natural disasters, the world community must address these and related issues with a combined strategy if it is to have any chance of successfully addressing each of them. Unless natural systems are stabilized, human welfare will be undermined. And unless excessive consumption is effectively addressed and the needs of the poor are met, both these pressures will continue to strain the health of the world’s ecosystems.

      Two recent global agreements provide a valuable framework for addressing poverty and environmental decline in tandem. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 have helped galvanize and focus international efforts on such objectives as eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development.

      The Plan of Implementation that was adopted by governments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 reaffirmed the MDGs. It also highlighted that eradicating poverty, changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, and protecting and managing the natural resource base are overarching objectives of and essential requirements for sustainable development. The Plan included several new targets, including restoring fisheries, stabilizing biological diversity, and meeting the sanitation needs of a half-billion people.

      None of these goals will be easy to achieve. And only through strengthened commitments by governments, international institutions, and civil society is there any chance of success. In 2002, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan summed up the challenge in a report to the General Assembly on implementation of the MDGs, stating that despite some signs of progress, the world community has a long way to go towards fulfilling the (Millennium) Declaration’s goals. These words echo his statement during the Millennium Summit, when he said: There is much to be grateful for. There are also many things to deplore, and to correct.

      Among the trends covered in Vital Signs 2003, we believe that you will find much to be grateful for and also much to deplore. We sincerely hope that this book will help the world community correct its course.

      Christopher Flavin

      President

      Worldwatch Institute

      Klaus Töpfer

      Executive Director

      United Nations Environment Programme

      TECHNICAL NOTE

      Units of measure throughout this book are metric unless common usage dictates otherwise. Historical population data used in per capita calculations are from the Center for International Research at the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical data series in Vital Signs are updated each year, incorporating any revisions by originating organizations.

      Unless otherwise noted, references to regions or groupings of countries follow definitions of the Statistics Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

      Data expressed in U.S. dollars have for the most part been deflated to 2001 terms. In some cases, the original data source provided the numbers in deflated terms or supplied an appropriate deflator, as with gross world product data. Where this did not happen, the U.S. implicit gross national product (GNP) deflator from the U.S. Department of Commerce was used to represent price trends in real terms.

      Overview

      Poverty and Inequality Block Progress

      Michael Renner and Molly O. Sheehan

      Environmental protection and human well-being are critical challenges. How do we protect Earth’s fragile ecosystems without denying billions of people a chance for a better life? How do

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