Well-designed policies can reverse the trends of environmental degradation - 16 April 2012.
The OECD has published a report where it stresses that environmental degradation could lead to "irreversible changes that could endanger two centuries of living standards". This approach is based on four themes: climate change, biodiversity, water and the impact of pollution on health.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development has recently published the OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: the 
Consequences of Inaction, where it warns that environmental degradation will
continue until 2050 if natural resources are not management correctly. The
report stresses that well-designed policies can reverse the trends of
degradation and erosion of the environment and considers some measures that may
help to stop them, such as allocating value and price to natural assets and
ecosystem services, removing environmentally harmful subsidies, devising
effective regulations and standards, or encouraging green innovation.
The report aims to identify the possible social and
environmental consequences of the current inaction, in other words, the lack of
new policies and continuing socio-economic trends over the coming four decades.
Poor environmental outlook for 2050
Under the 2050 scenario, pressures on the
environment from population growth and rising living standards will outpace
progress in pollution abatement and resource efficiency. In fact, by 2050, the
world’s population is expected to increase from 7 billion to over 9 billion,
70% of whom will live in cities and will consume 80% more energy than at
present.
Therefore, the OECD outlook foresees continued
degradation and erosion of natural environment capital, "with the risk of
irreversible changes that could endanger two centuries of rising living
standards. The report's forecasts thus include that climate change will be more
obvious and the global average temperature will increase between 3ºC and 6ºC
towards the end of the century.
Source: www.ihobe.net
16 April, 2012.