The Century Ahead.

• Author: Myers, Norman
• Position: The 21st century begins with earth's resources already strained by its human population

Ever-Greater Problems or Ever-Wider Opportunities?

As we enter the new millennium, our environmental underpinnings are far more valuable in strictly economic terms than we had ever supposed. Because most environmental goods and services are not traded in the marketplace and hence have no price evaluations, they have been treated as not only "price-less" but "worth-less". For this reason, they have been misused and overused as if with impunity. Fortunately, we now have a surrogate evaluation of all environmental goods and services: $33 trillion per year worldwide, and thus larger than the global economy of $29 trillion. In short, global natural product is more valuable than global national product. Now that we have a firm grasp of the economic value of our environmental supports, they are more likely to receive proper care.

The clearer understanding of the vital role played by our environments means we may learn to benefit from them in ways that enhance our welfare in myriad ways. Thus we can embark on a shift from an approach that has over-exploited and under-utilized our environments to a strategy that derives full arid sustainable benefit from them. In this sense, we can look forward to a century ahead that is marked by an ecology and an economy of hope without precedent.

There is much evidence that the Earth's carrying capacity is already exceeded by the present 6 billion people and their lifestyles. Humans now account for 55 per cent of all available water run-off, and they co-opt almost 50 per cent of all plant growth. Greater amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are mobilized by humans in the form of crop fertilizer than by natural processes. Similarly, humans already harvest an amount of ocean fish that reflects fully one third of phytoplankton productivity in temperate continental shelves.

Finally, the current decline of the environmental resource base worldwide may prove to be minor compared to what could well ensue, given exploitation pressures ahead. Fortunately, there are many opportunities to relieve environmental pressures, both present and prospective, and through shifts in lifestyles and enhanced technologies, all of which can be promoted by a range of policy responses.

Certain economic sectors are engaging in "full cost pricing" in order to internalize environmental externalities. There is much scope to reform the tax system so that we no longer penalize productive activities, such as individual work and business profits, but shift the tax burden to negative activities, such as overuse of key natural resources or generation of pollutants among other wastes. All these initiatives help to safeguard our environments and make our economies more sustainably productive and efficient.

Expanding eco-technologies: Now that environmental resources are being degraded and depleted, we need to move toward economies that safeguard the environmental supports of our economic activities. Conventional economies are remarkably inefficient. In the United States, materials used by industry's metabolism amount to more than 20 times all Americans' weight per day. Yet only 1 per cent of the material flow ends up in products that are still in use six months after sale, the rest being junked. Better would be industrial parks where each manufacturer feeds upon the wastes of others until emissions are finally reduced to zero...