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Worldbank future Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/020822/afp/020822000253top.htmlhttp://asia.news.yahoo.com/020822/afp/020822000253top.html
Thursday August 22, 8:02 AM
World Bank prods rich nations to save future generations
WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (AFP) - The world will deteriorate into a grim home for nine billion people, many of them impoverished, in 50 years unless rich countries act now, the World Bank said.
World leaders must agree on the steps when they gather at the UN Earth Summit in Johannesburg, starting Monday, the Bank said in its annual World Development Report.
Asked about the prospects for the Johannesburg summit in light of US President George W. Bush's decision to give it a miss, World Bank spokeswoman Caroline Anstey told a news conference: "We are owned by 183 countries not by one."
Ian Johnson, vice president of the World Bank and head of its environmental network, expressed some regret.
"The United States are sending a strong delegation but it would have been nice to have every head of state," Johnson said.
The World Bank report estimated that the world population would grow to nine billion people by 2050, stabilizing at the end of this century at 10 billion or less.
Two-thirds of the planet would live in cities, placing enormous demands on resources for energy, water, housing and education.
"The 140-trillion-dollar world of five decades' time simply cannot be sustained on current production and consumption patterns," World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said.
"A major transformation -- beginning in the rich countries -- will be needed to ensure that poor people have an opportunity to participate and that the environment is not damaged in a way that undermines their opportunities for the future."
The challenges were daunting.
The average income in the richest 20 countries was already 37 times that of the poorest 20 nations.
In the world, 1.3 million people lived on fragile lands such as arid zones, wetlands and forests that could not sustain them. The gap between rich and poor countries had doubled in 40 years.
Stern pressed rich countries to act first, chiding them for spending lots of money protecting their own farmers, and pricing the needy farm-exporting countries out of the world market.
Rich countries must abandon a system in which they spend a billion dollars a day on agricultural subsidies, the report said.
The challenges of the world's population and social trends also offered opportunities, the report said.
As population growth slowed, economic growth would lift people out of poverty with greater ease, but only if the environment survived intact, the Bank said.
Johnson said poor countries' economies would have to grow at 3.6 percent per person to meet two-year-old internationally-agreed Millennium Development Goals, including halving poverty by 2015.
"It would be reckless of us to successfully reach the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, only to be confronted by dysfunctional cities, dwindling water supplies, more inequality and conflict, and even less cropland to sustain us than we have now," he said.
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