Asian, Pacific countries must adopt ‘green growth’ patterns

If Asian and Pacific societies including India are to continue with their economic growth, they will have to adopt ecologically efficient ‘green growth’ patterns, a latest UN report has said.

The report specifically warns the South Asian countries including India that over 40 per cent of the region’s population will face some of the toughest issues in coming decades as population growth, changing water regimes and climates and rising demand for energy come to a head.
As the Asian and Pacific regions emerge as global production centres, they will encounter problems such as a population density 1.5 times the global average, lowest freshwater availability per capita of all global regions, a biologically productive area per capita that is less than 60 per cent of the global average, and arable and permanent crop land per capita that is less than 80 per cent the global average.

Highly polluting industries are also growing more rapidly in developing countries than in the developed world, the report says.

While plantation forests advance, natural forests are retreating, especially in South-East Asia, water extraction rates are already unsustainably high in at least 16 countries and irrigation systems, the biggest user of water, are highly inefficient in most countries, it adds.

The Hindu