Extravagant modes a main cause of natural resources depletion

Abu Dhabi: “Tell me what you buy, I tell you who you are”, Engineer Emad Sa’ad, environmental adviser at the Environment Friends Society in Abu Dhabi started his lecture titled: “Sustainable consumption” which was held at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research on Tuesday.

“The way people purchase their needs and their necessities is emblematic of their characters and cultures. Extravagance and over-consumption are byproducts of the welfare provision in a society which reflects its economic prosperity,” said Engineer Sa’ad who has also been chairman of the Media Committee at Khalifa International Date Palm Award and founder of the Arabic magazine Al Shajarah Al Mubarakah.

“Sustainable consumption is linking our current natural resources with the needs of the generations to come. The UAE current consumption patterns are completely linked to the welfare of its community and economy. Every individual in the UAE produces 2.5 kilograms of waste per day and this is the highest amongst the world’s population. The individual in the UK produces less than a kilogram of waste per day. This reflects the level of welfare people enjoy in the UAE,” remarked Engineer Sa’ad.

He added that people can reduce this ratio by 30 per cent in the blink of an eye by rationing consumption.

“Every person on earth consumes food the area of 2.3 hectares [a football pitch area] per year,” warned Engineer Sa’ad, calling on governments to take action to cease the depletion of natural resources and the continued deterioration of the global environment which reflect irresponsible and unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, particularly in the industrialised societies.He added that consumption patterns that exceed the resources of the planet are no longer an option in the long run, calling on changing production and consumption patterns fast enough to catch up with economic growth.

“America’s population makes up 5-6 per cent of the world’s population, yet it consumes 30 per cent of the earth’s resources and produces 40 per cent of the world’s waste,” he pointed out.

“In other words, we are simply demanding more from the earth than it can provide. If the population across the globe were to maintain a consumption level equivalent to that found in the developed world alone, it is estimated that we would need an extra four planets in addition to our current one,” Engineer Sa’ad warned.

He called for sustainable human development by living fulfilling lives without degrading the planet.

“Reducing humanity’s carbon footprint, which is how much land and water area a human population uses to provide all it takes from nature, includes the areas for producing the resources it consumes, the space for accommodating its buildings and roads, and the ecosystems for absorbing its waste emissions such as carbon dioxide,” he said, noting that humanity’s carbon footprint has increased 11-fold since 1961 and now stood at 400 PPM.

Decreasing our carbon footprint is the most essential step we can take to live within the means of our planet,” Engineer Sa’ad stressed.

He concluded that humanity has already exceeded planetary limits, and ecological assets have become more critical as each country has its own ecological risk profile with many running ecological deficits, with larger footprints.