Twenty years on, humanity still ‘at risk’

Two decades after a landmark report warned of the dire state of the planet and called for urgent action, climate change, species extinction and a growing population are still putting humanity at risk, a UN report said on Thursday.
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The fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4), an audit of the world’s environmental wellbeing by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), warns that government responses to major environmental issues are still
"woefully inadequate".

The study, involving more than 1,400 scientists, found that human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply.

In 1987, a study commissioned by then Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland sounded an early warning that the survival of humankind was at stake.

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