The ever-growing demand for resources, driven by a growing global population, which could hit 10.9-billion by 2050, is putting “tremendous” pressure on the planet’s biodiversity and is threatening South Africa’s future security, health and well-being, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in a report on Tuesday.

“We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce and unless we change course, that number will grow fast. By 2030 two planets will not be enough,” WWF South Africa CEO Morné du Plessis warned.

The WWF’s Living Planet Report uses the living planet index (LPI) to measure changes in the health of the planet’s ecosystem. It showed a 28% decrease since 1970, with the tropical regions the hardest hit.

The report highlighted countries’ ecological footprint, with high-income countries registering a footprint that was on average five times that of low-income countries.

South Africa’s ecological footprint per person was higher than that of fast-growing Asian giants China and India, owing to the country’s high coal dependence and high carbon emissions. In fact, the single largest demand on the biosphere was carbon, which currently accounted for over half of humanity's ecological footprint.

The WWF highlighted the increased ecological footprint of the rapidly growing Briics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa) and the pressure it was placing on regions’ ability to regenerate resources.

“The Briics economies have increased their per capita footprint by 65% since 1961,” the report stated.

The African countries with the biggest ecological footprint were Mauritius, Mauritania, Botswana, South Africa, Egypt, Namibia, Tunisia, Chad, Mali and Gabon.

Global demand a person was 2.75 ha in 2008, while global hectares per capita was 1.8 ha.

The report also revealed that global biocapacity – a region’s capacity to regenerate resources – was decreasing on a per capita basis, while total global boicapacity had increased. However it could still not keep up with the growing population and its resource use per capita.

Decreasing biocapacity would require countries to import essential resources from foreign ecosystems and would potentially lead to the long-term detriment of the latter.

The Earth's biodiversity was also shown to be on a downward trend.

“The loss of biodiversity and its related ecosystem services particularly impacts the poor, who rely most directly on nature to survive, particularly for their food,” Du Plessis added.

The declining LPI and rising ecological footprint emphasised the need for more sustainable policies.

Du Plessis indicated that solutions would be found in reducing wasteful consumption, smarter water management and using renewable energy sources.

The report further showed that limiting the global warming average to 2 ºC above preindustrial levels was likely to require emission reductions larger than 80% below peak levels.

“If emissions continue to grow, large regions probably will individually exceed a 2 ºC increase in average annual temperatures by 2040. By 2050, we have to get as close as possible to being 100% dependent on renewable as possible.

“We need to manage resources sustainably and scale up on renewable energy production, much of the coal and oil reserves need to stay underground for us to keep to the global warming targets,” Du Plessis said.

He noted that, although an aggressive switch to renewable energy would address a wide range of environmental problems, it was not a silver bullet, adding that the gap between politicians and the industry had to be overcome.

WWF South Africa climate change programme manager Richard Worthington said that fossil fuels subsidisation should be halted to contribute to the move to renewable energy and sustainable management of resources.

“There are a lot of inefficient subsidies to fossil fuel use; if we can get rid of them, we will be taking a step in the right direction,” he said, adding that credibility of renewable energy had to be established by changing the global mindset that coal and nuclear energy were required to feed the growing power consumption.

“There are challenges associated with renewable energy in term of creating a base load and its significant land space requirements, but it is physically and technologically possible.”

Worthington was optimistic that the time had come where society was becoming aware of the “myths” that have maintained the “unsustainable development pathway” followed globally.

However, WWF Living Unit head Saliem Fakir said pinning the blame on politicians for having a short-term approach obscured the fact that the general economy was operating this way.

“Short-termism is also apparent in the financial sector, which contributes to the problem of slow change,” he noted.

Head of WWF's biodiversity unit, Deon Nel, said a more integrated approach would be required to intelligently plan a landscape that would provide for the needs of a growing population.

“The food, water and energy nexus has become increasingly important in our thinking and should also become more paramount in that of society,” he urged.