22nd October, 2004
Australians have the fourth highest ecological footprint of any people in the world with only people living in the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Kuwait consuming more natural resources.

The latest Living Planet Report - prepared annually by the conservation group WWF - shows that it takes 7.7 hectares of land to sustain each person compared with the global average of 2.2 hectares and with the 1.8 hectares which it says is available for each person on earth.

Energy use - dominated by our use of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil - is the fastest growing component of the ecological footprint increasing by almost 700 per cent between 1961 and 2001.

On a broader scale, the report shows that humans are consuming 20 per cent more natural resources that the earth can produce and that populations of land, freshwater and marine species fell an average of 40 per cent between 1970 and 2000.

WWF say the reports shows people in the West in particular are consuming resources at an “extremely unsustainable level”.

"Sustainable living and a high quality of life are not incompatible," said one of the authors, Jonathan Loh.

"However we need to stop wasting natural resources and to redress the imbalance in consumption between the developing and industrialised worlds." 

• To download a copy of the report, visit www.panda.org.

- DAVID ADAMS