Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015
Making development sustainable: The future of disaster risk management


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of Vunidogolo are not responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to global climate change and rising sea levels. Those emissions are associated with high levels of energy consumption in other parts of the world. However, the residents of the village are quite literally paying the price: they contributed around onethird of the total cost of construction, farm and fish pond development incurred in the course of relocation.
The current approach to economic growth depends on an increasing and unsustainable overconsumption of energy, fresh water, forests
and marine habitats, clean air and rich soil (Nair, 2014

Nair, Ramachandran. 2014,Grand challenges in agroecology and land use systems, Frontiers in Environmental Science, Vol. 2 (January).. .
). The ecological footprint currently created by this overconsumption of energy and natural capital now exceeds the capacity of the planet to provide the resources used and to absorb waste, including greenhouse gas emissions. Somewhere around 1970, consumption surpassed the planet’s biocapacity for the first time. It is estimated that consumption now exceeds the biocapacity of the planet by around 50 per cent (Figure 12.1).
As GDP per capita grows, so do consumption and waste (Box 12.1).
Box 12.1 Destructive consumption and distribution patterns
Current consumption and distribution patterns have a direct impact on climate, water, land and biodiversity, which in turn mediate disaster risk. For example, more than a quarter of global agricultural production is lost or wasted (FAO, 2012

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2012,World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050, The 2012 Revision. ESA Working Paper No. 12-03, June 2012. Agricultural Development Economics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.. .
) along the supply chain, from production to storage, processing, distribution and consumption (EIU, 2014

The Economist Intelligence Unit. 2014,Global food security index 2014 special report: Food loss and its intersection with food security, Available from http://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/.. .
).

As Figure 12.2 highlights, Europe, the United States of America and a group of industrialized Asian countries including China, Japan and the Republic of Korea are mainly responsible for food waste in consumption, while losses in the production phase are particularly high in Latin America, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.
Figure 12.2 Relative food loss and waste by region and by phase of the food supply chain
(Source: FAO, 2013b

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2013b,Food wastage footprint: Impact on natural resources, Summary Report.. .
.)
Only the United States of America and China emit more greenhouse gases than the estimated 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent emitted by global food waste in 2007. Food waste now accounts for up to 10 per cent of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, in comparison to 35 per cent from the energy sector and 18 per cent from industry (UNEP, 2012

UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 2012,The Emissions Gap Report 2012, A UNEP Synthesis Report. UNEP, Nairobi.. .
; FAO, 2012

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2012,World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050, The 2012 Revision. ESA Working Paper No. 12-03, June 2012. Agricultural Development Economics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.. .
; Vermeulen et al., 2012

Vermeulen, Sonja J., Bruce M. Campbell and John S.I. Ingram. 2012,Climate Change and Food Systems, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 37: 195-222.. .
).
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