A number of private-sector groups have started projects to address global water supply. Breslin’s organization has experimented with a number of initiatives, including training specialists in India who can maintain communities’ water supplies and have a financial incentive to keep them operating. Coca-Cola has launched 385 projects in 90 countries, including some that protect watersheds and others that allow small farmers to irrigate more efficiently.
Manish Bapna, interim president at the World Resources Institute, said emerging economies will have to manage their growth differently than industrialized nations if they hope to achieve sustainability.
“It’s only going to be achieved if we find a way to decouple natural resources from improvements in lifestyle,” Bapna said.
In many cases, business and political leaders in these countries are just beginning to confront the challenge. Alibaba Group chief executive Jack Ma, a Chinese Internet entrepreneur who serves on the Nature Conservancy’s global board of directors, said he began to recognize the impact of his country’s economic gains once he started traveling outside his country. “I was shocked,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘The economy’s good, but the environment’s terrible.’ ”
Forests — which provide critical habitat for many species, protect local water supplies and store carbon that otherwise would accelerate climate change — are another resource under stress. Several nations and regions with relatively stable or declining populations, such as the United States and Europe, have seen the acreage and density of their temperate forests rise in the past few decades, but a number of developing nations with biologically diverse tropical forests have lost ground.
“When you look at Central America and Southeast Asia, the hot spots of deforestation, a large amount of that is being driven by global demand for food and, increasingly, fuel,” said Glenn Hurowitz, a consultant for the group Climate Advisers.
Jason Clay, senior vice president for market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund, noted that in the past decade land conversion to farmland worldwide has grown at a pace of 0.6 percent a year; by 2050 that would mean another 24 percent of the Earth would be devoted to agriculture, on top of the 33 percent used now.
“There just isn’t enough land out there, so we’ve got to intensify,” Clay said.
Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, said people need to recognize how human needs are transforming the planet.
“People can’t talk about the environment without talking about population,” he said. “Many of the environmental issues you talk about, whether it’s climate change or something else with the environment, people are in the center of it.”
In the end, according to National Geographic fellow Barton Seaver, the world’s growing population will have to learn how to live better within its means.
“We’re not going to find more fish; we’re not going to plow more rain forest to create more calories,” Seaver said. “I would rather have my anchoveta in all its briny, delicious, shiny glory than through a pork chop on my plate.”
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