WWF Release Living Planet Report

WWF has just released its periodic living planet report, the report "describes the changing state of global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere arising from human consumption of natural resources" (panda.org). The report has some interesting conclusions, it notes that the world's ecological footprint now exceeds the world biocapacity by around 30%.

But the report has even more damming information for New Zealand, we rank 6th in 'ecological footprint per person'. The numbers from 2005 show that the average New Zealander needs around 7.7Ha of land to sustain our current standard of living (compare this to the average biocapacity the earth can supply of 2.1Ha per person). To put it in perspective, if the whole world consumed the same way that New Zealanders do, we would require over three and half planet earths worth of land and resources.

Although it should be noted that New Zealand is an overall 'ecological creditor', this means that our local biocapacity exceeds our ecological footprint.

Will this report have any effect on our tourism industry? Given our international slogan of being '100% Pure'.