INTRO
Are we damaging our world by the way that we live? Are the stories of global warming true? What can we do about it? Aren't all these kinds of issues just for weird hippies with cardigans anyway?
FACTS
In 2003 the World Conservation Union's Red List said more than 12,000 species (out of 40,000 assessed) faced some extinction risk, including:
• one bird in eight
• 13% of the world's flowering plants
• a quarter of all mammals.
A third of the world's population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds.
There is more than enough water available, in total, for everyone's basic needs.
More than five million people die from waterborne diseases each year - 10 times the number killed in wars around the globe.
The UN-backed World Commission on Water estimated in 2000 that an additional $100bn a year would be needed to tackle water scarcity worldwide.
This dwarfs the $20bn which will be needed annually by 2007 to tackle HIV and Aids, and, according to the Commission, it is so much it could only be raised from the private sector.
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