[sustran] FW: Worldwatch Issue Alert: Paving the Planet

Paul Barter geobpa at nus.edu.sg
Fri Feb 16 10:42:26 JST 2001


-----Original Message-----
From: Farheen Mukri [mailto:farheen at riet.org.sg]
Sent: Thursday, 15 February 2001 6:04
To: 'Geraldine Lee'; 'Kenneth NEOCorp'; 'Paul Barter'; 'Nai Rui Chng';
'Nick JH'; 'TIM'; 'Tom Sounness 2nd add'
Subject: Worldwatch Issue Alert: Paving the Planet

> ----------
> From: 	RJ Kauffman[SMTP:rjkauffman at worldwatch.org]
> Sent: 	14 February, 2001 8:45 PM
> 
> February 14, 2001
> 
> PAVING THE PLANET:
> CARS AND CROPS COMPETING FOR LAND
> 
> Lester R. Brown
> 
> 	As the new century begins, the competition between cars and
> crops for cropland is intensifying. Until now, the paving over of
> cropland has occurred largely in industrial countries, home to four
> fifths of the world's 520 million automobiles. But now, more and more
> farmland is being sacrificed in developing countries with hungry
> populations, calling into question the future role of the car.
> 	Millions of hectares of cropland in the industrial world have
> been paved over for roads and parking lots. Each U.S. car, for example,
> requires on average 0.07 hectares (0.18 acres) of paved land for roads
> and parking space. For every five cars added to the U.S. fleet, an area
> the size of a football field is covered with asphalt. 
> 	More often than not, cropland is paved simply because the flat,
> well-drained soils that are well suited for farming are also ideal for
> building roads. Once paved, land is not easily reclaimed. As
> environmentalist Rupert Cutler once noted, "Asphalt is the land's last
> crop."
> 	The United States, with its 214 million motor vehicles, has
> paved 6.3 million kilometers (3.9 million miles) of roads, enough to
> circle the Earth at the equator 157 times. In addition to roads, cars
> require parking space. Imagine a parking lot for 214 million cars and
> trucks. If that is too difficult, try visualizing a parking lot for
> 1,000 cars and then imagine what 214,000 of these would look like. 
> 	However we visualize it, the U.S. area devoted to roads and
> parking lots covers an estimated 16 million hectares (61,000 square
> miles), an expanse approaching the size of the 21 million hectares that
> U.S. farmers planted in wheat last year. But this paving of land in
> industrial countries is slowing as countries approach automobile
> saturation. In the United States, there are three vehicles for every
> four people. In Western Europe and Japan, there is typically one for
> every two people. 
> 	In developing countries, however, where automobile fleets are
> still small and where cropland is in short supply, the paving is just
> getting underway. More and more of the 11 million cars added annually to
> the world's vehicle fleet of 520 million are found in the developing
> world. This means that the war between cars and crops is being waged
> over wheat fields and rice paddies in countries where hunger is common.
> The outcome of this conflict in China and India, two countries that
> together contain 38 percent of the world's people, will affect food
> security everywhere. 
> 	Car-centered industrial societies that are densely populated,
> such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan, have paved an average of
> 0.02 hectares per vehicle. And they have lost some of their most
> productive cropland in the process. Similarly, China and India also face
> acute pressure on their cropland base from industrialization. Although
> China covers roughly the same area as the United States, its 1.3 billion
> people are concentrated in just one third of the country--a
> thousand-mile strip on the eastern and southern coast where the cropland
> is located. 
> 	If China were one day to achieve the Japanese automobile
> ownership rate of one car for every two people, it would have a fleet of
> 640 million, compared with only 13 million today. While the idea of such
> an enormous fleet may seem farfetched, we need only remind ourselves
> that China has already overtaken the United States in steel production,
> fertilizer use, and red meat production. It is a huge economy and, since
> 1980, also the world's fastest growing economy.
> 	Assuming 0.02 hectares of paved land per vehicle in China, as in
> Europe and Japan, a fleet of 640 million cars would require paving
> nearly 13 million hectares of land, most of which would likely be
> cropland. This figure is over one half of China's 23 million hectares of
> rice land, part of which it double crops to produce 135 million tons of
> rice, the principal food staple. When farmers in southern China lose a
> hectare of double-cropped riceland to the automobile, their rice
> production takes a double hit. Even one car for every four people, half
> the Japanese ownership rate, would consume a substantial area of
> cropland.
> 	The situation in India is similar. While India is geographically
> only a third the size of China, it too has more than 1 billion people,
> and it now has 8 million motor vehicles. Its fast-growing villages and
> cities are already encroaching on its cropland. Add to this the land
> paved for the automobile, and India, too, will be facing a heavy loss of
> cropland. A country projected to add 515 million more people by 2050
> cannot afford to cover valuable cropland with asphalt for roads and
> parking lots.
> 	There is not enough land in China, India, and other densely
> populated countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt,
> and Mexico to support automobile-centered transportation systems and to
> feed their people. The competition between cars and crops for land is
> becoming a competition between the rich and the poor, between those who
> can afford automobiles and those who struggle to buy enough food. 
> 	Governments that subsidize an automobile infrastructure with
> revenues collected from the entire population are, in effect, collecting
> money from the poor to support the cars of the wealthy. In subsidizing
> the development of an auto-centered transport system, governments are
> also inevitably subsidizing the paving of cropland. If, as now seems
> likely, automobile ownership never goes beyond the affluent minority in
> developing countries, this becomes an ongoing and largely invisible
> transfer of income from the poor to the rich.
> 	In a land-hungry world, the time has come to reassess the future
> of the automobile, to design transportation systems that provide
> mobility for entire populations, not just affluent minorities, and that
> do this without threatening food security. When Beijing announced in
> 1994 that it planned to make the auto industry one of the growth sectors
> for the next few decades, a group of eminent scientists--many of them
> members of the National Academy of Sciences--produced a white paper
> challenging this decision. They identified several reasons why China
> should not develop a car-centered transport system, but the first was
> that the country did not have enough cropland both to feed its people
> and to provide land for the automobile. 
> 	The team of scientists recommended that instead of building an
> automobile infrastructure of roads and parking lots, China should
> concentrate on developing state-of-the-art light rail systems augmented
> by buses and bicycles. This would not only provide mobility for far more
> people than a congested auto-centered system, but it would also protect
> cropland. 
> 	There are many reasons to question the goal of building
> automobile-centered transportation systems everywhere, including climate
> change, air pollution, and traffic congestion. But the loss of cropland
> alone is sufficient. Nearly all of the 3 billion people to be added to
> the current world population of 6 billion by mid-century will be born in
> developing countries where there is not enough land to feed everyone and
> to accommodate the automobile. Future food security now depends on
> restructuring transportation budgets--investing less in highway
> infrastructure and more in rail and bicycle infrastructure.
> 
> For data and additional information:
> www.worldwatch.org/alerts/indexia.html
> 
> Contact: Reah Janise Kauffman
> Copyright: 2001 Worldwatch Institute
> 1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW 
> Washington, DC 20036-1904
> 
> PHONE: (202) 452-1992 x 514  
> FAX: (202) 296-7365
> EMAIL: rjkauffman at worldwatch.org
> 
> 



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