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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Rising demand and use of the Earth’s resources is above sustainable levels and humans need to cut back and conserve, the United Nations Environment Programme said Friday.

Some cheap and high quality sources of essential materials are already running short, UNEP said. Those materials include oil, copper and gold and the remaining sources require more fossil fuels and fresh water to produce than in the past.

Population growth and increasing prosperity for many of the world’s people is fueling demand for natural resources that is pushing consumption toward levels that are well above anything that is sustainable.

UNEP officials said decoupling an increased growth in the use of natural resources from economic growth was critical.

“Decoupling makes sense on all the economic, social and environmental dials,” says UN Under Secretary-General Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director.

For example, people in developed nations consume an average of 16 tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass per capita. In addition, that ranges up to 40 tons or more per person in some developed nations. By contrast average consumption of those resources is only four tons per per person per year in India. But as more nations develop, consumption of those items increases and that kind of growth in consumption simply is not sustainable.

UNEP called on people to do more with less to conserve resources.

The agency called for furthering that goal with “an urgent rethink of the links between resource use and economic prosperity, buttressed by a massive investment in technological, financial and social innovation, to at least freeze per capita consumption in wealthy countries and help developing nations follow a more sustainable path.”

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