The Environmental Predicament in the Asia-Pacific Region Compared With Other Regions

An elaborate attempt to measure pollution has been made by the Global Footprint Network (GFN). Its statistics offer quantitative measures of both pollution and its opposite, namely biocapacity. The basic division is that between CO2 pollution and other kinds of pollution. In the GFN data, carbon pollution is of such a size as to create a global ecological deficit. Whereas CO2 pollution follows the level of economic development, the variation in biocapacity is very much determined by country specific ecological factors. The Asia-Pacific region has a huge ecology deficit due to the immense carbon pollution in India and China, which is not compensated for by the bio-capacity assets in the region, such as in Oceania.