Published in the latest issue of the international journal Conservation Letters, the research has implications for the employment of conservation and human development projects worldwide and for guiding investment decisions by global institutions such as the World Bank and World Wide Fund for Nature.

“The services we examined included providing water for drinking and agriculture and minimising the effects of flooding,” Professor Luck said.

“We found that these services were most needed in watersheds found in the world’s poorest and most densely populated regions. Some of these regions are also ‘rich’ in biodiversity and we identified Southeast Asia and East Africa as regions with the highest priorities for protecting nature’s services and biodiversity.

“Our research showed that a dollar spent protecting nature’s services in many developing countries would have a greater relative benefit to humans than spending the same amount in developed countries such as Australia and the USA.

“People living in developing countries rely heavily on the services provided by local forests, wetlands and other ecosystems. In developing countries, land is relatively cheap to acquire for conservation and restoration and labour costs are lower than developed countries. Many of these areas are also under greater threat from land clearing, undermining the capacity of nature to provide services.

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South Africans should brace themselves for a severely water-stressed future, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report on the world’s ecological footprint warned this week.

The influential international report has been released every two years for the past decade.

In 1996 it warned that the world was heading for ecological disaster. The latest report paints an even bleaker picture of the future if consumers cannot curb their hunger for resources. …

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The world is heading for an “ecological credit crunch” far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.

The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year. …

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