By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby

An environmental think tank says that much economic activity in the United Kingdom is far from being sustainable.

In a report, Forum for the Future says its findings "present a substantial challenge to the UK government, which has made commitments to sustainable development, because they show that there is still a long way to go before those commitments can be said to have been honoured".

The Forum was founded by three prominent environmental activists, Paul Ekins, Sara Parkin and Jonathon Porritt. The report, Estimating Sustainability Gaps for the UK, was written by Dr Ekins and Dr Sandrine Simon, both of the department of environmental social sciences at Keele University.

More than a century away

The report says that "sustainability gaps" - the differences between current environmental impacts and standards of environmental sustainability - exist in several areas.

One is air pollution, where the report says emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) continue at unsustainable levels.

It estimates that, on current trends, it will take 126 years for the UK's CO2 emissions to reach sustainability.

SO2 emissions, it says, "have fallen greatly in recent years". Even so, emissions from the power sector are forecast to be about 50% above their environmentally sustainable level in 2010, so there will need to be substantial further emission reductions from that sector and elsewhere.

The report suggests that road vehicles will have to become considerably cleaner, or road traffic will have to be sharply reduced, if the UK is to meet its international commitments.

"Reductions in NOX emissions from road transport of the order of 55%, and of 70% overall in some places, seem likely to be required for the standards set by the World Health Organisation to be met.

"Reductions in several other air pollutants in certain places are also necessary if the concentration limits in the UK national air quality strategy are to be complied with."

Water pollution continuing

Other areas of concern identified in the report include water. It says: "Abstraction in a number of areas is above the sustainable level".

And although there is now almost 100% compliance with drinking and bathing water standards, "for a number of pollutants, standards for surface waters are still being exceeded".

The report acknowledges that in a third area, the generation and disposal of waste, the authors have made no attempt to specify sustainability standards.

But they say "the gap between the current situation and the various policy targets that have been adopted is substantial, and in some cases is growing".

"Assuming that the sustainability standards are likely to be stricter than current policy targets, this would seem to be an area of great and growing unsustainability."

The report criticises the UK government's own sustainable development indicators, although it says they are welcome in themselves, because they fail to identify sustainability standards and UK environmental performance in relation to them.

It says the absence of such standards leaves sustainable development as "a vague rhetorical aspiration rather than a real policy goal".