Australia continues to be one of the worst environmental performers on the planet after being ranked in the top 10 most unsustainable countries.

A study commissioned by World WIde Fund for Nature (WWF) placed us in eighth spot due to the vast amount of natural resources we use such as energy, transport, food, and infrastructure to sustain our individual lifestyles.

Countries to perform worse than Australia were the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, the United States, Estonia and Canada.

"I guess we have to ask that hard question; what are we doing in the way that we're using the land that's different than what (Indigenous Australians) did, why is it suddenly so unsustainably managed when for 60,000 years it was doing fine?" NSW biology professor, Mike Archer told The West Australian.

With Australia's alarming rate of species extinction, Professor Archer said Australia needs more national parks to guard against the ongoing loss of biodiversity.

"The parks are a great beginning but they are demonstrably too small at this point, given that climate change is going to make every animal and plant shift southwards, either 100 kilometres for every degree rise in temperature, or one kilometre up a mountain," he said.

"We haven't got too many of those mountains. We have to get bigger parks to give the resilience back to the biota that at the moment we've taken away.

"We've parcelled the land up in little patches and it can't respond in the way that it has in the past."