 |
 |
 |
 |
Fighting for a living planet |
| Get Involved About Team Projects News Contact Home |
|
|
|
|
 |
News Biodiversity and the New World Order 03 Nov 03 In May 2003 The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressed the world to remind us, "Biological diversity is essential for human existence and has a crucial role to play in sustainable development and the eradication of poverty. Biodiversity provides millions of people with livelihoods, helps to ensure food security and is a rich source of both traditional medicines and modern pharmaceuticals." Firstly I will set out my stall with a simple definition of what the term biodiversity means: Most simply it is THE WHOLE RANGE OF EVOLVED NATURALLY OCCURRING LIFE FORMS. This leads us to how we define and understand that range of life forms. The traditional and dominant terms relate to classical Linnaean descriptions of individual species, and Genera. Over the last 15 years or so the ability for many labs across the world to directly identify the genetic diversity within and between individuals, populations and species has further revealed the complexity of life. If before we saw evolution as the branches on a tree genetics now allows us to resolve the hairs on each tiny root of that tree. So far, about 1.8 (1.4-2.0m) million species have been described, although estimates of the global total range from 3 to 100 million with some consensus at the 10 million mark with Insects forming by far the biggest class. This broad range of estimates is symbolic of our ignorance of the natural world.
Hotspots Myers original 18 areas included places such as Madagascar and the Philippines which are exceptionally rich in endemic species, and which have lost most of their original habitat. Less than 10% of the original forest cover of Madagascar remains, yet living in it and relying upon it are 67 species of lemurs, nearly 80 species of birds and large numbers of reptiles and amphibians, many of which are still being named as new to science. And this makes no mention of the most numerous of groups, the insects. In more recent work Norman Myers and colleagues at Conservation International have designated 25 terrestrial hotspots and defined several other marine and freshwater areas of particular importance such as the Great Barrier Reef and the lakes Victoria, Malawi and Tanganyika in East Africa. Much discussion of these hotspot areas has centred on the size of areas that should be conserved. Regions of high biodiversity, such as those I have mentioned today are increasingly fractured and depleted, extinction becoming inevitable for many species when the last slice of a habitat is removed or shrinks below a certain threshold. In studies of some tropical forests, up to half the original species could survive in 10% of the original habitat but the removal of that final 10% spells complete extinction many species. Many tropical areas of the world are in this situation, the "endgame" as Edward Wilson calls it. In Win Win Ecology Rosenzweig makes the case that traditional reserves- parks, refuges and other designated natural areas-will, at best, secure roughly 5 percent of the world's species. Under this system a few ecologists and even fewer taxonomists battle against time and seemingly hopeless odds to count the number of sub-species, species and genera found in the different biomes of the planet, as many species, still unknown to science are lost every day. The battle is, I am sure, well known to all of you. I suspect many of you are here today because you want in some way to fight against the tide that seems never to turn. And a noble battle it is. But does the feeling ever creep up that there is actually no point and that the efforts we make are just temporary eddies in the ceaseless flow of species loss occurring at a truly unprecedented rate. Some of you may have the happy countenance born of a more philosophical perspective. What goes around comes around and the planet that gave birth to us will see the death of us and many more millions of species will come and go when we are long gone. A question of practicality or morality? But of course we must live our lives in the best way we can and only the most fatalistic would argue that doing little or nothing is justifiable any more than not fighting diseases such as cancer and AIDs. But
is there a question of morality? May 2003 The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressed the world to remind us, "Biological diversity is essential for human existence and has a crucial role to play in sustainable development and the eradication of poverty. Biodiversity provides millions of people with livelihoods, helps to ensure food security and is a rich source of both traditional medicines and modern pharmaceuticals." For E.O. Wilson, it's a matter of human values. We are the only species which has the power to destroy or preserve any other species on earth and that in itself means that we should value and respect biodiversity. He also argues that the ecological services such as water and air purification, soil enrichment, pollution filtration are performed free by the world's biodiversity and any artificial maintenance of these functions is likely to be costly and uncertain. And yet the acceleration of the depletion of key habitats such as primal rainforests, probably the most diverse of all habitats, continues and is seemingly unstoppable. Biological resources are lost and degraded through large-scale clearing and burning of forests, over harvesting of plants and animals, indiscriminate use of pesticides, draining and filling of wetlands, destructive fishing practices, air pollution, and the conversion of wild areas to agricultural and urban uses. Subsidised energy pricing in many countries encourage inefficiency and in so doing add to the burden of air pollutants and the risk of substantial global climate change. Last year after a 2 week Meeting for the Convention on Biological Diversity in The Hague, Joy Hyvarinen, international treatise advisor to the RSPB, expressed her frustration saying "Nature's taken an incredible beating over the past 10 years, and an almost greater one in the last two weeks," "Environment ministers should have taken a stronger line with their "bickering bureaucrats". "There has been absolutely no political willpower to do anything other than to weaken this Convention." For all the high level talk by representatives of internationaly respected organisations such as Conservation International and the UN, there is a fundamental missing link. And that link is in the minds of the lay public. Repeated surveys indicate that although many people may be aware of environmental problem there is little belief that anything can be done, or there is an assumption by most that if something needed to be done then the government would do it. And still today there is very little, if any, awareness of how this reflects on the lives of individuals, in consumption patterns and general daily activities. Whether it is the increasing use of the car and air travel or the purchase of fish taken from collapsing stocks. I am more and more convinced that it is in the minds of the masses, particularly in the wealthy nations, that the solution lies. The dark and the light of the information age But how do we make the change and create the socio-political space for our politicians and bureaucrats to act. This is no mean feat and although there is a general paralysis brought on by the belief that if something needed doing then someone would do it, there is also a collapse in the trust that the general public has for politicians and a resistance to policy changes. Simply look at the reaction to the fuel levy and the climb down by the Labour government. It is now more difficult than ever for a politician to ask for perceived sacrifices when they are so often portrayed in the media as self-serving hypocrites given to endlessly spinning the truth. Here I would like to borrow from Onora O'Neill, a philosopher and psychologist, in her Reith lecture last year. 'Open government' is now upheld as an ideal. Those holding public office in the UK are required to conform to the seven 'Nolan' principles. The core of these principles is a demand for trustworthiness in public life. Newspapers and activists invoke the publics 'right to know'. Politicians and public servants are admonished to ensure that transactions with the public are always based on informed consent. But In an when 'sources' borrow promiscuously from one another, and statistics are cited and regurgitated because they look striking or convenient for those pursuing some agenda, when rumour can readily be reprocessed as news, active checking of information is pretty hard for many of us. Unqualified trust is then understandably rather scarce. We need information but also we need the means to judge that information. But
as Oneil points out the problem of information transcends millenia. In this desert of trust and sea of information has surfaced a startling array of pressure groups, consultancies, quasi-independent research bodies and NGOs, filling the vacuum created by the evaporation of blind trust in traditional institutions. The information age and technology is the father of many of these new globally interconnected organisations. It would be impossibly time consuming and expensive to administer, monitor, develop and promote many activities without the tools of the information age that we now take for granted. But here lies a paradox, these tools we take for granted have come at a heavy price to the planet and the poorer nations of the world. Whether it's paper from the forests of Indonesia or Coltan from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This paradox must be resolved. Filling
the vacuum If you think this is all a little off the point for a talk on biodiversity then I ask you to think again. In the past when I have found myself musing at the projects One World Wildlife has been involved in the question of how to allocate resources, whales, snails, invasive plants, or environmental education, is often unanswerable. But latterly I have realised that a very big part of it all is the cultivation or release of a part of our nature, so often neglected in our working environment, both that of a parent with a direct sense of responsibility but also the need to be part of something much greater than oneself. But a word of warning don't for one second think that this is an inevitable approach that will be adopted by Governments, institutions and commercial entities in the UK and the rest of the world. There is a firm belief by many in Europe and especially now in the US that the world needs to be ordered in a way which first and fore most delivers with increasing speed the economic benefits of a world regulated by the powerful, and this seemingly to the exclusion of all other goals. I am sure many of you have heard the term of The New Europe as coined by members of The Project For The New American Century. The group of US power brokers, politicians and industry chiefs that form this organisation are at least bold enough to be instantly recognisable. Let me read a short précis of the only reference I could find on their website to environmental issues: A paper written in June 1998 by Lawrence Lindsey, holder of the Arthur F. Burns chair at the American Enterprise Institute and former governor of the Federal Reserve. Lindsey argues that by attaching appropriate conditions to the legislation, Congress can facilitate the IMF becoming a mechanism for promoting reforms that encourage sound market practices in countries receiving IMF loans. Instead of loading up the IMF appropriation with a host of dubious labor and environmental conditions, Lindsey makes the case that the U.S. should use its position within the IMF to foster serious changes that are consonant with American economic principles and the realities of today's global markets. This way of thinking still reflects the modern paradigm. How do we move the hearts and minds of people so this view of the world becomes as outdated as the hundreds of species we lose every year. Well, change is happening in the array of conservation groups, advocacy and lobbying organisations as well as the millions of individuals who give money or time to conservation projects BUT the leap from the green ghetto has not yet been made. To be an environmentalist or a green is not something to be proud of because it makes that person different in some way to the majority, some how better, taking the moral high ground. As long as it feels different to be green we are in trouble. Over the last 50 years our societity has fought to eradicate racist and sexist attitudes once accepted as inevitable and normal. To give a parallel that might further explain the point: No one ever questions the value of the health service, state education or national security. These are rightly central issues on the agenda but NOW, right there next to these issues in the public understanding of what matters and what is demanded of every government should stand the preservation of this planets biodiversity on which every single person depends.
Download
the article as a Microsoft PowerPoint
Slideshow
|
|
|
|
|
