Preserving Ecological Balance is Crucial for Us

Our planet has suffered five mass extinctions, the last of which occurred about 66 million years ago, when a giant asteroid believed to have landed near the Yucatán Peninsula set off a chain reaction that wiped out the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the other species on earth. A few years ago, in a book called ‘The Sixth Extinction’, the writer Elizabeth Kolbert warned of a devastating sequel, with plant and animal species on land and sea already disappearing at a ferocious clip, their habitats destroyed by human activities. This time, she made clear, the asteroid is us — and we will pay heavily for our folly.

Humanity’s culpability in what many scientists believe to be a planetary emergency has been reaffirmed by a detailed and depressing Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report compiled by hundreds of international experts, based on thousands of scientific studies. Its findings are grim.

“Biodiversity” — a word encompassing all living flora and fauna — “is declining faster than at any time in human history,” it says, estimating that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades,” unless the world takes transformative action to save natural systems.

The at-risk population includes a half million land-based species and one-third of marine mammals and corals.

Most of the causes of this carnage seem familiar: logging, poaching, overfishing by large industrial fleets, pollution, invasive species, the spread of roads and cities to accommodate an exploding global population, now seven billion and rising. If there is one alpha culprit, it is the clearing of forests and wetlands for farms to feed all those people (and, perversely, to help them get to work). The destruction of Indonesia’s valuable rain forests, and their replacement with palm oil plantations, has been driven in part by Europe’s boundless appetite for biodiesel fuels.

Add to all this a relatively new threat: Global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is expected to compound the damage. Rising seas and increased extreme weather events propelled in part by climate change — fire, floods and droughts — have already harmed many species.

The most obvious victim is the world’s coral reefs, which have suffered grievously from ocean waters that have grown warmer and more acidic as a result of all the carbon dioxide they’ve been asked to absorb.

Many ecologists insist that species are worth saving on their own, that it’s simply morally wrong to drive any living creature to extinction. The IPBES report also deliberately adds a powerful practical motive to the spiritual one: Biodiversity loss, it says, is an urgent issue for human well-being, providing billions and billions of dollars in what experts call “ecosystem services.” Wetlands clean and purify water. Coral reefs nourish vast fish populations that feed the world. Organic matter in the soil nourishes crops. Bees as well as other threatened insects pollinate fruits and vegetables. Mangroves protect us from floods made worse by rising seas.

“Most of nature’s contributions are not fully replaceable,” the report says. But humans can stop or at least limit the damage. One critical task is to protect (and, if possible, to enlarge) the world’s natural forests, which are home to fully two-thirds of the world’s species. Intact forests also absorb and store enormous amounts of carbon, so preserving them assists not only the species that live there but also helps in the struggle against climate change. Recent estimates in fact suggest that deforestation accounts for slightly over 10% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

There are two important parallel approaches to the interconnected climate and species crises now. One is to transform agricultural practices, figuring out how to produce more food on fewer acres. The other is to enlarge the world’s supply of legally protected landscapes that cannot be touched for any commercial purpose.

The authors of the paper titled ‘A Global Deal for Nature’ in Science Advances (April, 2019) recommend a two-fold increase in the protected land area and a four-fold increase in marine reserves over the next decade. If rigorously policed (which many parks are not today), that would effectively quarantine about 30% of the world’s land and oceans.

This proposal, which its authors call a ‘Global Deal for Nature’, will be further refined before the next meeting of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity scheduled in October 2020.

Matter referenced:

Times of India, Ahmedabad, Saturday, 25th January, 2020.

By: Dr. Bhawana Asnani.

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