A DYING OUT PLANET

PAOLA DEDA, UNECE

Why are those extinctions left so silent ? Are these species countdown and loss of ecosystems not relevant to the overall balance of the planet ? Is diversity of species and natural habitats after all not so important for the Earth and humanity ?

Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, provides for many services we all need and depend on in our daily lives. Biodiversity means food and fibers, for nutrition and shelter. Insects pollinate crops, mangroves and other ecosystems buffer against severe climate events. Plants act as filters for waterborne and airborne pollution. Worldwide, about 50,000–70,000 plant species are used in traditional and modern medicine.

Although the value of nature is impossible to estimate, as its beauty and relevance to our cultures cannot be quantified and priced, biodiversity provides services that sustain life on Earth as well as world economies. Thus, the disappearance of habitats and species has a direct effect on markets and livelihoods.

The monetary value of services and “products” of biodiversity is estimated to about 33 trillion dollars per year. This is approximately twice the global production resulting from human activities. For instance, the value of anticancer agents from marine organisms is calculated to reach 1 billion USD per year. The global herbal medicine market amounted roughly at 43 billion dollars in 2001. The regulating services of honeybees as pollinators for agriculture and crops is estimated at around 2–8 billon US$ a year. The value of coral reefs for fisheries and tourism at 30 US$ per year.

Nevertheless, despite the proven social, cultural and economic value of the planet’s health and people well-being and wealth, we are experiencing rates of extinction between thousand and ten thousand times higher than what expected in a natural extinction process, if compared to those mass extinction events of geological history. Unlike at the times of dinosaurs, nowadays in fact it is not natural disasters, meteorites or planetary changes to cause the mass disappearance of species and their habitats. This time it is our fault.

In the last 500 years, human activity has forced eight hundred and twenty species to extinction. Entire habitats and ecosystems have been swiped out by manmade new systems, like cities. Human pressure on habitats is too high. Consumption increasing exponentially, urban areas expanding, overexploitation of land and natural resources taken to the limit, pollution and climate change a growing reality.

Around half of the forests that used to cover the Earth are now gone and although trees can grow back and forests recovered, the rate of loss is ten times higher then the rate of regrowth. Only in Europe, 60 % of wetlands are damaged, despite their essential function to provide for clean drinking water. In the USA, one million acres of open space, including parks, farms and natural areas disappear every year to leave space to urban sprawl.

Despite local initiatives, national plans and international commitments to protect the environment, including the agreement of world governments to reverse by 2010 the trend in biodiversity loss, the planet is still inexorably losing life diversity and natural habitats.

Predictions are negative. Tropical forests are expected to be lost at a rate of 5 % per decade for the next 30 to 50 years. This not only reduces green areas of the world, but also strongly affects over 1 billion people living in extreme poverty who depend on forests for their livelihoods.

Cities continue to have a fast increasing impact and responsibility on the loss of ecosystems and they services. Land will continue to be lost to support the growth of metropolitan areas. According to the New Scientist, a sustainable ecological footprint that shares all the world resources equally among its inhabitants would be 1.8 hectares per person. In 2006, the average in rural China was 1.6, in Shanghai 7 and the ecological footprint of an average American 9.7 Given trends in population growth and related consumption patterns, these footprints are likely to expand.

London, that was the largest city in the world 100 years ago with its 6.5 million inhabitants, currently does not even make it to the top 20 largest cities, with its 7.5 millions. London’s footprint however is calculated at 197,500 km² (125 times larger than its surface area), while the potential productive surface area of the UK is about 210,000 km².

Numbers, examples, percentages and evidence of the unsustainability of the trends are available. Scientists repeatedly proof and report about extinction patterns, data gathered confirm the negative impacts of phenomena like climate change, overexploitation of resources, and uncontrolled urban growth on ecosystems. And the importance of biodiversity for food, health and wealth of economies is indeed a substantiated fact.

But while the world is assisting at the unfolding of serious food and energy crisis, as almost inexorable consequences of a strange and unfair human faith and distribution of wealth and resources worldwide, very little is said about the root causes of those phenomena. The silent catastrophe of species and ecosystem disappearance does not yet interest the reader, the loss of habitats in remote or near areas does not yet concern the average citizen.

It is however time to realize that we share one small planet only, and the only one we have is dying. When will this be worth the daily news ? When will we wake up from denial and take the problem seriously ?

Information and data contained in this article and more are available at: www.biodiv.org, www.iucn.org and www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/