  A Blue Starfish resting on hard Acropora coral. - Wikimedia Commons
BY BABUKAR KASHKA
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NAIROBI (IDN) - Don’t call it biological diversity or biodiversity if you don’t wish -- just call it variety of life, which is the same thing. So, please don’t run away from understanding it -- it is not horribly technical or toughly scientific. And it is fascinating.
Perhaps a first approach to it is to just remember that the natural environment provides the basic conditions without which humanity could not survive.
Then, life on the blue planet is contained within the biosphere -- a thin and irregular envelope around the Earth’s surface, just a few kilometres deep around the radius of the globe.
Here, ecosystems purify the air and the water that are the basis of life. They stabilise and moderate the Earth’s climate.
Soil fertility is renewed, nutrients are cycled and plants are pollinated.
NO VARIETY, NO BIOSPHERE-- NO BIOSPHERE, NO GOODS…
The variability of life on Earth, that is biodiversity, is the key to the ability of the biosphere to continue providing us with these ecological goods and services and thus is our species’ life assurance policy.
That is how the United Nations has been trying to explain the meaning and significance of biological diversity.
And that is what Klaus Toepfer wrote in the year 2000 when he was the Executive Director of the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program, which hosted the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) after its adoption by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio do Janeiro and entry into force in 1993.
Toepfer alerted that although scientists are now able to appreciate the complexity of this web of interacting natural processes, “we are still a very long way from understanding how they all fit together”.
“What we do know is that if any part of the web suffers breaks down, the future of life on the planet will be at risk.”
Just consider these facts: the 20th century saw a four-fold increase in human numbers and an18-fold growth in world economic output.
With these came unsustainable patterns of consumption and the use of environmentally unsound technologies, said Toepfer, and there are now more than six billion of human beings, placing unprecedented strains on the planet’s ability to cope.
“Worse”, the former UN top environmental official added, “the fruits of this growth are extremely unequally divided. Whilst some enjoy better standards of living than at any time in history, nearly half the world’s population is unjustifiably poor, making do on less than 2 dollars a day.”
“Worse still, the poor suffer disproportionately from the damage done to the environment.”
… And NO FOOD, NO FUEL, NO HEALTH, NO WEALTH
For its part, the Montreal-based CBD secretariat reminds all that “Humans are part of nature's rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it.”
Its executive secretary Ahmad Djoghlaf has just confirmed that biodiversity continues to be lost at “unprecedented rate, thus threatening the capacity of the planet to continue providing its good and services.”
The current rate of extinction is estimated to be up to 1,000 times higher that the natural rate.
“We may be at entering a new era of the sixth global mass extinction of species and the first to be generated by human beings,” according to Djoghlaf.
If current loss rates continue, he alerted, it is expected that an area of 1.3 billion hectares worldwide – about 1.5 times the United States – will completely lose its original biodiversity levels by 2050.
This unprecedented loss of biodiversity is being compounded by climate change. More than 30 per cent of all known species may disappear before the end of this century owing to climate change.
According again to the top CBD official, the variety of life on Earth is “essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on.”
These losses are irreversible, he says, impoverish us all and damage the life support systems we rely on every day. “But we can prevent them."
AN INTERNATIONAL JUST FOR LIFE
In view of its relevance to human life, the UN declared 2010 as the International Biodiversity Year, with plea to save world's life-supporting ecosystems.
The scope is to curb the unprecedented loss of the world's species due to human activity -- at a rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression, the UN reports.
A variety of events throughout the world will try to highlight the vital role biological diversity plays in maintaining the life support system on Planet Earth.
Although initial celebrations began in November under the slogan “Biodiversity is life, biodiversity is our life,” the official launch of the International Biological Diversity Year will take place in Berlin on Jan 11.
This will be followed on Jan 21 and 22 by the first major event of the Year, a high-profile meeting at the Paris headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is expected to bring together heads of state.
Perhaps another simple way to explain the importance of disappearing variety of life is what UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said: “A wide variety of environmental goods and services that we take for granted are under threat, with profound and damaging consequences for ecosystems, economies and livelihoods.”
AT LEAST CONSIDER THE HUGE ECONOMIC LOSS
In a so-called global system used to monetizing everything, including life itself, perhaps it would be about time to tackle the economic and financial impacts of losing this variety of life.
Here, focusing on the economic costs of action or inaction, a recent UN-backed Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study estimated loss of natural capital due to deforestation and degradation at between 2 trillion dollars and 4.5 trillion dollars… every year – that high is the staggering economic cost of taking nature for granted.
On the other hand, it is estimated that for an annual investment of 45 billion dollars into protected areas alone, “we could secure the delivery of ecosystem services worth some 5 trillion dollars a year”, according to the study.
When these figures are compared to current financial losses on the markets, this is not a big price to pay. After all, far much more is being spent in destroying life, isn’t it? (IDN-InDepthNews/05.01.2010)
Copyright © 2010 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters
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External links:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33393&Cr=envirionment&Cr1=
http://www.cbd.int/
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