Biodiversity, Development & Aid, Environment, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

BIODIVERSITY: Scientists Warn of Species Holocaust

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Jul 19 2006 (IPS) - The world’s accelerating biodiversity crisis requires a new international coordinating mechanism to provide a united, authoritative scientific voice that can inform government decision-making internationally, experts say.

A large number of species are likely to become extinct in this century, warned 19 leading scientists and policy experts Wednesday in the science journal Nature.

They have signed a declaration stating that the gap between biodiversity science and public policy must be closed urgently and the world’s scientific community must be far more strongly organised and integrated.

“It is the bits of biodiversity acting together that creates the ecological goods and services that we depend on for life,” said Georgina Mace, director of science at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London.

“There is much we don’t understand about how biodiversity sustains life and we have not been managing (it) sustainably,” Mace told IPS.

The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, set a target of reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010, but nearly everywhere, the rate of decline is accelerating, she said.

The four-year Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, carried out by more than 1,300 researchers from 95 countries, warned last year that the current rate of species loss is estimated to be 1,000 times faster than at any time in history. With the added stresses of climate change, up to 30 percent of all mammal, bird and amphibian species are in danger of disappearing by 2050, it found.

Until recently, biologists have tended to focus on simply counting and describing species, but now realise the need to monitor populations, model the rates of species loss and determine the implications for humanity, Mace said.

Addressing the biodiversity crisis requires a global mechanism along the lines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank and former chair of the IPCC and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

“The IPCC played a major role in assessing climate science, determining the impacts and looking at the policy options and technologies to deal with the issue,” Watson told IPS. “It is a wonderful example of academics working with politicians.”

The climate change panel, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology, the Ozone Assessment Panel and other scientific collaborations today serve as reliable sources of information and advice for the public, their governments and decision-makers.

“They then choose what to do,” Watson said.

Biodiversity is intrinsically more complex than other major problems like the stratospheric ozone hole or even global climate change. It includes all species, down to the microorganisms that make up one-third of all living beings on the planet. But more than that, it also refers to all of interactions of these species that have made the Earth that gave rise to humans and continue to make it possible for people to live here.

“Biodiversity provides ecosystem services such as disease and climate regulation, storm protection and habitat for useful species. The loss of biodiversity imposes real economic costs on society, and we need to develop clear science guidance for policy options accordingly,” says signatory Charles Perrings of Arizona State University in the United States and the vice chair of Diversitas, an international scientific organisation based in Paris.

Before making major changes to ecosystems, a better understanding is needed of the goods and services they provide, said Watson.

Cutting down forests releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, increasing CO2 levels and making the land more vulnerable to erosion, which in turn reduces water quality and quantity, he said. Some forests may have a greater value to society if they are left alone.

“Unfortunately air and water have no value in the market,” he noted.

For example, the value of mangrove forests in protecting shoreline communities from storms or tsunamis is not understood by finance ministers, and a major effort to determine the true economic value of nature’s services is needed.

“It is critical to get the world economic system right because subsidies in agriculture and energy undermine the sustainability of ecosystems,” Watson said.

Existing treaties such as the Convention of Biological Diversity “do not have the structural means to mobilise the expertise of a large scientific community that spans a wide range of disciplines,” according to the declaration’s signatories.

“Most cutting-edge experts in climate, agriculture, sociology, marine biology and so forth have never heard of the CBD,” said Watson.

A new international panel on biodiversity would provide the best science and evidence and the CBD would make the political decisions.

A structured and continuous assessment of the science to get a clear picture of what is happening is needed along with mechanisms to integrate this knowledge and the consequences into policy, said Watson.

“Because ecosystems are specific to local regions, these assessments will have to be done at that level and dialogues with governments, industry and NGOs will have to be done on multiple scales,” he explained.

The proposed biodiversity panel would need funding from governments as well as the private and development sectors, but it must be objective and independent, the authors of the Nature paper stressed. It also should be transparent and representative of all geographic regions.

The French government is funding a global consultation process expected to produce recommendations within 18 months. The consultations will determine what kind of information is needed by decision-makers in many fields with an impact on biodiversity – including industry, fisheries, transportation, and parks management – in order to design a panel that addresses those requirements.

“For the sake of the planet, the biodiversity science community has to create a way to get organised, to coordinate its work across disciplines, and together with one clear voice advise governments on steps to halt the potentially catastrophic loss of species already occurring,” Watson concluded.