Price tag of Asean progress: biodiversity loss

Lyn Resurreccion, Business Mirror 22 Oct 09;

SINGAPORE—The Asean region registered “impressive and dramatic progress” in the last 50 years, but this came with a “stiff price” in terms of the loss of biodiversity resources, the top executive of the Asean Center for Biodiversity (ACB) said on Thursday.

“We are losing our biodiversity resources and dramatically altering our ecosystems at unprecedented rates,” Rodrigo Fuentes, executive director of the ACB, said in a speech at the three-day Asean Conference on Biodiversity 2009, which started on October 21.

Of the 64,800 known species in the region, he said 1,313 are endangered, 80 percent of coral reefs are at risk, and deforestation rates are at least twice higher than in higher tropical areas.

“We have narrowed the genetic range of our endemic foods through agricultural intensification, and concentrated the production systems to varieties and species of food that have short rotation,” Fuentes said at the conference with the theme “Biodiveristy in focus: 2010 and beyond.”

However, he quickly said that “biodiversity loss is beyond losing plants and animals. It’s an issue of human survival, with the greatest impact on the poor.”

He said it is a real threat which could affect the lives of more than 500 million Southeast Asians.

Meanwhile, Singapore, which is known as a “garden city” owing to the trees and gardens that line its streets, is now working with the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and other partner cities to develop the Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity.

Grace Fu, Singapore’s senior minister of state for national development and education, said this will serve as a “self-assessment tool” that cities could use to evaluate their own biodiversity-conservation efforts.

The draft Singapore Index is being tested by the cities of Brussels, Curitiba, Edmonton, Joodalup, Montreal, Nagoya and by Singapore itself.

Fu said in a speech at the conference the measure would help cities benchmark the success of their efforts and enhance urban biodiversity in the long term.

Fuentes said species of both plants and animals that overwhelm and replace the region’s more endemic and beneficial species were allowed in. The region’s natural assets and heritage are decimated by illegal trade in wildlife.

“Unbridled economic activities have caused unwarranted pollution that leads to the destruction to our ecosystem and their natural functions,” he said.

While there was no available estimate on the cost of the region’s development to the ecosystem, Fuentes cited a 12-year ago estimate of the global ecosystem services at $33.3 trillion, while the global gross national product was valued at $18 trillion.

“Clearly, the measured benefit of economic progress is not even enough to even pay for the value of ecosystems services,” said the executive of the four-year old ACB.

Asean, a treasure trove of biodiversity resources

Fuentes said Asean is known to be a “treasure trove” of biodiversity resources—so much so that although it occupies only 3 percent of the earth’s total surface, its diverse landscape, seascapes and ecosystem are home to more than 20 percent of all known plant, animal and marine species.

It has three mega-diverse countries (Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines); several biogeographical units (Malesia, Wallacea, Sundaland, Indo-Burma and the Central Indo-Pacific; a third of the world’s highly diverse coral reefs; and extensive mangrove forest areas that comprise a significant portion of the world’s total.

“Our biodiversity resources and the ecosystems that support it is our lifeline and is a crucial contributor to global environmental sustainability,” Fuentes said.

Fu added that the region’s vast mangrove cover “play an important role in protecting our shorelines and buffer coastal settlements” from the hazards of tsunamis.

Finally, biodiversity contributes significantly to the economy, supporting agriculture, pharmaceuticals, ecotourism and recreation.

Singapore’s holistic biodiversity plan Minister Fu said each Asean member-country can do much to conserve the region’s rich biodiversity by formulating their respective National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.

“Such action plans lie at the heart of our biodiversity conservation efforts. The successful implementation of these plans at the local level is critical to reversing the rate of biodiversity loss in the region,” she said.

She added that biodiversity conservation plans should have a “holistic approach that balances the needs of nature conservation with the competing demands on their resources.”

She said it is important that biodiversity-related agencies work closely with agencies in charge of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, urban development, trade, industry and tourism to ensure that considerations on biodiversity are factored into the sectors.

Singapore, a small city-state of only 700 square kilometers, faces the challenges of the tradeoffs between conservation and development, Fu said.

“Recognizing our constraints, we have adopted a long-term and integrated approach toward land-use planning and nature conservation,” she said.

Fu emphasized that Singapore was able to retain its rich biodiverisity “despite rapid urbanization” in the past four decades through legislation protecting nature reserves, judicious land use, careful urban planning and sensitive development.

Its greening efforts have yielded almost half of the island under a “green cover.”

Singapore is home to 2,300 species of plants, 360 species of birds, 280 species of butterflies, a large variety of animals, a third of the world’s hard coral reefs and half of the number of seagrass species in Indo-Pacific.

“As the trend of urbanization continues, the conservation of biodiversity in cities is emerging as an important challenge that demands critical attention,” Fu said.

The Asean biodiverisity conference was held in time for the preparation for the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, and the 10th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, next year.

At the same time, Fuentes announced that as of October 1, ACB became a full-fledged international organization when the center’s establishment agreement received the required ratification of six of the 10 Asean member states in July, and the ratification of the host-country agreement between ACB and the Philippines was concurred in by the Philippine Senate in September.