Public Service UK 9 Feb 10
Dr Robert Bloomfield, co-ordinator, International Year of Biodiversity UK, outlines why the loss of habitats is causing a ecological, but also a financial disaster that is orders of magnitude greater than the current crisis
The celebration of the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species on 24th November 2009 offers a most poignant time to also reflect on the future of species.
We can trace our understanding of biodiversity to the Entangled Bank Darwin describes so poignantly in Origins and to his term the Economy of Nature. It was inspired by Malthus, whose essay on human populations growing to outstrip their food and material resources, leading to starvation and war, provided the vital clue for Darwin's realisation of the role of natural selection in driving evolution.
Later, Haeckel referred to Darwin's study of 'all those complex interrelations' to define the science of ecology, using the same Greek 'House' – 'Oikos', that provides the eco in economics. With this etymology in mind, the International Year of Biodiversity has to be about getting our house in order.
Key to this will be moving the perception that biodiversity loss is not just about saving remote, exotic and cuddly species, to the realisation that it is about the vital preservation of our natural capital. It was Darwin who introduced us to what we now call Ecosystem Services – how natural communities of organisms provide key functions to sustain life. In his essay on the crucial role of earthworms in soil formation, he concluded with the understated: 'Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose.' Today the economic cost that would be incurred in losing the ability of natural systems to provide services is providing a vital focus. The ability to store and clean water, retain soil for agriculture, provide nurseries for fish stocks, protection against natural disasters such as floods, drought and tidal surges are being quantified. The scale is enormous – on a global scale, current loss in financial terms is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of the current global financial crisis.
One barrier to communication is that messages on sustainability are often fragmented, but at the heart of what must be sustained is biodiversity. We need a clear narrative that joins biodiversity loss, climate change and sustainable economic development. They are intimately interlinked and need to be addressed together. For example, why are we looking at expensive technical mechanisms for carbon capture when preserving and replacing lost rainforest, peat bog and other natural systems is a proven, inexpensive mechanism for carbon storage that also provides resources for the wellbeing and food security of local people? Developing our carbon currency for biodiversity protection makes huge global and local sense.
Issues of this scale require bold responses; the first is that we need to re-contextualise the problem. While science helps us measure, and helps address the response, the problem is not so much a scientific or environmental question but a human, social one. It is driven by human impact; it affects everyone and we all contribute to the problem. It is about ethics and what we value, what we want now, and at what cost the loss of these irreplaceable resources will mean for our grandchildren and future generations. It's about choices that humans have to make, and this is the debate that we urgently need. For the International Year to be successful, the debate must spill out from the statutory bodies and conservation focused trusts that deal with conservation. Biodiversity is about how we engage in commerce, understand wealth, growth and sustainability. It is about the values of our society and culture, our artistic and spiritual values, and how we want to measure our heath and wellbeing. This is indeed a challenge, but there are ways forward. In the UK,
the International Year of Biodiversity partnership (www.biodiversityislife.net) aims to bring together diverse partner organisations from many sectors, sharing similar concerns and identity, to encourage a wide and nuanced debate that will reach large-scale public audiences. This need for wider awareness is crucial, not least because politicians, local and international, need both the support of and pressure from an informed electorate to leverage the prioritisation of biodiversity preservation.
It's also about learning the lessons of nature. The Malthusian economics of Boom and Bust have re-emerged in the global economic meltdown, but looking through Darwin's eyes, we see that rich ecosystems are inherently stabilising; they tend to produce higher yields, retain maximum resources, and buffer rapid fluctuations; they are intrinsically more resilient in their complexity. Humans not only have to understand and protect this resilience in an otherwise rapidly changing world – we also need to align our values and our practices to this lesson from nature. Humans in evolutionary terms have been a success story, a species whose major advantage has been adaptability to modify environments and respond to change. It is this success that now makes our impact so dominant and places the future of species and of people at a crossroad. The challenge for the year is seeking to redirect our innate ability to innovate towards working in harmony with, rather than against, natural ecosystems and the services they provide. Despite our ingenuity, we are still a part of nature. We should also be heartened that we can all make a difference; there are many real success stories that can show the way. Companies in India that are managing invasive alien trees are turning a devastating pest plant into a valuable source of bio-fuel; the provision of efficient wood-burning ovens in rural Mexico is helping to sustain local forests, while local women gain health benefits from not inhaling wood smoke. When the Large Blue Butterflies went locally extinct in the UK, it took real people to develop a reintroduction programme, and now the UK has the largest population of this species in Western Europe. In our homes, efforts to live on 'Green principles' have a real effect in reducing our individual ecological footprints and reducing biodiversity loss. The message for the year is 'Biodiversity is life, Biodiversity is our life, and together we can all do something to make a difference'.
