Nirmal Ghosh, Straits Times 29 Jun 10;
ON JUNE 14, delegates from 85 nations attended a five-day United Nations meeting in Busan, South Korea. They proposed to set up an international 'science policy platform' that many hope will do for biodiversity what the 2006 Nicholas Stern report did for climate change - put the issue on the global agenda.
The awkwardly named Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) will function much like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will produce peer-reviewed scientific reports that can serve as the basis for assessments of the planet's biodiversity.
The IPCC's reputation has been somewhat tarnished, though the challenge of climate change remains a genuine and life-threatening one. It is to be hoped that the IPBES will avoid a similar fate.
While a stable climate regime is the cradle of life, biodiversity is the fabric of life. It is too important an issue to be lost in the kind of political and corporate games that delayed action on climate change for years, and continue to obscure the issues.
Unlike climate change, biodiversity is often a local issue. And it is not just vested interests that are destroying biodiversity; beyond that is the entire paradigm in which we view our companion species, from leopards to Lepidoptera, from arachnids to antelopes.
There is enough evidence to confirm that human activity is driving most species to extinction. �One example is the Alaotra Grebe, a wetland bird that declined rapidly after carnivorous fish were introduced to its lake habitat in Madagascar. This, along with the use by fishermen of nylon gill-nets, which caught and drowned the birds, drove it to extinction.
Most species depend on human goodwill to survive. The public's imagination is caught by charismatic megafauna - big-bodied species, mostly mammals, that are instantly recognisable. These include tigers, lions, orang utans, gorillas, whales, dolphins and elephants. Looking cuddly - like the Giant Panda - also helps.
All these species face an uphill battle for survival - but perhaps none more so than the large-bodied predators, some of which, like crocodiles, do not have much appeal to the public.
What they are up against was dramatically illustrated in January this year when students training in the camera-trapping of wildlife in the sprawling wooded campus of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), near Dehra Dun and close to the forests of Rajaji National Park, detected the presence of a leopard.
It was not the first leopard to come through the grounds. Thinning habitat and vanishing prey have driven leopards across India to the margins of their preferred habitat. In some cases, human habitats have come to them, leaving them with little choice but to live in a human-dominated landscape.
Many of the students and faculty at the WII were delighted at the leopard's presence. As scientists working for wildlife conservation, the coexistence of people and wildlife is at the heart of the issues they grapple with. To have a leopard on the premises was to many an endorsement of everything the WII stood for.
Not quite, however. Many were afraid of the leopard. Children were instructed to stay indoors after sunset. After much debate, the director of the WII decided to have the leopard - a female with cubs - driven out of the scrubland.
Parts of the scrub were cut down, and parts burned. As a result, the leopard, cornered, mauled two people. One faculty member wryly remarked that it was a case of 'people attacking the leopard' and not the other way around. The leopard had lived in the vicinity for some time without attacking anyone until the attempt to evict her.
The incident has sparked outrage in conservation circles. If the WII could not tolerate a leopard on its premises, what right do conservationists have to preach coexistence with wildlife?
The problem is our inability to live in peaceful coexistence with species that are capable of killing and eating us, even if most of the time they do not.�In his 2003 book Monster Of God, David Quammen wrote how humans fear being reminded of predators, and of their own place in the food chain - which is not at the top of it. For that reason, we try to destroy the predator.
Many predators are what biologists call 'keystone species'. A keystone balances the opposing forces of an arch; without it, the structure will wobble and collapse. Predators perform much the same function in the food chain. Remove a top or 'alpha' predator and its prey species will multiply, with cascading consequences for the rest of the ecosystem.
It is admittedly easy for faraway armchair conservationists to preach coexistence with predators. Try telling that to a family with small children living in a flimsy cottage at the edge of a forest. Some conservationists maintain that coexistence of humans with large predators like tigers is simply not possible without conflict - which the tiger will, of course, lose.
How far will the IPBES go towards correcting the paradigm? Probably not far enough or fast enough.
Quammen wrote: 'The foreseeable outcome is that in 2150, when human population peaks at around 11 billion, alpha predators will have ceased to exist - except behind chain-link fencing, high-strength glass and steel bars.
'As memory recedes and the zoo populations become... ever more conveniently docile... people will find it hard to conceive that those animals were once proud, dangerous, unpredictable, widespread and kingly, prowling free among the forests, rivers, estuaries and oceans used by humanity.
'Children will be startled to learn, if anyone tells them, that once there were lions at large in the very world.'
