David Fogarty and Sunanda Creagh Reuters 20 Jul 10;
SINGAPORE/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia, one of the world's richest nations in terms of species, is losing hugely valuable resources and services through the destruction of forests, coral reefs and watersheds, scientists said on Tuesday.
The natural environment provides services critical to economies, from clean water, rich fishing grounds from coral reefs to clean air filtered by forests, services that aren't fully taken account of in modern economics.
But deterioration of these services through loss of species robs the planet of rich resources, scientists say, that can help ensure mankind can grow sufficient food as well as exploit a vast gene pool to make new drugs and even beauty treatments.
In Indonesia, the loss of biodiversity has reached crisis levels, scientists at a major tropical biodiversity meeting in Bali this week say.
"The reason Indonesia is going through such a major crisis is because the biodiversity of Indonesia is extremely rich. It's probably the second most important country after Brazil in terms of biodiversity," said senior scientist Terry Sunderland.
"The other great value of Indonesia's biodiversity is that many of the species that occur here are endemic," said Sunderland of the Centre for International Forestry Research based in Bogor, Indonesia.
"Because there are 17,000 islands, you have these unique ecosystems throughout the archipelago which combined have a huge number of species so the biodiversity value of the country as a whole is enormous."
But logging of forests and rapid expansion of pulp and paper and oil palm plantations has created vast monocultures with little resilience to disease or climate change.
Bronwen Powell, a PhD candidate and specialist on forests and nutrition who presented at the Bali conference, said deforestation could increase human exposure to diseases carried by primates and drive important medicinal plants to the point of extinction.
"A huge number of the world's pharmaceuticals were discovered as compounds in plants," she said. "As forests are lost, the knowledge that goes with those plants is lost as well. We are potentially losing the cure for cancer."
About half the country of 240 million people remains forested and the government has ramped up efforts to save the remainder, including an agreement on a two-year moratorium from next January on the clearing of natural forests.
The United Nations says annual losses from deforestation and damage to forests alone is estimated at between $2 trillion and $4.5 trillion globally.
Sunderland said the basic equivalent of the market value of biodiversity if you include pharmaceuticals, agriculture and food, health and beauty products was about $500 billion, roughly the equivalent to the petrochemical industry.
Slowing the loss of the planet's plant and animal species and putting a value of them has risen up the global political agenda, with 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity.
A major meeting in Japan in October is expected to agree new targets including a 2050 vision.
World leaders agreed in 2002 to achieve a significant reduction in biodiversity loss by 2010. But the United Nations has said the target hasn't been met and that current trends are placing the planet on a path to possible ecosystem collapse.
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)
