EXTINCTION DISASTER LOOMS

I usually try to sugar the pill of ecological news with something amusing but this story unrelentingly grim. Sorry, but there it is. 

Dr. Cristiana Paşca Palmer is the Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The UK is a signatory, with 195 other countries and states, to this important Convention and its latest pronouncements about the state of the world’s biodiversity make alarming reading. Dr Palmer says that the rates of wildlife extinction and the collapse of ecosystems, which she calls a “silent killer” are just as dangerous as climate change, and we need worldwide agreement for action with the same strength as the Paris climate accord. Our biodiversity and ecosystems support life on Earth, us included, and we all need to make our governments adopt serious policies to protect the invertebrates, fungi, plants, fish, birds and mammals that make up the complex wealth of ecosystem services that are vital for clean air & water, food production, and the sequestration of carbon.

In the UK, the blight of Brexit is dragging us down. Only recently did the UK government commandeer some 400 staff from the Department of the Environment to work on the mind-boggling waste of time and societal menace that is Brexit. To take these people from jobs that involve habitat and wildlife protection to serve the pointless and unnecessary inanity of leaving the EU is exasperatingly wrong-headed to any thinking scientist, but I can rant about that unrelentingly. And we are not the only political villains: perhaps unsurprisingly, the USA and the Vatican have not signed up, and the latest events in Brazil where the new President talks about opening up the Amazon and other ecological destruction, do not bode well.

Currently, despite Agreements and Targets on Biodiversity such as Aichi, the planet is witness to the greatest rate of extinction since the days of the dinosaurs. The Aichi targets were, by 2020, to reduce habitat loss by at least 50%, and to ensure 17% of the Earth’s land was designated as nature reserves; but so far it has not happened and, even where reserves have been created, they are not adequately managed of policed. 

Sixty per cent (yes SIXTY!) of wild animal populations have been wiped out in the last fifty years. Future projections are equally depressing: by 2050 Asian fisheries face total collapse, and half of Africa’s mammalian and avian fauna are expected to disappear.  This matters – and matters hugely – because as biodiversity declines, ecosystems will fall into a vicious spiral of deterioration, adversely affecting the planet’s biogeochemical life-supporting systems and cycles.

There is much to be done and it is not without hope. Emmanuel Macron, for example, has publicly expressed his understanding that climate change cannot be resolved without a halt in biodiversity loss. This is now on the G7 Summit Agenda. Businesses are recognising that ecologically sound models are necessary for sustainable trade: things like afforestation and forest conservation, preservation of soils, re-wilding and restoration of degraded land. 

Ultimately, though, politicians need to stop squabbling and listen to science. And those are tall orders!

Action at local level is of the highest importance and helps to spread the ecological message as well as benefitting local communities. The raison d’être of Betts’ services is the protection and enhancement of biodiversity. You can find out more elsewhere on our web site, by emailing nature@bettsecology.co.uk and asking for our leaflet entitled Why should I care about biodiversity? Why do we need it? or you can read the WWF Living Planet Report 2018 at http://bit.ly/2PVQBf7

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