Yet another report highlights an unprecedented species collapse, with the worst outcomes in tropical areas. It is the only latest in a series of warnings about the dire state of the planet.
The World Wildlife Fund’s biennial Living Planet report, produced with the Zoological Society of London, measures the health of almost 8,000 populations of 2,500 species. It shows a 30% decrease since 1970, but in the tropics the decline is 60%. Populations of tropical freshwater species, for example, have fallen by nearly 70%.
“Species are the foundation of ecosystems,” said Jonathan Baillie, conservation programme director with the Zoological Society of London. “Healthy ecosystems form the basis of all we have – lose them and we destroy our life support system.”
Planetary life support is no concern of the market, however, and the demand for raw materials and energy has doubled since 1966. The world’s carbon footprint has increased 11-fold in the last five decades – at the same time as high-level summits and empty promises have failed to cut emissions or protect eco-systems.
The 31 OECD countries, the richest economies, account for nearly 40% of the world’s ecological Footprint. But twice as many people live in the rapidly developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China .And the report shows that these are now on a trajectory to overtake the OECD bloc if they stay on the same development path.
To carry on at the present rate, we would need two planet earths by 2030. The obscene credit-fuelled globalisation of the world economy has left humanity with an ecological, as well as a financial, overdraft.
Jim Leape, director general of WWF International said: “Somehow we need to find a way to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly prosperous population within the resources of this one planet. All of us have to find a way to make better choices in what we consume and how we produce and use energy."
But this approach is problematic, since the issue of individual choice does not arise in today’s crisis-ridden reality. Ordinary people are not in control of the processes that, for example, use raw materials to produce goods which are obsolete within months. Here in Britain, we are not control of a government that is backtracking on every commitment on renewable energy.
And the unemployed worker in Detroit who has lost her home and lives in her car does not feel she is involved in any kind of “over-consumption”. She certainly can’t make choices about “diet and lifestyle”, as the report recommends.
The real problem is the structural impossibility of curbing the excess use of raw materials and energy within the capitalist model, with its demand for continuous growth and increaed profits whatever the cost in human and ecological terms.
However, the report does point part of the way forward. It seems that high levels of consumption do not necessarily lead to healthier, more successful populations. The UN Human Development Index, which looks at life expectancy, income and educational attainment, can be high in countries with only a moderate carbon footprint.
Mathis Wackernagel, President of the Global Footprint Network, says: “Those countries that are able to provide the highest quality of life on the lowest amount of ecological demand will not only serve the global interest, they will be the leaders in a resource-constrained world."
To offer such leadership – to be able to make choices about what we produce and consume – requires that the majority take control of economic resources and political decision-making. The aim would be to plan an economy that meets real needs: good health, social life, culture, and meaningful work. Not wanted on this voyage will be a new mobile phone every four months, or a dozen brands of the same washing powder.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label species loss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label species loss. Show all posts
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Biodiversity loss threatens us all
Almost 500 animals and plants have become extinct in England, and almost all within the last two centuries, a period which coincides with industrialisation and the merciless exploitation of the environment for profit.
A new report from Natural England highlights how habitat loss, inappropriate land management, environmental pollution and pressure from non-native species have all played a part in the erosion of England’s biodiversity.
All of the major groups of flora and fauna have experienced losses, with butterflies, amphibians, and many plant and other insect species being particularly hard hit – in some groups up to a quarter of species have been become extinct since 1800.
The report also lists nearly 1,000 native species whose survival is under severe threat today, and scientists working for Natural England fear that a tipping point has now been reached where the rate of extinction has outstripped evolution’s ability to generate new species:
“Although changes in species populations are a natural consequence of environmental change, recent technological advances have led to humans altering species’ habitats in ways and at rates that make it impossible for them to adapt. This has led to the decline and loss of many of England’s native species, losses that matter both for the intrinsic value of the species themselves, and because they are associated with damage to our natural environment.”
Or as Helen Phillips, Natural England’s Chief Executive put it: "Each species has a role and, like the rivets in an aeroplane, the overall structure of our environment is weakened each time a single species is lost."
The outcome of the past 30 years of globalisation, actively promoted by governments as the only possible way for humanity to live, is the marketisation of increasing areas of the planet. No land, habitat or species has any value to capitalism unless it can be transformed into profit.
And we can easily track this accelerating attack on bio-diversity by looking at how, as industrial production has migrated to Asia, so the rate of extinctions there has increased. Our closest ancestors are being wiped out, with more than 70% of primates now on the “Red List” of endangered species. Over half of all mammals are under threat globally.
This shows that the profit-driven capitalist market operates in ways which are the direct opposite of the evolutionary process first described by Charles Darwin. His phrase “survival of the fittest” is often wrongly connected to the notion that greed is good and the strongest will survive.
But in fact natural evolution works in favour of diversity and not in favour of reduction to the most powerful. “Fittest” in Darwin’s conception equals not physically strongest, but best adapted. In periods when our planet has provided ideal conditions for great evolutionary surges, species evolved to populate every nook and cranny, every biological niche, on land and sea, with a staggering diversity.
Darwin explains in On the Origins of Species “how plants and animals remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex relations” and he adds that he uses the term “struggle for existence” in a large and metaphorical sense, “including dependence of one being on another”.
Unless human society begins urgently to use all its great scientific knowledge to reinstate, or finds ways of reproducing, this interdependence and co-operation between species, we risk not only the future of what the old religion called “lesser species”, but our own survival.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
A new report from Natural England highlights how habitat loss, inappropriate land management, environmental pollution and pressure from non-native species have all played a part in the erosion of England’s biodiversity.
All of the major groups of flora and fauna have experienced losses, with butterflies, amphibians, and many plant and other insect species being particularly hard hit – in some groups up to a quarter of species have been become extinct since 1800.
The report also lists nearly 1,000 native species whose survival is under severe threat today, and scientists working for Natural England fear that a tipping point has now been reached where the rate of extinction has outstripped evolution’s ability to generate new species:
“Although changes in species populations are a natural consequence of environmental change, recent technological advances have led to humans altering species’ habitats in ways and at rates that make it impossible for them to adapt. This has led to the decline and loss of many of England’s native species, losses that matter both for the intrinsic value of the species themselves, and because they are associated with damage to our natural environment.”
Or as Helen Phillips, Natural England’s Chief Executive put it: "Each species has a role and, like the rivets in an aeroplane, the overall structure of our environment is weakened each time a single species is lost."
The outcome of the past 30 years of globalisation, actively promoted by governments as the only possible way for humanity to live, is the marketisation of increasing areas of the planet. No land, habitat or species has any value to capitalism unless it can be transformed into profit.
And we can easily track this accelerating attack on bio-diversity by looking at how, as industrial production has migrated to Asia, so the rate of extinctions there has increased. Our closest ancestors are being wiped out, with more than 70% of primates now on the “Red List” of endangered species. Over half of all mammals are under threat globally.
This shows that the profit-driven capitalist market operates in ways which are the direct opposite of the evolutionary process first described by Charles Darwin. His phrase “survival of the fittest” is often wrongly connected to the notion that greed is good and the strongest will survive.
But in fact natural evolution works in favour of diversity and not in favour of reduction to the most powerful. “Fittest” in Darwin’s conception equals not physically strongest, but best adapted. In periods when our planet has provided ideal conditions for great evolutionary surges, species evolved to populate every nook and cranny, every biological niche, on land and sea, with a staggering diversity.
Darwin explains in On the Origins of Species “how plants and animals remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex relations” and he adds that he uses the term “struggle for existence” in a large and metaphorical sense, “including dependence of one being on another”.
Unless human society begins urgently to use all its great scientific knowledge to reinstate, or finds ways of reproducing, this interdependence and co-operation between species, we risk not only the future of what the old religion called “lesser species”, but our own survival.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Friday, December 11, 2009
World 'leaders' in short supply
We are told by the media that the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen. But what does the term “leader” mean in this context?
An event organised by A World to Win at the Whitechapel Gallery in London looked at the lessons of the revolutions of 1989 that brought down the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. One key point made, was that without the leadership offered by Mikhail Gorbachev and the group around him, events could not have happened in the way that they did.
Maintaining the status quo of bureaucratic power and the one-party state was not their priority; nor did they believe it was the only route open to them. The hopeless war in Afghanistan, the crisis in the economy and the civil corruption represented by the Chernobyl disaster were straws in the wind that Gorbachev understood. As a result, he created a break in the Stalinist wall, through which the masses of Eastern Europe poured.
Is this the type of leader that is present in Copenhagen where, it has been suggested, the future of the planet is being decided? Clearly not. The maintenance of the capitalist status quo is their be-all and end-all. They have watched it descend into economic chaos, on a global scale, and yet they are determined to carry on.
Their sole commitment is not to democracy, or “the people” or the earth’s environment, but to the global corporations and the fossilised perspective that they represent the only possible economic form available to humanity.
Capitalism - by its nature - must eventually process the whole substance of the eco-system, into profit. It is an anti-evolutionary system, dragging nature backwards from abundant, evolving life to the brink of no-life, as the latest update of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species shows.
The list reveals that 21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds and 32% of all known gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) are threatened with extinction. Sea shellfish and molluscs are threatened by the increased acidification of the seas, with serious impacts higher up the marine food chain. Data from the conservation organisation BirdLife shows that over 400 bird species have already suffered climate-driven impacts.
“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity. The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met. It’s time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it’s high on their agendas for next year, as we’re rapidly running out of time.”
Outside the official conference in Copenhagen there are many people who recognise these realities. One the emerging figures of the Conference is Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who said: "We will not walk out of the talks at this late hour, because we will not allow the failure of Copenhagen. But we will not sign an inequitable deal; we will not accept a deal that condemns 80% of the world population to further suffering and injustice."
Let’s see if he means it, if any of these leaders – including those for whose countries climate change represents a threat to their very existence – have the courage to walk away from a dirty political deal, as these African delegates and campaigners demanded.
Is there is any chance of a break down of the “business-as-usual” consensus inside the conference, which would greatly help those of us trying to break the status quo outside? We shall see. But with it, or without it, we must seek answers to climate change outside of the existing capitalist structures because they are the problem and not the solution.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
An event organised by A World to Win at the Whitechapel Gallery in London looked at the lessons of the revolutions of 1989 that brought down the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. One key point made, was that without the leadership offered by Mikhail Gorbachev and the group around him, events could not have happened in the way that they did.
Maintaining the status quo of bureaucratic power and the one-party state was not their priority; nor did they believe it was the only route open to them. The hopeless war in Afghanistan, the crisis in the economy and the civil corruption represented by the Chernobyl disaster were straws in the wind that Gorbachev understood. As a result, he created a break in the Stalinist wall, through which the masses of Eastern Europe poured.
Is this the type of leader that is present in Copenhagen where, it has been suggested, the future of the planet is being decided? Clearly not. The maintenance of the capitalist status quo is their be-all and end-all. They have watched it descend into economic chaos, on a global scale, and yet they are determined to carry on.
Their sole commitment is not to democracy, or “the people” or the earth’s environment, but to the global corporations and the fossilised perspective that they represent the only possible economic form available to humanity.
Capitalism - by its nature - must eventually process the whole substance of the eco-system, into profit. It is an anti-evolutionary system, dragging nature backwards from abundant, evolving life to the brink of no-life, as the latest update of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species shows.
The list reveals that 21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds and 32% of all known gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) are threatened with extinction. Sea shellfish and molluscs are threatened by the increased acidification of the seas, with serious impacts higher up the marine food chain. Data from the conservation organisation BirdLife shows that over 400 bird species have already suffered climate-driven impacts.
“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity. The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met. It’s time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it’s high on their agendas for next year, as we’re rapidly running out of time.”
Outside the official conference in Copenhagen there are many people who recognise these realities. One the emerging figures of the Conference is Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who said: "We will not walk out of the talks at this late hour, because we will not allow the failure of Copenhagen. But we will not sign an inequitable deal; we will not accept a deal that condemns 80% of the world population to further suffering and injustice."
Let’s see if he means it, if any of these leaders – including those for whose countries climate change represents a threat to their very existence – have the courage to walk away from a dirty political deal, as these African delegates and campaigners demanded.
Is there is any chance of a break down of the “business-as-usual” consensus inside the conference, which would greatly help those of us trying to break the status quo outside? We shall see. But with it, or without it, we must seek answers to climate change outside of the existing capitalist structures because they are the problem and not the solution.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Thursday, June 05, 2008
UN summits - all talk and no action
Another week, another United Nations-sponsored summit. Another failure to act. The food summit is just ending in Rome with no effective plan to come to the aid of the increasing numbers of people in the developing world who are going hungry because of rising prices and shortages.
From food to biodiversity, it’s the same story. Three species die out every hour of every day. Yet governments who have just finished a 12-day conference on biodiversity could not reach agreement on measures to halt the destruction of species and habitats. Another week, another UN summit. Another failure to act.
There was acknowledgement that the UN Convention on Biodiversity’s previous targets will not be met and the only “achievement” was to set up more working parties and to say in the final statement signed by 122 government ministers, that "biological diversity is being destroyed by human activities at unprecedented rates".
Martin Kaiser, head of the Greenpeace delegation summed up the conference: "The UN biodiversity summit inches forward like a snail while animals and plants are being wiped out at great speed.” In fact, it was so meaningless that some organisations are reconsidering whether to attend in future. Joy Hyvarinen, international treaties adviser at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: “After 10 years of these meetings there is no impact I can discern on slowing down the destruction of the natural world, but they have set up a wonderful bureaucracy for discussing it.”
Deforestation was largely ignored as an issue, under pressure from countries led by Brazil and Indonesia. Tropical forests are home to an estimated 50% of all life on the planet. These are the areas where tigers, orang-outang, Asian elephants, rhino, river dolphins, toucans – are at risk, not to mention thousands of other plants, animals and insects whose names we may not know, but which form crucial links in the web of life on the planet.
A major report on the economic impact of loss of biodiversity published to coincide with the conference, points out that a business as usual scenario will mean many eco-systems will be “damaged beyond repair”, and that by 2050:
· 11% of remaining wild areas would be lost, chiefly as a result of conversion for agriculture, the expansion of infrastructure, and climate change
· almost 40% of the land currently under low-impact forms of agriculture could be converted to intensive agricultural use, with further biodiversity losses
· 60% of coral reefs could be lost - even by 2030 - through fishing, pollution, diseases, invasive alien species, and coral bleaching due to climate change.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity review assesses financial consequences in the hope of galvanising governments to act. It says that human activities are causing almost £40bn-worth of damage to land-based ecosystems each year. And without dramatic changes, all of the world’s fisheries will have collapsed within 50 years, leaving a billion people who rely on fish protein facing starvation.
During the conference, the US government helped to clarify the reasons for this global failure to act. They finally agreed to place the polar bear on their endangered species list but added that protecting it must not stand in the way of economic development in its habitat. So in the end it is all about putting profit first.
After the biodiversity marathon, Bonn is now hosting the latest round of UN-sponsored global climate change negotiations. These will no doubt have similar results. Global summits of capitalist politicians fronting for global business are a total waste of space. The planet and its people cannot afford to fritter away any more time. These empty UN talking shops need to be replaced with democratically-controlled, people’s global forums that will develop strategies to end the power of the global corporations to wreck the planet in pursuit of private profit. Then human activity could start to make a positive difference.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
From food to biodiversity, it’s the same story. Three species die out every hour of every day. Yet governments who have just finished a 12-day conference on biodiversity could not reach agreement on measures to halt the destruction of species and habitats. Another week, another UN summit. Another failure to act.
There was acknowledgement that the UN Convention on Biodiversity’s previous targets will not be met and the only “achievement” was to set up more working parties and to say in the final statement signed by 122 government ministers, that "biological diversity is being destroyed by human activities at unprecedented rates".
Martin Kaiser, head of the Greenpeace delegation summed up the conference: "The UN biodiversity summit inches forward like a snail while animals and plants are being wiped out at great speed.” In fact, it was so meaningless that some organisations are reconsidering whether to attend in future. Joy Hyvarinen, international treaties adviser at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: “After 10 years of these meetings there is no impact I can discern on slowing down the destruction of the natural world, but they have set up a wonderful bureaucracy for discussing it.”
Deforestation was largely ignored as an issue, under pressure from countries led by Brazil and Indonesia. Tropical forests are home to an estimated 50% of all life on the planet. These are the areas where tigers, orang-outang, Asian elephants, rhino, river dolphins, toucans – are at risk, not to mention thousands of other plants, animals and insects whose names we may not know, but which form crucial links in the web of life on the planet.
A major report on the economic impact of loss of biodiversity published to coincide with the conference, points out that a business as usual scenario will mean many eco-systems will be “damaged beyond repair”, and that by 2050:
· 11% of remaining wild areas would be lost, chiefly as a result of conversion for agriculture, the expansion of infrastructure, and climate change
· almost 40% of the land currently under low-impact forms of agriculture could be converted to intensive agricultural use, with further biodiversity losses
· 60% of coral reefs could be lost - even by 2030 - through fishing, pollution, diseases, invasive alien species, and coral bleaching due to climate change.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity review assesses financial consequences in the hope of galvanising governments to act. It says that human activities are causing almost £40bn-worth of damage to land-based ecosystems each year. And without dramatic changes, all of the world’s fisheries will have collapsed within 50 years, leaving a billion people who rely on fish protein facing starvation.
During the conference, the US government helped to clarify the reasons for this global failure to act. They finally agreed to place the polar bear on their endangered species list but added that protecting it must not stand in the way of economic development in its habitat. So in the end it is all about putting profit first.
After the biodiversity marathon, Bonn is now hosting the latest round of UN-sponsored global climate change negotiations. These will no doubt have similar results. Global summits of capitalist politicians fronting for global business are a total waste of space. The planet and its people cannot afford to fritter away any more time. These empty UN talking shops need to be replaced with democratically-controlled, people’s global forums that will develop strategies to end the power of the global corporations to wreck the planet in pursuit of private profit. Then human activity could start to make a positive difference.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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