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Earth's Life Support Systems Failing
UXBRIDGE, Canada - The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
A loggerhead turtle. Biodiversity is not just weird-looking animals and pretty birds. It is the diversity of life on Earth that comprises the ecosystems that provide vital services, including climate regulation, food, fibre, clean water and air. (Photo: Damien du Toit; Creative Commons License) The last big promise to act was in 2003, when government ministers from 123 countries committed to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.
Experts convening an international meeting in South Africa this week agree that target will not be met next year, which is also the International Year of Biodiversity.
"It is hard to imagine a more important priority than protecting the ecosystem services underpinned by biodiversity," said Georgina Mace of Imperial College in London, and vice chair of the international DIVERSITAS programme, a broad science-based collaborative.
"We will certainly miss the target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010," said Mace in a statement.
Biodiversity is not just weird-looking animals and pretty birds. It is the diversity of life on Earth that comprises the ecosystems that provide vital services, including climate regulation, food, fibre, clean water and air.
By some estimates, 12,000 species go extinct every year, and the rate is accelerating. Akin to a cataclysmic asteroid, pollution, logging, over-exploitation, consumption, land use changes and engineering projects have produced the planet's sixth great extinction of species.
Freshwater ecosystems may be the first collapse of one of Earth's life support systems in 13,000 years. Species that live in lakes and rivers are vanishing four to six times faster than anywhere else on the planet, said Klement Tockner of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany.
"There is clear and growing scientific evidence that we are on the verge of a major freshwater biodiversity crisis," Tockner told IPS.
Some experts predict that by 2025, not a single Chinese river will reach the sea, except during floods, with tremendous effects on coastal fisheries in China. Worldwide, all 25 species of sturgeon and all species of the river dolphins are either extinct or facing extinction. The species remaining in the world's great rivers like the Danube, Rhine, Hudson and Mekong are mostly non-native species, Tockner said.
"This is a complete change, and few are aware of the threat," he added.
Freshwater ecosystems cover only 0.8 percent of the planet's surface, but they contain roughly 10 percent of all animals, including more than 35 percent of all vertebrates. The pace of extinctions is quickening, Tockner warns - especially in hot spot areas around the Mediterranean, in Central America, China and throughout Southeast Asia.
"Our priority must be to conserve the last free flowing river systems...there are very few left," he said.
And many have new dams proposed to generate carbon-free electricity. Ironically, freshwater ecosystems do a better job at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere as they absorb and bury about seven percent of the carbon humans add annually to the atmosphere.
"Scientists are alarmed at how fact things are unraveling," said Hal Mooney, an environmental biologist from Stanford University in California and the chair of DIVERSITAS, which is convening its Second Open Science Conference Oct. 13-16 with 600 experts from around the world.
"There is a real sense of urgency, but not amongst policy-makers," Mooney told IPS from Nairobi, Kenya last week.
Mooney and others had been meeting with government officials from 95 countries in Nairobi to try and create an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - not unlike the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The idea is to bridge the enormous divide between biodiversity science and policy and be able to provide science-based guidelines for policy-makers.
Many policy decisions, even green ones, are made without regard to impacts on biodiversity, said Anne Larigauderie, executive director of the Paris-based DIVERSITAS.
For example, government policies that encourage and subsidise the use of biofuels and biomass energy to reduce carbon emissions have largely gone forward with little investigation into the potential impacts on ecosystems.
"Such policy decisions reveal a fragmented view of the world," Larigauderie told IPS in an interview in Geneva last August.
While major decisions about the fate of the climate will be made at the Copenhagen climate treaty negotiations in December, those involved know little about biodiversity. Some carbon reduction programmes carried out poorly, such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), could be a disaster for biodiversity and make climate change worse, she said.
"Climate change impacts biodiversity and vice versa," Larigauderie said.
However, governments are not yet ready to integrate or mainstream biodiversity concerns into their daily decision-making. After four and half years of talking about an IPCC-like organisation for biodiversity, they failed to agree in Nairobi, said Mooney.
"It will be at least another year... There is a mismatch between speeds of ecosystem decline and political decision-making," he said.
And without such an organisation, there is little possibility the accelerating decline in species will slow. As with climate, governments need to firmly commit to binding targets, but no specific biodiversity protection targets are likely for some years.
"If we already had created IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service) the world would have new science-based targets in place," said Mooney. "We're hoping that missing the 2010 target to stem the rate of biodiversity loss will create the momentum to get governments to create IPBES."
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23 Comments so far
Show AllClimate change is a big biodiversity issue.
Most of the earth's species will be gone soon.
We can save what we can in vats of liquid nitrogen or in zoos. Think "Wall-E". Or, we can make trillions of barrels of biodiesel in deserts and pump it back into the ground. Or we can lose this for our grandchildren.
I wonder if they will show "Solyent Green" as an inspirational video for the conference?
Damn good idea.
MichaelC
So very few people understand that we are part of a system called the biosphere. One system. If you destroy part of the system you live in, what do you think will happen to you? You die. The more of the system you destroy, the quicker you die. Is that so hard to understand? We call ourselves homo sapiens - the thinking hominid. What a joke. The human population has tripled in my lifetime. Tripled. Our ability to pollute has quadrupled [or more]. And even though everybody knows that we are polluting our planet, very few people actually take action to deter its course. Each thing we buy, each wrapping we produce, adds to the problem. More appropriate names for our species might include homo suicidalis, or homo trashitis. Or, unfortunately, homo extinctis.
MichaelC
MIchaelC, you are so correct. All of the systems are interdependent, so when one fails, the others tend to follow suit. You would think that this would be important news wouldn't you? But you never heard a word of this mentioned other than obscure articles tucked away somewhere where nobody tends to read or even find them.
yes, vitally integrated, this planet's myriad parts...I'm sure the key one failing will be the inevitable surprise...when you mess with everything, you're sure to mess with the one you shouldn't...and some of them are so tiny, and not part of the 'market'...
Earth's life support systems are being murdered. Humans are the most ignorant and arrogant species in the entire universe and earth is a prison where all violators of natural law are sent. Anyone who has ever had one brief thought of being superior is human or about to become human. A fundamentalist christian once informed me, that if i didn't immediately take Jesus as my lord and savior, that i would 'go' to hell. I responded with, "Perhaps you are not paying attention." Humans are like mosquitos, they suck the life force out of the very thing that gives them life. Then while continuing to suck on mother earth someone points out that a condition of peak blood will occur shortly. The solution? Suck faster than everyone else and you will have enough reserves to escape the coming apocalypse.
from the article:
"Biodiversity is not just weird-looking animals and pretty birds. It is the diversity of life on Earth that comprises the ecosystems that provide vital services, including climate regulation, food, fibre, clean water and air."
'Services'?
Is rain a 'service'?
Is my beating heart providing me a 'service'?
Is my kitten's purr a 'service'?
This is utterly insane...using corporate jargon to describe life itself...we must escape this mindset, or perish...
The final 'service' will be the funeral...
Nestle Foods think rain is a service, they even think they provide it.
These priceless little pieces of life can never become commodities despite the best efforts of Madison Avenue.
Several enlightened economists have pointed out that ecosystems provide vital services that the traditional economy considers to be free.
Now if comporations had to pay the real costs for such services as the pure aquifer waters that they ship across the planet, such as Fiji water available in N. America, then a more sustainable economy would be possible.
Just finishing MAtwood's "The Year of the Flood."
Highly recommended, very pertinent to this topic...
How come this isn't the headline story>
arrrgh!
This is a great article about the human-caused global megacrisis. Climate change is one part of that crisis. Loss of biodiversity (caused by habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, pollution and more) is also a major part of that crisis.
Sadly, the global thinkers in US politics are still thinking in geostrategic terms, playing their power-based games of which nation will be king of the hill and master of the planet.
What is needed? I suggest that we need a different lens than the geostrategic lens—a geophysiological lens instead, for the biosphere is a set of living systems with communities of living organisms. Pursuing power in a competitive global context will simply divert attention and resources from the megacrisis as it actually exists. It is ecocide which awaits us unless our thinking and actions change where it counts—with political and military power institutions such as Congress and the US President.
We need to be questioning fundamental assumptions in our actions and communications with those progressives who want real change, for a progressive non-violent, constitutional revolution in the US and the world system is the only thing that will prevent ecocide on Earth.
Money for this money for that... Money IS the problem.
It was a beautiful and mostly healthy little planet when I landed on it in 1941---- I now wonder if my Grandchildren will even live a normal life span. They are of very tender years ---- oldest four ---- I think they know about as much as the average human conceives about what is about to happen --- that is to say ---- no clue. I am thankful that I have been able to have a good simple life, and I suspect that history will record that the last half of the 20th century saw the unwitting, undoing of it all. Can it be turned around? Not a chance. Can there be survivors? I don't know, but I am quite sure that corporate personhood pushes the odds far against it.
It is precisely the CORPORATION and the usurpation of humanrights that is the problem.
The corporate system floats the wrong people to the top of the power structure for the wrong reasons.
Anthropologically speaking, I would go so far as to say that the corporation and its predeceasors all the way back to Roman times constitute the entity that St John had such a bad dream about and described as the "Anti-Christ". Sounds rather extreme, but consider that Christ-ness is a human quality, corporations are defined as "artificial beings, entities, or legal fictions", in other words, anti-human.
Human---Antihuman
Christ---AntiChrist
Person---Corporation/artificial person
The results of corporate domination of human activities are certainly clear enough to make that point in spades.
The religious fundamentalists in the Middle East seem to have a somewhat similar view with their rhetoric about "Great Satan", referring, sadly, more to western governments/societies than to corporate entities. They are experiencing the bloody end of the corporate/MIC stick and are responding in a predictable manner.
(It is interesting to note that most western religious fundamentalists support and march in lockstep with the corporate agenda. Puzzling...)
Nor is it difficult to see the problems of corporate/commercial co-opting of public military force to expand influence and secure (take) resources.
We would do well to immediately and drastically alter the way business activities are organized and conducted. (How's that for a windmill to tilt at, Donkey Hote?)
The race to the bottom ends in a heap of dead species.
The New Atlantis!
We had a good run... perhaps longer than any others of our kind on this planet. What happened to the civilizations before us was probably similar, but perhaps less destructive to the earth itself. That is beyond our scope.
Sadly, what we have lacked is what many of the indigenous tribes of the earth have maintained all along: competent leadership; the wise elders; ones who held life sacred, "all life," knowing the deep connection of all things. More sadly, most of these cultures have been eradicated.
The earth is a whole living thing. You can't destroy part of it without affecting all of it. Some are aware of this, but with large masses of people... nearly seven billion on earth, currently... it takes "strong" leadership to teach, and guide, and maintain such awareness. By "strong," I don't mean control and domination. I mean strength in conviction, to preserve that which allows us to exist... therein is the "wisdom" of leadership.
Some of you are gardeners. You know what it takes to keep everything just right and flourishing, ecologically sound, so that all survives. It is our governments and our religions, our leadership, our major influences, who garden the earth, and sway the decisions of how to "be," in relationship to each other, and in relationship to our environment. It takes strong leadership, and more than a handful of support, to pool all our resources and put a man on the moon. It also takes strong leadership to say that every decision we make “must” be supportive of life.
Most of us prefer to live, and let live. But, some get excited by those who profess that we can be better than others. It is our “leadership” who must keep us focused, connected, and in touch with the reality that our existence depends upon our awareness that we are “one,” in life, and in spirit, and that we must support “all” life in order to preserve life.
The destruction of physical life on our planet is at hand, folks. What does Jesus want? What does Allah want? What do your "leaders" want? What does your family want? What do “you” want? Decide, and speak up, or let it come to pass.
… And remember, death is no big deal if you are ready to go… you’ve had enough, and you have no concerns for the welfare of your grandchildren. But then, some of us want to enjoy the world as long as we can. It's really cool!
Although I'm sure I agree with you about the problem. And I no doubt agree with you on many environmental issues regarding practical aspects around what can be done about it.
But I cannot accept the sort of noble-savage arguments presented here.
Ancient American civilizations rose and fell just as European ones did. They clearly had highly sophisticated trade, politics, cultures....I suspect they succombed to the same problems we are.
When we then go back to the hunter-gatherer tribes my question then becomes "Which Tribe". Many were very different. If we look at the Ancient Hawaians or the inhabitants of Easter Island we do NOT get anything like an idyllic people living in harmony with their land. The Easter Island inhabitants destroyed themselves with a searing-hot mix of internicene war, out-breeding their resources, and religion. The Ancient Hawaians were well on their way to that route too but two factors first delayed, then accelerated, their own collapse. (the first was a united country under strong visionary leadership of King Kamehameha I, the second was embracing trade with the western explorers that encountered the islands....of course, this latter then led to the collapse of the Hawaian population and suppression of the monarchy after about 120 years or so....but it seems to me that if they had remained fragmented and rejected western trade that collapse would have taken only 20 years given the small size of the islands and importance of their location to the trade routes) But the Hawaians were NOT living in harmony with their environment, they were killing off unique species as quickly as they could.
We do have one powerful weapon against our own destruction of our own island (Earth) that these peoples did not have though. Birth control that is no more expensive than aspirin. It should be given freely to all the women of the world who want it.
While I agree that not all savage tribes were governed by wise elders, I do know that some were, and some still are. There are even small groups among us who's lives are directed by wisdom and a reverence for life.
The point though, is that our demise would be at the hand of thoughtless and careless living. I was hopeful that Mr. Obama would bring a bit of wisdom into the American government, and I'm sure that he has, to a degree, but he is only one, and unfortunately, money buys the conscience of many deciding factions.
Good point about birth control. It would be especially wise to give it to those who can't afford it.
"The only things that work well are the things that work the way Nature works."---Black Elk, Lakota medicine man, from "Black Elk Speaks", Neihardt, about 1931...
In his rituals, he referred to north, as "Where the Great White Giant Lives". That tells me that verbal knowledge of the great glacier over Canada was carried by word of mouth, ritual, for perhaps 12,000 years, since the glacier started to retreat. How about that?!
i just had to laugh at this:
Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and other institutions around the world continue to study and document the impact of human activities on the environment. It is hoped that the lesson of the Dodo can help prevent similar extinctions, and aid us in preserving the diversity of life on earth.
from the amnh.org
the 'nobel peace prize' should be awarded to the dodo, for their 'peaceful' submission to extinction...........
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
If there is any forward thinking idea on the global level that will at least slow down the sixth extinction event it won't come from Amurka's corporatist Establishment. The U.S. is only going to sink deeper and more rapidly into a barbaric Dark Age. The rest of the community of nations would be better off leaving the U.S. in history's dust with respect to environmental issues so they can forge their own path. Although it's not all their fault because over two generations have been deliberately dumbed-down, it is hard not to have Gore Vidal's contempt for the stupidity of the vast majority of Amurkans.
The WTO, an association for crony capitalists staffed by corporatist think-tank wonks and former corporate executives currently adjudicated environmental trade decisions with global impacts in secret tribunals whose priorities are greed-based.
The WTO should be replaced with global council of scientists drawn from every nation who make environmental policy (and control trade policy)) based on objective and transparent hard environmental science instead of subjective and generally secretive corporate profit motives that take into account no greater need.
Meanwhile back in everyone's nest, It's a shower every day, clean this, clean that. We've (most of us) gotten way too used to so much that causes the problems. I just hope we won't settle on watching reruns of Animal Planet while it all slips away. And they call it an education? It's just a way of putting the kids in hock (side point).