by Paul Brown Guardian 8/10/98 HUMANS have destroyed more than 30 per cent of the natural world since 1970 with serious depletion of the forest, freshwater and marine systems on which life depends. Consumption pressure from increasing affluence has doubled in the past 25 years and continues to accelerate, according to a ground-breaking report from the World Wide Fund for Nature, the New Economics Foundation, and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre at Cambridge. The Living Planet Report says that the acceleration in environmental destruction shows that politicians who have been paying lip service to sustainable development have done little to promote it. "Time is running out for us to change the way we live if we are to leave future generations a living planet," Nick Mabey, WWF's economic policy officer, said at the launch of the report in London last week. "We knew it was bad, but until we did this report we did not realise how bad." One of the most serious problems revealed for the first time is the depletion of freshwater resources with half of the accessible supplies being used by humans - double the amount of 1960. The rate of decline of freshwater eco-systems is running at 6 per cent a year, threatening to dry up many wetlands, and push the species of those habitats to extinction. The report says that governments should increase the efficiency of their water use, and stop wasteful irrigation schemes where water losses are highest. Carbon dioxide emissions have doubled in the same period, and, being far in excess of the natural world's ability to absorb them, are accelerating global warming. Global consumption of wood and paper has increased by two-thirds, and most forests are managed unsustainably. In the same period, marine fish consumption has also more than doubled, and most of the world's fish resources are either fully exploited or in decline. Although Western countries have high consumption rates, some of the developing countries are depleting their natural resources at an alarming rate. The people of Taiwan, the United States and Singapore are singled out as the world's most voracious consumers, responsible for depleting the Earth's resources faster than other countries. Britain comes 41st in the list of more than 130 countries. The report says that though governments are failing to take action to protect croplands and resources, every individual bears a responsibility for being careless with the world's resources. Dr Norman Myers, of Green College, Oxford, said: "As the world becomes economically richer, it becomes environmentally poorer. Many people have known this for a long time, but they have sometimes lacked evidence of a comprehensive and compelling sort. More power then to WWF for documenting our declining prospect in such fine grain detail." Although the report says that a growing population is part of the problem, increased consumption has been the main problem. The average North American or Japanese consumes 10 times as much of the world's resources as the average Bangladeshi. Japan and Bangladesh have the same populations but have a vastly different effect on the world's eco-systems, particularly in timber and fish consumption. The average North American resident consumes fives times as much as an African and three times as much as an Asian. However, in total Asia takes more of the Earth's resources because there are 3.2 billion Asians compared with only 0.3 billion North Americans. The Swiss billionaire industrialist Dr Stephan Schidheiny, who is president of the Avina Foundation, said: "This index indicates a serious decline in the health of the Earth's ecological balance sheet, which reflects our imprudent and inefficient use of natural resources. To restore its ecological health, we must ensure that our consumption and production of food, water, materials and energy are within the Earth's carrying capacity now, and in the future." He said people could help save the planet and save themselves money through energy efficiency, reducing waste, using water sparingly and not contaminating it, and by avoiding unnecessary trips in vehicles. Gro Harlem Brundtland, head of the World Health Organisation, said: "This quantifies for the first time a scary decline in the health of the world's forest, freshwater and marine ecosystems. It shows we have lost nearly a third of the Earth's natural wealth since 1970." Sir Ghillian Prance, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, said: "The index presents a warning which we should all take most seriously because it charts an alarming decline in the health of natural forest, freshwater and marine ecosystems over the past 30 years. "The conservation of natural ecosystems is not a luxury which only the rich can afford, but is essential to ensure the maintenance of the vital ecological functions of our planet upon which we all depend for our survival." -------------------- April 9, 1998 Plant Survey Reveals Many Species Threatened With Extinction By WILLIAM K. STEVENS At least one of every eight plant species in the world -- and nearly one of three in the United States -- is under threat of extinction, according to the first comprehensive worldwide assessment of plant endangerment. The assessment, which required more than 20 years of work by botanists and conservationists around the globe, added nearly 34,000 plant species to the World Conservation Union's growing Red List of imperiled organisms. The survey was made public Wednesday in Washington. Among the plants most at risk, the survey found, are 14 percent of rose species, 32 percent of lilies, 32 percent of irises, 14 percent of cherry species and 29 percent of palms. Coniferous trees as a group, and many species found in island nations, were also judged especially vulnerable. While endangered mammals and birds have commanded more public attention, it is plants, scientists say, that are more fundamental to nature's functioning. They undergird most of the rest of life, including human life, by converting sunlight into food. They provide the raw material for many medicines and the genetic stock from which agricultural strains of plants are developed. And they constitute the very warp and woof of the natural landscape, the framework within which everything else happens. The census of imperiled plants should be taken not as an exact measure of the situation, leaders of the survey said, but rather as a first, rough approximation. And some acknowledged that the majority of species were "secure and widespread," in the words of Dr. Bruce Stein, a botanist who is a senior scientist with the Nature Conservancy, one of nine scientific and conservation organizations that participated in drawing up the list. Furthermore, Stein said, some plants were placed on the list simply because they are rare, not because their numbers are declining or their habitat is threatened. Nevertheless, of the world's 270,000 known species of plants, the 12.5 percent found to be at risk is a huge proportion, said David Brackett of Ottawa, chairman of the World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission. Moreover, he said, the figure is probably an underestimate, since data from most places in the world -- including some species-rich tropical nations where the countryside is being rapidly cleared -- are fragmentary. The list of imperiled plants fills more than 750 pages of a large red-bound book. Nine of every ten plants on the list are found in only one country, making them especially vulnerable to national or local economic and social conditions. Many species are found only on a few islands, and countries like Mauritius, the Seychelles and Jamaica consequently have disproportionately high numbers of threatened plants. Scientists generally cite two main reasons why plants become endangered: destruction of large swatches of wild countryside by agriculture, logging or development, and invasions of plants from one part of the world that run riot and crowd out native species in another part. The new listing of endangered plants is one more piece of evidence that "a whole chunk of creation is at risk," said Dr. Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in producing Wednesday's report. While 1 plant in 8 might not seem like much, he said, "that's what's threatened now, as a consequence of what we've done so far; but all the evidence is that the destruction is continuing at an accelerating pace." The United States' situation looks comparatively grim, said Stein, because plants are probably better surveyed here than elsewhere. With 4,669 species judged to be threatened to one degree or another, the United States ranked first, by far, among the nations of the world in total number of plants at risk. That is 29 percent of the country's 16,108 plant species. "I don't believe the U.S. is worse off than other countries," said Stein. "If anything, I think the U.S. has taken a more active interest in plant conservation." Stein's group, the Nature Conservancy, maintains what is widely regarded as one of North America's most comprehensive databases on endangered plants. Other major American participants in drawing up the Red List were the New York Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. The conservation union, also called the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, is based in Gland, Switzerland. Many governments and scientific organizations are among its members. Since 1960, it has been maintaining and adding to its Red List of threatened species. The list has no official effect but is widely regarded as an influential guide for conservation policy makers. Two years ago, the union placed nearly a quarter of all known mammal species and 11 percent of birds on the list. It also added a number of marine species for the first time. The Red List establishes five categories of organisms: species not seen in the wild in 50 years and presumed extinct; species suspected of having recently become extinct; endangered species, those likely to become extinct if the causes of endangerment continue; vulnerable species, those likely to become endangered if the causes continue; and rare species, those with small worldwide populations not yet endangered or vulnerable. Of the total number of plants on the Red List, 43 percent are classified as rare, 24 percent as vulnerable and 20 percent as endangered. These categories are different from those established under the United States' Endangered Species Act, and cannot be compared with them. The American categories, in descending order of seriousness, are called endangered and threatened. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ------------------------------------ Our Genetic Resource All methods of increasing food production are essentially "tinkering" with Earth's ecosystem, and "[t]o save every cog and wheel," wrote the great American naturalist Aldo Leopold, "is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." [18] We are not saving every cog and wheel. We are throwing away the parts of the ecosystem left and right, as illustrated in Figure 14. By early in the 21st century, species will be vanishing forever at a rate of hundreds per day. A species that becomes extinct, that disappears forever, can easily be seen as a "nonproblem," since it just vanishes and we hear no more about it. But the rapidly increasing losses of species is a very serious problem. Species are valuable for many reasons. First and foremost, the community of all life is like a sky full of stars, and it is the whole sky full of stars, not human technology, that allows life on Earth to continue. We humans have been making our star to shine brighter and brighter, not even noticing that the other lights in the sky are being eclipsed. Each time we crowd out another species, it is an aesthetic and spiritual loss for all of us. Children born today will have no opportunity to see a third of the species that were here during the lives of their parents and grandparents. There are pragmatic reasons for concern, too. Both conventional and biotechnical methods of increasing yields require diversity in the germplasm for major crops, but the diversity of available germplasm is declining daily. The wild races and strains of crop plants on which plant breeders depend will largely be lost over the next few decades as more and more marginal land is brought into cultivation. Dr. Peter H. Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a world-renowned expert on the diversity of Earth's species, summarizes the practical concerns as follows: In fact, the loss of biological diversity is important to us for many reasons. Only about 150 kinds of food plants are used extensively; only about 5,000 have ever been used. Three species of plants -- rice, wheat and corn -- supply more than half of all human energy requirements. However, there may be tens of thousands of additional kinds of plants that could provide human food if their properties were fully explored and brought into cultivation. Many of these plants come to us from the tropics. Further, there are numerous uses for tropical plants other than for food. Oral contraceptives for many years were produced from Mexican yams; muscle relaxants used in surgery come from an Amazonian vine traditionally used to poison darts; the cure for Hodgkin's disease comes from the rosy periwinkle, a native of Madagascar; and the gene pool of corn has recently been enriched by the discovery, in a small area of the mountains of Mexico, of a wild, perennial relative. Among the undiscovered or poorly known plants are doubtless many possible sources of medicines, oils, waxes, fibers and other useful commodities for our modern industrial society. Furthermore, as genetic engineering expands the possibilities for the transfer of genes from one kind of organism to another -- indeed, as our scientific techniques become even more sophisticated -- we could come to depend even more heavily on biological diversity than we do now. [20] One particularly dangerous false and popular notion current today is that with a collection of seeds from endangered species, biologists can restore the ecosystems containing these species, should we ever need them. Scientists cannot recreate lost species, and even if they had all the species, biologists would have no idea, even with billions of dollars and thousands of scientists, how to recreate, for example, a tropical rainforest. [21] _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
