The august journal Nature recently published Life – a status report. It is a graphic portrayal of the vast number of species disappearing from the planet; a difficult calculation, as scientists don’t know how many species there are, with estimates ranging from two to 50 million. But for those species we know about, the picture is grim. Globally, 41% of amphibian species are facing extinction; 13% of all birds are at risk; as are 22% of flowering plants.
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The reasons behind this potential mass extinction are manifold, but all stem from human activity. Humans are “the ultimate invasive species” having spread from Africa to every corner of the planet (and beyond) in 100,000 years. In doing so, we have removed the habitats of other species, or affected them by moving other invasive species around, causing pollution and driving climate change. We do so at our peril, because humans depend on nature utterly for our survival.
If it is possible to stop this mass extinction, humans need to take rapid and radical action.
Here are five actions that I think will be needed:
- Give places back to nature
Some 3% of the oceans and 15% of land are classified as “protected areas”. In practice, many of these offer no protection to nature – more protected areas are needed, and they must be properly protected.
- Change the way we view nature
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Nature is not another asset class to be traded on the world’s financial markets. Yet we see governments and businesses keen to implement biodiversity offsetting, where biodiversity lost as a result of development schemes is traded for the creation of nature sites elsewhere. Most would consider it heinous to develop a market in tradeable credits for children’s happiness – so why is it deemed acceptable to trade biodiversity?
Humans have an absolute requirement for nature – for the food we eat, the oxygen we breathe, but also for the inspiration it provides, the sense of well being, meaning, joy and solace it brings us all. We need to develop new ethics that transform the values people ascribe to nature and the way we relate to it.
- Change our economic system so it values nature
The neoliberal obsession with economic growth and profit is a major driver of this mooted global extinction. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the main way economists measure economic growth. Economists talk of “market failure”, when the external costs to nature of human activities are given no monetary value.
A farmer can grow a profitable crop of maize, ignoring the costs of cleaning up the nearby river contaminated with silt, nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides; or the homes flooded further downstream. These costs are externalized and are either not addressed or are paid by the taxpayer. GDP counts the economic value of the crop, the cost of cleaning the nitrogen from the water and the cost of clearing up after the flood all as contributing positively to GDP. This makes no sense on any level. We need to radically transform the way nature is valued through economics.
- End public subsidies that damage nature
Perhaps the largest causes of nature destruction in Europe over the past 40 years are the common agricultural policy on land and the common fisheries policy at sea. These have paid farmers to replace areas rich in nature with places almost entirely devoid of it; and they have paid fisheries to empty the seas. All this has been paid for by taxpayers. It is time to abolish the CAP and the CFP and replace them with systems that only support farming and fishing practices that either do no harm or actively restore nature. Practices that continue to cause unnecessary damage to nature should be taxed or outlawed.
- Reduce human inequality
The planet cannot sustain our current consumption of finite resources and, as our population expands, other species disappear. There is a near free market in the products of wildlife crime, in that the laws of supply and demand operate without much hindrance. The wealthy can afford to pay ever higher prices for poached products, such as ivory. Elephants have a right to exist, and their existence enriches all our lives. Yet the ivory buyers have no care for elephants, nature or for society.
As wealth is concentrated in corporations and the top 1%, key decisions that affect the future of nature are left to a tiny number of individuals, who act neither in the interests of society, or of nature. It is also the world’s poorest people who depend most on nature, so their lives are most affected when nature is damaged.
In the long run nature will survive, as it has the previous five extinctions. It is we, Homo sapiens, who will join the myriad other species disappearing in this mass dying, unless we radically change our relationship with nature.
source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/16/five-ways-to-stop-mass-extinction