Introduction: A perspective on sustainable pathways toward preservation of biodiversity

AuthorVicki Breazeale
PositionFounder and Board President of Great Wilderness
Pages2-4
2SPRING 2010
INTRODUCTION: A PERSPECTIVE ON SUSTAINABLE
PATHWAYS TOWARD PRESERVATION OF BIODIVERSITY
by Vicki Breazeale, Ph.D.*
“Look deep into natu re, and then you will understand
everything better.”—Albert Einstein
THE PROBLEM: LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY
Biodiversity describes the vast variety of all species of
life on Earth. Ecosystems are where species live, and
the health, size, and nature of intact ecosystems directly
affect their biodiversity. The structure, complexity, inhabitant
species, organism interactions, and fragility of ecosystems vary.
Tropical rainforests, for example, are the most complex and
diverse ecosystems on earth, and more than half of all species
live in tropical forests.
Biodiversity has steadily increased on Earth since life began
some 3.2 billion years ago, but now it is on a precipitous decline
due to human activity. The biologically diverse ecosystems on
earth constitute our life support system—they are responsible
for our atmosphere, our clean water, our medicines, and the food
we eat. If ecosystems collapse and biodiversity continues to
decline at the current rate, humans will be at great risk.
There are many ways to describe the accelerating loss of
biodiversity on earth and the diff‌iculty humans have in grasping
the depth of the problem. The most rapid changes in biodiversity
in history have occurred in only the last 50 years. The major
human created threats to ecosystem health and biodiversity are:
1. invasive species that out-compete and cause extinction
of native species,
2. climate change due to increased carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere,
3. habitat1 change or destruction,
4. over exploitation of ecosystems such as removing top
carnivores or over-f‌ishing of oceans, and
5. nutrient loading and pollution from nitrogen and phos-
phorous fertilizer.
According to the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature (“IUCN”):
Loss of biodiversity - the variety of animals, plants, their
habitats and their genes–on which so much of human
life depends, is one of the world’s most pressing crises.
It is estimated that the current species extinction rate is
between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would
naturally be. The main drivers of this loss are converting
natural areas to farming and urban development, intro-
ducing invasive alien species, polluting or over-exploit-
ing resources including water and soils and harvesting
wild plants and animals at unsustainable levels.2
The Ecological Footprint has been calculated globally on
the basis of United Nations statistics and other well-established
* Vicki Breazeale (a.k.a. Dr. Bug) is the Founder and Board President of Great
Wilderness. More information about her organization is ava ilable at www.
greatwilderness.org. Dr. Breazeale is currently the Academic Director of the
Integrated S cience Program at Southern Ca lifornia University of Health Sci-
ences and has a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
data. It shows the ratio between humanity’s demand and the
Earth’s productive capacity, or biocapacity (the ability of the
f‌lora, fauna, water and atmosphere to sustain the balance of life
on Earth), in each year, and how this ratio has changed over
time. Humanity has moved from using, in net terms, about half
the planet’s biocapacity in 1961 to 1.2 times the biocapacity of
the Earth in 2001. The global demand for resources thus exceeds
the biological capacity of the Earth to renew these resources by
some 20%—in other words, it takes the biosphere one year and
nearly three months to renew what humanity uses in one year.
This “ecological def‌icit” or “overshoot” means ecosystem assets
are being liquidated and wastes are accumulating in the bio-
sphere, and the potential for future biocapacity is reduced. Over-
shoot is possible because, for example, forests can be cut faster
than they grow, f‌ish can be harvested faster than their natural
replacement rate, water can be withdrawn faster than aquifers
are replenished, and carbon dioxide (“CO2”) emitted faster than
it is sequestered. We must stop cutting down our forest and ear-
nestly support global reforestation efforts.3
Humans need to better understand the nature of the elegant
organismal interactions that sustain life on Earth, including their
own—we need to realize we are an integral and powerful part
of nature. But, it seems that humans and their institutions don’t
see themselves as part of ecosystems. Perhaps this is because we
move from one ecosystem to another so easily and quickly, and
we manipulate the natural world so effortlessly and profoundly.
In fact, we have the single greatest effect of any species on the
health and welfare of ecosystems on Earth and we have executed
our inf‌luence on Earth’s biodiversity with devastating effects.
From the tundra of Alaska, to the desert in Death Val-
ley, to the Choco-Manabi Bioregion in Ecuador, every species
has a job to do, and they tak e their work v ery seriously. Bees,
for example, pollinate most of the plants that pro vide food for
humans and terrestrial animals, which makes the current Honey
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder very troubling. There is currently
a widely disseminated view that if the bees disappear from the
surface of the earth, humans would have no more than four to
f‌ive years to live.
In another poignant example, recent f‌ield research of John
Terborgh at Duke University shows that ecosystem integrity is
often dependent on the functional presence of large carnivores.
And yet we are losing top carnivores at an alarming rate in
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LAW & POLICY3
oceans and on land. Humans, acting as “ultra carnivores,” are
solely responsible for these losses. The kind of predation that we
engage in is not ecologically sustainable and results in ecologi-
cal imbalance of the highest order.
The Earth’s oceans, which cover 71% of the surface of the
Earth, may be the most threatened ecosystems of all. We are
over-f‌ishing our oceans, driving many species of f‌ish to extinc-
tion and disrupting complex ocean food chains. There are large
masses of plastic in the Pacif‌ic, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.
Beaches all over the world are covered with plastic trash, medi-
cal waste, and f‌ishing nets. Run-off into the oceans, especially
from industrialized nations, is polluted with pesticides, herbi-
cides, fertilizers, pharmaceutical wastes, and other pathogens
that are creating large dead-zones in the oceans.
Given this ecological context, many questions arise:
Where on Earth are the large, intact ecosystems that need urgent
attention? What must we do to restore the health of our oceans?
What legal and policy tools can promote solutions to biodiver-
sity loss?
THE SOLUTION: SUSTAINING BIODIVERSITY
The global path to sustainable perpetuation of biodiver-
sity must involve as many people, institutions, businesses, and
governments as possible. As Albert Einstein put it “Our task
must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compas-
sion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and
its beauty.” Fortunately, there are dedicated, intelligent people
working on the problem all over the world. Below are a few
examples of progress.
In December 2009, the 190 nations that are party to the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”)
met in Copenhagen, Denmark. Part of the meeting dealt with
Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or
REDD, which is a program that would compensate countries
that possess large forests if they reduce their rates of deforesta-
tion. Reducing deforestation reduces carbon emissions, and car-
ries the added benef‌it of maintaining and enhancing the health
of large intact ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain. The
details of exactly how to implement REDD have not been care-
fully elaborated and “the devil is in the detail,” but great poten-
tial exists to protect biodiversity through REDD.
The Uni ted Nations d eclared 2010 to be the International
Year of Biodiversity. It is a celebration of life on earth and of the
value of biodiversity for our lives, as well as a unique opportu-
nity to increase understanding of the vital role that biodiversity
plays in sustaining life on Earth. The world is invited to take
action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth. The UN
declares that:
You are an integral part of nature; your fate is tightly
linked with biodiversity, the huge variety of other ani-
mals and plants, the places they live and their surround-
ing environments, all over the world. This is vital for
current and future human well being. We need to do
more. Now is the time to act. You rely on this diversity
of life to provide you with the food, fuel, medicine and
other essentials you simply cannot live without. Yet
this rich diversity is being lost at a greatly accelerated
rate because of human activities. This impoverishes us
all and weakens the ability of the living systems, on
which we depend, to resist growing threats such as cli-
mate change.4
The GLOBIO consortium is a collaboration between the
Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (“PBL”),
UNEP GR ID-Arendal, and UNEP-World Conservat ion Moni-
toring Centre (“UNEP-WCMC”). The consortium started in
2003. The main output of the consortium is the GLOBIO model-
ing framework, with the aim to support integrated global assess-
ments and to calculate the impact of f‌ive environmental drivers
on land biodiversity for the past, present, and future. The f‌ive
drivers are: land cover change, land-use intensity, fragmentation
of ecosystems, atmospheric nitrogen deposition and infrastruc-
ture development. This is a powerful, science-based tool that
will help researchers, institutions, and governments around the
world in their efforts to monitor the global state of ecosystems
and biodiversity.5
The Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford was estab-
lished by Paul Ehrlich in the Department of Biological Sci-
ences in 1984, and is one example of an academic institution
tackling the challenge of biodiversity.6 Gretchen Daily, Director
of the Center, is an ecologist and a conservation heroine with
the admirable goal of developing a scientif‌ic basis—and politi-
cal and institutional support—for managing Earth’s life support
systems. Her recent book, The New Economy of Nature, writ-
ten with Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist,
is an inform ative and eng aging examination of what the y call
the “new economy,” an economy that recognizes the economic
value of natural systems and the prof‌its in protecting them. Daily
describes her work as:
…developing the f‌ield of countryside biogeography to
forecast changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services
in human-dominated landscapes, using both theoretical
and empirical approaches, including remote sensing.
I am also developing a scientif‌ic framework for char-
acterizing ecosystem services and incorporating their
value into decision-making. Finally, to investigate new
conservation f‌inance mechanisms and policy options,
I am collaborating extensively with economists, legal
scholars, mathematicians, and leaders of non-gov-
ernment organizations and in the public and private
sectors.7
Even with these examples of progress, there is much more
that can be done. It would be wise, for example, for governments
to educationally empower young people all over the world to
become actively involved in preservation of biodiversity. I pro-
pose offering high school and college student’s government paid
sabbaticals from school to do conservation work in biologically
critical ecosystems. It would certainly be a life-changing educa-
tional experience.
SPRING 2010 4
CONCLUDING REMARKS: A CALL TO ACTION
It is fair to say that there is a lot of “bad news” about the
environment, and that how humans respond to these challenges
will def‌ine us as a species. Our unique ability to communicate
abiotically via language and symbols comes with the responsi-
bility to make choices as individuals and members of society
that do not diminish the ability of the planet to renew itself.
Prior to global industrialization there was a balance that has
been altered unsustainably by the demands of an ever-increasing
human population.
Now, during the International Year of Biodiversity, it is more
important than ever that biodiversity be put at the forefront, and
discussed widely by all kinds of people, from government off‌icials,
to conservation professionals, to academics, to average citizens.
The time for action is now. This issue of Sustainable Development
Law & Policy provides a forum for such discussion.
Endnotes: Introduction: A Perspective on Sustainable Pathways
toward Preservation of Biodiversity
1 A habitat is the unique space and time occupied by a particular species in an
ecosystem.
2 Int’l Union for Conservation of Nature, Biodiversity, http://www.iucn.org/
what/tpas/biodiversity/ (last visited May 3, 2010).
3 GreenFacts.org, Scientif‌ic Facts on Biodiversity, http://www.greenfacts.org/
en/global-biodiversity-outlook/index.htm#6 (last visited May 5, 2010).
4 UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Messages, http://www.cbd.
int/2010/messages/ (last visited May 3, 2010).
5 Globio, Home, http://www.globio.info/ (last visited May 3, 2010).
6 Center for Conservation Biology, http://www.stanford.edu/group/CCB/
About%20CCB.html (last visited May 3, 2010).
7 Center for Conservation Biology, Gretchen Daily, http://www.stanford.edu/
group/CCB/Staff/gretchen.htm (last visited May 3, 2010).

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