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Runaway Global Economy Decimating Nature — World Bank Offers A Solution

Stephen 1 Must Read, Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Forests, Global Issues and Perspectives, Indigenous People, News, OCEAN, sustainability , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

NAGOYA, Japan, Oct 28, 2010 (IPS)

One-fifth of all birds, fish and animals are threatened with extinction – as many as six million unique and irreplaceable forms of life – an authoritative new assessment warned Wednesday.

Deforestation, agricultural expansion, overfishing, invasive alien species and climate change are the specific causes, but the main engine of destruction is an economic system that is blind to the reality that there is no economy or human well-being without nature, experts here say.

“Without global conservation efforts the situation would be massively worse,” noted Simon Stuart, chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, which launched the study at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, it is the most comprehensive assessment ever done of the world’s vertebrates – mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes – Stuart said.

Every year, 52 species of mammals, birds and amphibians move one step down a three-step path to extinction, according to the study, which utilised data for 25,000 species from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Southeast Asia has experienced the most dramatic recent losses, largely driven by the planting of export crops like oil palm, commercial hardwood timber operations, agricultural conversion to rice paddies and unsustainable hunting, the study found. Parts of Central America, the tropical Andes of South America, and even Australia have also all experienced marked losses, in particular due to the impact of the deadly chytrid fungus on amphibians.

“The backbone of biodiversity is being eroded,” said the eminent U.S. ecologist and writer Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University.

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Biodiversity at the Cliff’s Edge – Nature’s ‘Free Services’ In Sharp Decline

Stephen 1 Must Read, developing world, Forests, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, Science, WILDLIFE , , ,

By Stephen Leahy*

NAGOYA, Japan, Oct 18, 2010 (Tierramérica)

What nature gives us is often taken for granted, but if its basic elements disappear, human life on Earth would not be possible. The mission of the biodiversity summit under way in Nagoya is to reverse the headlong rush towards the precipice.

The 10th Conference of Parties (COP 10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Oct. 18-29 in this southern Japanese city, seeks to create a new set of international agreements to halve the rate of loss of natural habitat, end overfishing, achieve zero net deforestation, eliminate harmful subsidies, and ensure that agriculture is sustainable by 2020, among other goals.

Without a successful meeting in Nagoya, achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be impossible, Janez Potočnik, of the European Union’s Commission for the Environment, told a high-level UN meeting last month in New York.

“Biodiversity” is term used to describe the wide variety of the living things that comprise the planet’s biological infrastructure and provide us with health, wealth, food, water, fuel and other vital services.

Many people fail to understand how dependent humanity is on the many natural services provided by nature, says Hal Mooney, an environmental biologist at Stanford University, in California.

“Those services are considered ‘free’ and not valued under the current economic structures,” Mooney told Tierramérica.

Is this article of interest? It exists thanks to contributions from readers. Please click here to learn more about Community Supported Journalism.

via Biodiversity at the Cliff’s Edge – IPS ipsnews.net.

A Tipping Point on Species Loss?

Stephen Biodiversity, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, economics, Energy, Food, Forests, global warming, News, sustainability , ,

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 13, 2010 (IPS)

Humanity is destroying the network of living things that comprise our life support system. While this sawing-through-the-branch-we’re-perched-on is largely unintentional, world leaders can’t say they didn’t know what’s going on: 123 countries promised to take urgent action in 2003 but have done little to stem the rising tide of extinctions in what’s known as the extinction or biodiversity crisis.

Species are going extinct at 1,000 times their natural pace due to human activity, recent science has documented, with 35 to 40 species vanishing each day, never to be seen again.

“The question of preserving biological diversity is on the same scale as climate protection,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech in Berlin Monday at the official launch of the United Nations’ International Year of Biodiversity.

This week’s official launch will be followed by the first major event of the International Year, a high-profile meeting at the Paris headquarters of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Jan. 20-21.

“We need a sea change. Here, now, immediately – not some time in the future,” Merkel said.

While climate has been the focus in 2009, this year will be a global celebration of and action on biodiversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), told IPS from Berlin.

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Deep CO2 Cuts May Be Last Hope for Acid Oceans

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, News, OCEAN , , ,

(Report from the World Oceans Conference in Indonesia)

gbr cap mushroom death4By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 15 (IPS) –

Ocean acidification offers the clearest evidence of dangers of climate change.

And yet the indisputable fact that burning fossil fuels is slowly turning the oceans into an acid bath has been largely ignored by industrialised countries and their climate treaty negotiators, concluded delegates from 76 countries at the World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia.

Oceans and coastal areas must be on the agenda at the crucial climate talks in Copenhagen in December, they wrote in a declaration. “We must come to the rescue of the oceans,” declared Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the opening of high-level government talks on Thursday in the northern city of Manado.

It is fair to say most international climate negotiators aren’t aware of the impacts of climate change on the oceans, said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN’s Global Marine Programme.

“Very few people understand that carbon emissions are making the oceans acidic,” Lundin told IPS.

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Polar Bears’ Future Bleak in Melting Arctic

Stephen Alaska, CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, WILDLIFE , , , ,

http://www.firstpeople.us

Lots of folks have been telling me that polar bears are doing ok and don’t need protection under the US Endangered Species Act. Some say polar bear populations are stable in Alaska and increasing in parts of Canada. And there might be 1500 more bears than previous estimates according to a three year study in Nunavut which makes $2 million a year from polar bear trophy hunters. But 1500 isn’t very many more bears and with the Arctic sea ice melting fast the future certainly doesn’t look bright.

As for Alaska consider this fact:

This week scientists announced new findings that the survival rate of polar bear cubs in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea has plummeted. In the late 1980s, 65 percent of polar bear cubs in the southern Beaufort Sea survived their first year. That has fallen to an average of 43 percent in the past five years. — Polar Bears Go Hungry as Icy Habitat Melts Away

“Without taking serious and urgent action to stabilize the climate, there is no future for polar bears” says Andrew Derocher, Chair of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Polar Bear Specialist Group.

See also this controversy: Oil vs Polar Bears in Alaska

And these updates on the Arctic: Arctic Is the Canary in the Coalmine

Arctic Oil and Gas Rush Alarms Scientists

Arctic Meltdown Signals Long-Term Trend

Inuit Sue America over Climate Change

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