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The world is about to miss another deadline. By 2010 there was supposed to be "a significant reduction" in the speed at which varieties of life are disappearing.
Both the 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations' 2000 Millennium Development Goals call for it. But the most wide-ranging analysis of global biodiversity ever attempted has found that it's not happening – despite what seem to be massive government efforts.
Biodiversity: try as we might, things just keep dying
Seeded on Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:04 PM EDT
Article Source: newscientist.com- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (13)
Never before has anyone produced a single measure of biodiversity across the thousands of species and habitats on Earth. Scientists working with CBD have developed 31 different surveillance schemes to track the loss of species, ecosystems or genetic variants in mammals, marine life, birds and other broad categories of life. This week, for the first time, they have put them together.
I don't think anyone needed a study to tell us that this is the truth. However, getting the numbers of both sides of the story is enlightening.
- 4 votes
#1 - Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:05 PM EDTBetween the natural ebb and flow of all things nature, and the damaging activities of human kind, folks are pipe-dreaming to think the dying off of various species will ever slow.
Even at our most well meaning, we have a way of destroying that which we touch.
- 3 votes
#2 - Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:07 PM EDT"But what do you expect?" asks Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, a leading fisheries scientist and co-author of the report. "The forces destroying biodiversity are huge – human economic expansion, shoving everything out of its way. The forces working against that are tiny. This won't change until a force emerges that is similar in strength to the forces spreading destruction."
Which will be when Mother Nature has had enough and kicks us humans out of the equation.
Stop tearing down the rain forests and the other forests around the world would be a help.
- 3 votes
#3 - Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:37 PM EDTStop tearing down the rain forests and the other forests around the world would be a help.
That would be a great start.
The planet can not sustain indefinitely the (human) population numbers as they currently are. Yet we continue to expand our population anyway. As long as our species continues to expand its numbers with disregard to the planet and its other inhabitants, we will continue to see the loss of other species at greater and greater rates.
- 2 votes
Thanks for your comments, you're both absolutely correct. Human greed is the basis for all of it.
- 4 votes
I think a quote from an April '10 Scientific American article pretty much sums things up: "Scientists have set thresholds for key environmenal processes that, if crossed, could threaten Earth's habitability. Ominously, three have already been crossed."
Quite frankly, if we aren't able to use large scale nanotech in time to save the planet, we might as well start looking for a new home. It is rather upsetting that our only real hope is a future technology which is speculative at best.
- 2 votes
#4 - Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:16 PM EDTThanks for the comment there. How many thresholds have been set if 3 have been crossed?
It does worry me that we fix rather than prevent. We've been doing it with all kinds of pollution here on earth, and the space-junk orbiting the planet is another example. Somehow people just hope that this time it will magically not matter.
- 2 votes
Here's the online preview: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=boundaries-for-a-healthy-planet
As for how many, there were 10, 2 of which there is not enough data to determine what the tipping points would be and where we are at now. Biodiversity loss is the highest above the limit, at over 100 extinct species per year, with 10 per year being the boundary for sustainability. The other 2 are climate change (only a little over) and removal of nitrogen from the atmosphere.
- 1 vote
Wish I had a subscription, the start of the article was very interesting. Thanks for the link Alway.
- 1 vote
The world is not static. It never has been. Despite humans best efforts to 'stabilize' the world, its not happening. I am not sure why everyone is so shocked. The Earth really is a MASSIVE place. I am finding out that most people, especially here in America, really have no sense of scale on the size of the planet. Maybe that comes from being couped up in cities most of their lives. Who knows?
If you took every city on the face of the planet and put them right next to each other, you would only fill a space about the size of Texas.
Humans don't have as much influential impact on an ecosystem as large as the Earth as many people like to believe they do. Many of our actions are based on emotional decisions without a lot of thought process behind it. Efforts to save one species, have ripple effects through the ecosystem that often culminate in many unforseen results and might result in the decline in populations of several other species.
An ecosystem balances itself over time. Its our influence to try to tip those scales to our desired outcome that ends up keeping the scales unbalanced and rocking back and forth. We need to learn to adapt to the changes instead of trying to influence them.
#5 - Sat May 1, 2010 7:41 AM EDTI can see your point but it doesn't help when human interference is destroying various ecosystems. I personally believe that humans are using more than their share of available resources, while a lot of resources recycle itself - like water - it needs time to do so and humans don't allow it time to do so. In the end we all lose out, IMO.
- 3 votes
WatchTheOtherHand, while there are plenty of examples of natural changes what is happening now is primarily human induced. Everywhere you look there are ecosystems being torn up, habitats simple no longer exist for the creatures and plants that used to live in them.
If you took every city on the face of the planet and put them right next to each other, you would only fill a space about the size of Texas.
That may be true, but the sphere of human influence is not restricted to cities. In fact, some of the most damaging human activities occur outside of cities - farming (with associated runoff, land degradation, burning, poisoning etc), industry, over fishing etc. While the total area may look small, the spread-out nature of settlements has the effect of fragmenting habitats. It's a bit like saying you should be happy because your house is perfectly big enough for you, but ignoring the fact that there is an impenetrable barrier between your bedroom and kitchen.
Efforts to save one species, have ripple effects through the ecosystem that often culminate in many unforseen results and might result in the decline in populations of several other species.
This is especially true of attempts at biocontrol methods. What it means is not that we shouldn't try to save species, but that we should not let them get to the point where they need saving.
We need to learn to adapt to the changes instead of trying to influence them.
The trouble is that we are changing the ecosystems so fast that the other inhabitants have no chance of adapting.
- 5 votes
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