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                       WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE

           Life Support: Conserving Biological Diversity
                          by John C. Ryan
                                 
                      worldwatch@igc.apc.org

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                    MASS EXTINCTION HAS STARTED

     An unprecedented biological collapse has begun worldwide, and
only unprecedented effort will curtail the massive wave of
extinctions.  Furthermore, climate change from carbon dioxide
emissions is likely to accelerate the demise of many forms of
life.  Although species are disappearing most rapidly from the
world's tropical forests. biological diversity is diminishing all
over the globe.

     The top priority for halting the loss of biodiversity--the
ecosystems, species, and genes that together constitute life on
earth--will be the protection of wildlands, those areas so far
minimally degraded by human activities, Ryan concludes.  But the
pervasive nature of the problem and the imminent threat of global
warming mean that parks and reserves alone cannot do the job.  

     Only if biodiversity becomes a central concern in our
mainstream economic activities as well as our protected areas 
will we avoid squandering our biological inheritance.

Among the report's findings:

***  Three-fourths of the world's bird species are declining in
     population or threatened with extinction.

***  Amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and related species) are
     declining worldwide.  

***  In Indonesia, 1,500 local varieties of rice have disappeared
     in the past 15 years.  Nearly three-fourths of the rice grown
     today descends from a single plant.  

***  In the United States, about 3,000 plants, nearly one in every
     eight native species, are considered in danger of extinction. 
     More than 700 are likely to disappear in the next 10 years. 

***  Industrial nations have decimated their wetlands: Italy, New
     Zealand and California have all destroyed more than 90
     percent of their wetlands.

   Without immediate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,
however, the impacts of global warming will probably make the
world's current biological collapse pale in comparison.  Rapidly
rising temperatures will overwhelm many species' and ecosystems'
ability to adapt.  Widespread die-offs of forests, tundra, and
coral reefs, disruption of animal migrations, and the loss of
mangroves and other wetlands to rising seas are likely in coming
decades if actions are not taken soon to slow global warming.  

     The specter of global warming makes even clearer the
importance of incorporating diversity into all human production
systems, as well as protecting it in wilderness.

     Biological diversity is no luxury.  Like every species, ours
is intimately dependent on others for its well-being.  An adult
frog can eat its own weight in insects daily; diminishing frog
populations in India have been linked to higher rates of malaria
in West Bengal, and pest damage to crops in Maharashtra State. 
Species-rich tropical forests provide hundreds of millions of
rural people with food, health care, raw materials, and cash
income.

     American oysters, once so numerous in the United States'
Chesapeake Bay that they could filter all its water every three
days, have declined in population by 99 percent since 1870.  Now
it takes a year for oysters to filter the same amount of water,
one reason the bay is increasingly muddied and oxygen-poor.

     Governments and communities around the world have taken steps
to stem the erosion of life.  Today, national parks and other
protected areas cover nearly five percent of the earth's land
surface, and wilderness areas (many maintained by indigenous
people) cover as much as a third of the planet's land.  

     Impressive as these figures sound, they can be misleading.
Most of the world's remaining wildlands, and most of its protected
areas, are deserts and tundra.  And many of the world's parks
exist largely on paper.  Destructive activities, such as mining or
large-scale tourism, are often encouraged within protected areas,
while outside forces, from air pollution to landless farmers,
often pose even greater threats.

     The efforts of indigenous people, both to protect sacred
lands and to sustain diversity in production systems, have likely
been more effective than their modern counterparts in conserving
life's variety.  The world's healthy ecosystems are found
predominantly in areas under indigenous control.  But many
traditional management systems are unraveling as cultures erode
and national governments confiscate or privatize resources held by
communities.

     A top priority for biological conservation, whether in parks,
village woodlots, or farms, is to recognize the vital role of
local people.  Government negotiators working on a global
biodiversity convention have so far failed to address this issue. 
Restoring some degree of local control over resources is probably
the only way that vast areas in the tropics can be 'managed' at
all. Governments claim ownership of 80 percent of the world's
remaining mature tropical forests, but only by sharing management
responsibility with the millions of people living in or near the
forests do governments have any hope of controlling the forests'
exploitation.

     LIFE SUPPORT finds that extractive reserves (government-owned
areas of the Brazilian Amazon managed by forest dwellers for
rubber, nuts and other products) are no substitute for strictly
protected areas.  But these and other programs of sustainable
commercial use of ecosystems can help conserve diversity if
ecological limits are observed and if political reforms ensure the
basic human rights of rural people.  In Brazil, as in many parts
of the world, to speak up for the environment is literally to put
one's life in danger. 

     Limiting the amount of the planet we dominate, and tolerating
diversity more in the places we do dominate, will entail tackling
two of the most intractable forces in the modern world: galloping
per-capita consumption and rapid population growth.  No
conservation strategy, however ingenious, can get around the fact
that the more resources one species consumes, the fewer are
available for all the rest.

                              --END--

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