The Forgotten Crisis
The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) to raise awareness on the importance of biodiversity all over the world and its value for life on Earth. Biodiversity is defined as the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire planet.
With the slogan “Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our future”, the UN wants us to understand that humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it, and that biodiversity is essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on.
The UN also wants to highlight the fact that human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate.
By and large, the IYB is primarily a campaign against ignorance and apathy, a challenge to educate urban and rural populations on the perils of biodiversity loss.
Biodiversity loss is often described as the forgotten crisis. According to the ASEAN Center for Biodiversity (ACB), we are losing plants, animals and other species at unprecedented rates due to deforestation, large-scale mining, massive wildlife hunting and other irresponsible human activities. This poses a significant threat to our food security, health, livelihood, and the world’s overall capacity to provide for our needs and those of future generations.
So, if we talk about the rice shortage or the food crisis, we are not just talking about declining rice production due to increasing global temperature or to shrinking rice paddies due to land conversion and urban expansion. We are talking about biodiversity loss.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that about three-quarters of the “varietal genetic diversity” of agricultural crops have been lost over the last century and that hundreds of the 7000 animal breeds registered in its databases are threatened by extinction.
It also reported that just about twelve crops and fourteen animal species now provide most of the world’s food. “Fewer genetic diversity means fewer opportunities for the growth and innovation needed to boost agriculture at a time of soaring food prices,” reports the UN agency tasked to defeat hunger.
Rod Fuentes, ACB executive director, explains: “The loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest threats that we face. No one will argue that it is in the area of food security, perhaps more than any other, that biodiversity’s value is most clear. Nature provides the plant and animal resources for food production and agricultural productivity. When we destroy biodiversity, we destroy our source of food.”
If we also talk about the health crisis, we are also taking about biodiversity loss. Nature is a source of medicines that save lives and avert illnesses. Studies show that about 119 pure chemicals are extracted from less than 90 species of higher plants and used as medicines throughout the world, like caffeine, methyl salicylate (oil of wintergreen) and quinine which has antipyretic (fever-reducing), antimalarial, analgesic (painkilling), and anti-inflammatory properties. On the other hand, antibiotics like streptomycin, neomycin, and erythromycin are derived from tropical soil fungi.
More than 60 percent of the world population relies almost entirely on the plant medicine for primary health care. But the pharmaceutical potential hidden within the natural world is largely untapped – only one percent of the plant species in rainforests have been tested for their possible pharmaceutical value, and other ecosystems have been largely unexplored as well.
If we continue to lose species and habitats at the current rate, untold numbers of beneficial medicines will be lost forever.
Biodiversity, according to the ACB, is also a source of livelihood to millions of people as the economy of many communities is driven by the use of species in industries such as biotechnology, forestry, agriculture and fisheries. Moreover, biodiversity provides social benefits including recreation and tourism, as well as cultural and aesthetic values.
Adds Fuertes: “Our biodiversity resources and the ecosystems that support it is our lifeline and is a crucial contributor to global environmental sustainability. Forgetting the biodiversity crisis is therefore akin to cutting our lifeline to the world’s natural treasures.”
As we observe 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity, let us remember that biodiversity loss is not just an issue of losing plants and animals but it is an issue of human survival.
Nereo C. Lujan
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