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Savings and Loans
The biodiversity of Earth is our biological wealth,
our biological capital. The savings are every gene, every
population, every species, and every natural community that
inhabits the oceans, the land, and the air. Whether we believe
that God put them there or that they evolved from earlier
creatures, the stark truth remains that they are the only ones
we have - there are no life forms anywhere else. As yet there
is no evidence whatsoever that one day humans will be
able to fly to Mars or some other remote planet to stock up
on tree species, order giant panda replacements, or obtain
refills of extinct phyla. Nor is there any hope, based on the
current status of biotechnology, that we will be able to create
organisms through the miracles of science. Biodiversity
is, as far as anyone knows, totally irreplaceable. It would
be marvelous to be proved wrong, but were not holding
our breath.
...Not all of the ninety-six phyla are known to be "useful"
in the sense that they contribute directly to human welfare
through ecosystem services or resources, but many more
are involved than most people think. Further, numerous
examples of industrial innovations show repeatedly that we
can never predict what species or populations are going to
be useful, or even desperately important, in the future.
It has become fashionable in some circles to assert that
humanity cannot possibly need all the species on Earth.
This may turn out to be true one day, but which ones are
redundant? We know that ecosystems evolved for billions of
years before humans inhabited the planet. They did not need
us, and they will carry on with or without us. Yet when the
context includes people, the situation changes. People do
need ecosystem services, each of which involves an unknown
number of species. The key question is, how many species are
needed to maintain the services that keep us alive? It seems
that some extinctions do not much affect those services; for
example, millions of people live in Europe where nearly all
the large predators have been eliminated. The tragedy of loss
in these cases is no less because it is a moral or aesthetic issue,
but ecosystem services to date show little sign of detrimental
effects.
We get glimpses into the question of how many species
we need from accidental or intentional abuse of ecosystem
services, as when pesticides are overused or too many wastes
are dumped into rivers or the sea. Species then are killed in
large numbers and the services often fail. It would be highly
advantageous if some of these accidents or disasters were
treated as experiments - so that at the very least we could
determine which species were present, and in what numbers,
before and after the event. Thus, we might know which
species are missing when the service declines or breaks
down. Sometimes the answers seem obvious, as when floods
and mudslides or salination of soils follows the destruction of
vegetation, especially of forests and woodlands. Still, what the
critical number of species needed may be, or which species
may turn out to be the most important, and at what time
and place, we simply do not know.
We think it is wiser to turn the whole concept of
redundancy around. Thus, in the same way that "redundant"
systems are engineered into modern passenger jets as
insurance against electrical, engine, or structural failure,
"redundant" species provide insurance against failure in the
natural systems on which we depend. We are suggesting
that any species could be important, sooner or later. Who
knows, for example, what tree species will emerge as our
main source of timber as the climate continues to change?
Who knows which beetle or wasp will emerge to control
pests when pesticides and biotechnological solutions fail?
What species of marine animals will form the aquaculture of
the future, or which bizarre species will provide an essential
industrial or medical chemical?
Right now the human race is recklessly squandering its
savings. All over the world forests, soils, and fisheries are in
decline. The oceans, our freshwater, soils, and air are polluted
in various ways. We are even changing the climate for the
worse (or to put it another way, weather that we always
considered a problem is likely to become a nightmare). What
will our children do if the capital is used up?
The answer is to make sure we do not lose biodiversity, and
that means conservation. We...all depend on the millions
of genes, populations, species, and natural communities
that we call biodiversity. Conservation is not just for
environmentalists, it is everyones business. Who can afford to
ignore the natural processes that keep us alive?
Two major ingredients of conservation are imagination
and action, as dramatically demonstrated by Pilai Poonswad
in Thailand. She was faced with gangs of poachers taking
hornbills - huge, beautiful, rare birds of the rain forest.
Unscrupulous collectors paid large sums for eggs, chicks, or
adults and the poachers defended their booty with violence
when necessary. Pilai went to the villages where the poachers
lived and showed them that the birds were worth far more
alive than dead. Today she has a growing band of ex-poachers
earning far more by taking tourists into the forest to see live
hornbills than they ever made by stealing them. A superb
example! The birds and their rain-forest habitats remain
intact, the local people profit from the presence of the
undisturbed forest, and visitors from all over the world learn
a little about biodiversity. The venture is funded by tourists
and by city dwellers in Bangkok who sponsor individual
nests.
We all know the three Os that cause the decline of
biodiversity and the extinction of species: Overpopulation,
Overdevelopment, and Overconsumption. The global human
enterprise uses unsustainable technologies in agriculture,
forestry, fisheries, and industry and produces massive urban
developments generating worldwide pollution. Although
based on biodiversity, all these activities contribute daily to
its decline. The developed countries have the wealth and
power to influence economic activity on a vast scale, yet
their actions are subversive in the very real sense that we are
steadily eroding our own capital.
This book shows why so many people have accepted that
our most important capital is natural capital: biodiversity. ...
this is the capital of the real world. The currencies based
on financial capital derive from the life-support systems
and products generated by biodiversity. We know full well
that humanity has chosen to operate in a world of financial
capital. The way to proceed, therefore, is first to recognize
the true worth of the two kinds of capital and then to
organize the human economy to preserve both. The value
of financial capital is accepted by most people; the value of
natural capital is only starting to be recognized. Our hope is
that the concept of natural capital is accepted before its value
is destroyed.
Excerpted with kind permission from Wild Solutions: How
Biodiversity is Money in the Bank, by Andrew Beattie &
Paul R. Ehrlich. Yale University Press, 2001.
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