Fight for biodiversity begins at home - out on the bog

Preserving the variety of life on Earth has to take priority in Irish and world politics over short-term interests

BIODIVERSITY IS such a boring term that it’s no wonder it hasn’t caught the public imagination. Maybe if people realised that it meant life on Earth, as depicted so memorably by David Attenborough in all of its glorious variety, their perception of its importance would be more sympathetic.

The United Nations always has its “years” for this or that, and 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, which comes with a message from secretary general Ban Ki-moon that conserving life on Earth “cannot be an afterthought once other objectives are addressed – it is the foundation on which many of these objectives are built”.

Ban is implying that we shouldn’t be so single-minded in fixing the economy if everything else is falling apart.

As the latest UN report warns, natural systems that support economies, human lives and livelihoods are “at risk of rapid degradation and collapse unless there is swift, radical and creative action to conserve the variety of life on Earth”.

Ecologists have long understood that we rely on services provided free by nature. For example, up to 30 per cent of our food depends on bees pollinating plants – and that service is said to be worth $14 billion a year in the US alone, which is why there’s such alarm about the rapid decline in the number of bees over the past four years.

But many countries “remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other life-forms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems”, according to Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme. It was an illusion – indeed, a fabrication – that we could “get by without biodiversity”.

In 2001, EU leaders adopted a declaration that “biodiversity decline should be halted with the aim of reaching this objective by 2010”.

A year later, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a similar target of achieving by 2010 a “significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss . . . to the benefit of all life on Earth”.

This was reiterated by the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, the UN Economic Commission for Europe (which embraces 51 countries) in 2003 and by a major stakeholder conference in Malahide, Co Dublin, convened under Ireland’s EU presidency in 2004; it produced a plan called the “Message from Malahide”.

That the world has failed to achieve the 2010 target has now been confirmed by the UN’s third Global Biodiversity Outlook, published last Monday.

Indeed, it warns that “massive” further losses are increasingly likely as several “tipping points” are approached, including a “dieback” of tracts of the Amazon rainforest due in part to climate change.

“The news is not good”, said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. “Extinction rates may be up to 1,000 times higher than the historical background rate . . . should serve as a wake-up call for humanity. Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet.”

Saying that the continued loss of biodiversity could not be treated as an issue separate from the core concerns of society, the outlook notes that “for a fraction of the money summoned up instantly by the world’s governments in 2008-09 to avoid economic meltdown, we can avoid a much more serious and fundamental breakdown in the Earth’s life support systems”.

The authors argue, however, that such a breakdown is avoidable through effective action to reduce the multiple pressures on biodiversity – for example, by reducing land-based pollution and destructive fishing practices that weaken coral reefs and make them more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification.

A possible new strategy for reducing biodiversity loss, learning lessons from the failure to meet the 2010 target, is also outlined. This would include addressing the underlying causes of species loss, such as patterns of consumption as well as the impacts of increased trade and demographic change. Ending perversely harmful subsidies would also be an important step.

The UN’s third global outlook was based on scientific assessments, national reports by governments and a study looking at future scenarios. It will feed into discussions by world leaders at a special “high-level segment” of the UN General Assembly in September and negotiations at the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit in Japan in October.

Despite having four Green Party Ministers, Ireland missed the deadline for submitting its national report to the UN convention’s secretariat; it is to be sent this week, according to a spokesman for John Gormley. The draft concludes that we have made “considerable progress” in designating areas for the protection of nature, in our knowledge base and in official awareness.

One thing leaps out: as the report admits, raised bogs as a habitat have been “heavily exploited. It is estimated that there has been a 99 per cent loss of the original area of actively growing raised bog, and one-third of the remaining 1 per cent has been lost in the last 10 years.”

And even this tiny remnant is “severely” threatened by peat-cutting, drainage, afforestation and burning.

It is beyond belief, therefore, that John Gormley’s ban on turf-cutting for “domestic use” in 32 protected areas of raised bog has been opposed not only by Fine Gael but also by Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore.

What this shows is that, when it comes to the crunch, short-term thinking still overrules a long-term, sustainable future for one of our most unique habitats.