Sir, – Last week’s UN report on global biodiversity paints a bleak picture. It warns that the world’s food supplies are under “severe threat” because of mankind’s failure to safeguard biodiversity. Overfishing, less productive land use, the decline in animals and micro-organisms that promote food production, unsustainable water-use management, population growth, urbanisation and overharvesting are all contributing factors.
Food production depends on thousands of organisms (worms and bees, for example). This is biodiversity and it is under threat, putting food production at high risk.
The report has found that 63 per cent of plant species, 11 per cent of birds and 5 per cent of fish and fungi are in decline. Furthermore, the variety of crop production is dangerously low. For instance, 66 per cent of global crop production is made up of just nine species (including rice, wheat and maize). The failure of any one of these would severely impact on agriculture’s ability to feed a rising global population, which is expected to rise to nine billion by 2050. There are just 40 types of livestock that provide the global population with meat, eggs and milk. With less biodiversity, these animals are more vulnerable to disease and extinction.
The report is clear that the cause of this decline in biodiversity is human activity – pollution, climate change, unsustainable construction (cement production) and deforestation. Bees and insects are the ones dying out the fastest and they are essential for food production.
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The environmental economist Robert Constanza estimated the value of “nature” at €33 trillion. He said that there was no right way to put a value on nature and the ecosystem. But there is a wrong way, and that is not to do it at all. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS POWER,
School of the
Built Environment
and Engineering
Technological
University Dublin.