Biodiversity in peril

Md. Asadullah Khan

The heady pace of economic growth fueled by rapid industrialization coupled with hurried urbanization that take people away from traditional employment in rural areas has contributed to the degradation of natural resources. But these natural resources are in many ways the foundation of a society and its economy. Shockingly, political economy in many countries emphasizes discounting the future value of human development, natural resources and ecological processes in exchange for short-term benefits.

Spurred by poverty, population growth, ill-advised policies and simple greed, humanity is at war with the plants and animals that share the planet. Nature's biodiversity is being destroyed by agents no other than humans simply out of greed. Every year fire caused by companies with vile greed for plantation and timber interest continue to destroy huge forest cover from Malaysia to Indonesia to India to even Bangladesh. Director of Missouri Botanical Garden predicts that if things are allowed to go on like this, during the next three decades man will drive an average of 100 species to extinction every day.

Extinction, believably is part of evolution but the present rate is at least 1000 times the pace that has prevailed since pre- history. Biologist E. O. Wilson believes that even the mass extinction 65 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs and countless other species did not significantly affect flowering plants. But these plant species are disappearing now through greed and population pressure and people, not comets and volcanoes, are the angels of destruction. Who knows how many plant species like willow, many of them till now unexplored, have been extinct for good?

Unfortunately, the earth is suffering the decline of the ecosystems -- the nurseries of life forms. As forests continue to be decimated, the soil has lost its protective cover and lies exposed to the relentless forces of wind and sun. As reports have been gleaned, nearly every habitat is at risk. Forests in all parts of the world has fallen to lumbering, development and acid rain. Marine ecosystems around the world are also threatened by pollution, over-fishing and coastal development. The last best hope to preserve the bio-diversity remains in the tropics. Tropical forests cover only seven per cent of the earth's surface but they house between 50 and 80 per cent of the planet's species.

Even developed countries can't afford to dismiss the growing concern about this planet earth's future or so to say their own countries' environmental woes. It has been stressed time and again that variety is the spice of life. Life needs diversity because of the interdependence that link flora and fauna, and because variation within species allows them to adapt to environmental challenges. But ironically, as the world's population explodes, other life forms continue to go extinct.

And surely humans are indulging in a risky game. Many of us are mistakenly prone to believe that we don't need the great variety of earth's species to survive.

With the alarm bells ringing, governments in many countries have turned their attention to high profile animals like tiger, elephant and rhino while most people hardly see the point of worrying about insects or plants. These are also on the verge of extinction. And extinction is a sort of environmental calamity that is irreversible. As these low species go extinct, they take away with them survival mechanism of other species. “ It is as though the nations of the world decided to burn their libraries without bothering to see what is in them,” said Pennsylvania biologist Daniel Janzen. Harvard's Wilson called this profligacy, the “folly” that future generations are not likely to forgive.

Humanity has already benefited greatly from the little known species. Some 25 per cent of the pharmaceuticals in use in the US today contain ingredients originally derived from the plants. Hidden anonymously in clumps of vegetation, ready to be bulldozed or burned, might be plants with cures for still unconquered diseases like AIDS and cancers. In addition to creating habitable environment, wild species are the source of products that help sustain our lives.

With the advent of genetic mapping and engineering, nature's diversity has offered many opportunities to agriculture, especially to biotechnology firms, the potent power to improve crops by transferring genes to wild strains. The most visible results are drought and salt resistant crops, natural fertilizers and pesticides.

Diversity is the raw material of earth's wealth, but nature's true creativity lies in the relationships that that link various creatures. The coral in a reef or the orchid in a rain forest is a part of the ecosystems that supports as well as offer check and balances integrating life forms into functioning communities. Given the complex workings of the ecosystems, it is never clear which species, if any, are expendable.

Biologists have identified numerous “hotspots” where ecosystems are under attack and surely a large number of unique species face an immediate threat of extinction. These troubled areas include Madagascar where 90 per cent of the original vegetation has disappeared, the monsoon forests of Himalayan foothills that include Nepal, India and Bangladesh that are being denuded by villagers in search of wood, building materials, and arable land, as well as forests of East Africa, peninsular Malaysia, Indonesia along with the Atlantic coast of Brazil and Mexico.

Because of such plundering of the forest, 976 species, throughout the world are classified as critically endangered. The animal species facing total extinction are Javan rhinoceros, Philippine eagle, Hawaiian crow, Chinese river dolphin, giant panda, Sumatran rhinoceros, and mountain gorilla.

Researchers grimly point out that our descendants would inherit a biologically impoverished and homogenized world. Not only would there be many fewer life forms, but also faunas and floras would look much the same over large parts of the world, with disaster species such as fire ants and house mice widely spread.

As it is catalogued now, humanity's food supply comes from a narrow sliver of bio-diversity. Throughout the history people have cultivated or gathered 7,000 plant species for food. Today only 20 species provide 90 per cent of the world's food and three -- rice, wheat and maize -- more than half. Natural pharmaceuticals offered by bio-diversity are also under-utilized. Only a few hundred wild species have served to stock our antibiotics, anticancer agents, pain killers and blood thinners. The biochemistry of the vast majority, millions of other species are unfathomed reservoir of new and potentially more effective substances.

Looking more closely at nature it would become evident that every species is a masterpiece, exquisitely adapted to the particular environment in which it has survived for millions of years. But we have to be concerned about the current spasm of extinction, which has been accelerated by the inexorable expansion of agriculture and industry. Nobody can deny now that the wellbeing of the human race is tied to the wellbeing of many other species which are most important for our own survival.

But dealing with the extinction crisis is no simple matter, since much of the world's bio-diversity resides in its poorest nations, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These countries can't think of spending huge sums of money to save some species -- be it elephant or an orchid. In a nation where a sizeable percentage of the people are living below the poverty line, the question promoting wildlife is something unthinkable.

People in poor countries should not be asked to choose between their own short term survival and long term environmental needs. Since protecting the environment is such a paramount necessity, the money should come from the international sources. What is needed now is a paramount global endowment devoted to wildlife protection and forest growth, funded primarily by the industrial nations.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.
e-mail : aukhanbd@gmail.com