The
earth is an incredibly complicated place, when you look at the whole world, its
oceans, the rivers, the forests, the climate; it is all connected and supports
this glorious array of life and us at the same time. However, we are slowly and
inexorably destroying what is our home.
Since 1970 the earth
has lost 52% of all of its wildlife. Currently
41% of all amphibians and 25% of all mammals are now threatened with
extinction. The last period of extinction like this, was 65 million years ago
when the dinosaurs went extinct. Scientists yesterday concluded that the earth
is now entering “the sixth great mass extinction level”.
The
Living Planet Report has warned that human activity is “outstripping
the resources the Earth can provide, cutting down forests too quickly,
overfishing and putting out more carbon dioxide than the planet can absorb,
leading to climate change”. It is estimated that the Earth would need to be 1.5
times larger to soak up the damage caused by man.
Indonesia, home to some of the
world’s most iconic endangered species such as the orangutan, rhino, tiger and
Asian elephant is set to lose 98% of all its rainforest by 2022. The below image shows the scale of deforestation in Borneo since 1950.
Much of the deforestation in
Indonesia is due to palm oil. Palm oil is a vegetable oil which is found in one
in ten of our supermarket products. 50 million tons of palm oil is produced
annually, supplying over 30% of the world’s vegetable oil production. According
to Greenpeace, major corporations such as Dove, KFC and Pepsi are among the
worst offenders in destroying virgin rainforest for palm oil. The WWF estimate
that an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour
to make way for palm oil production.
This large scale deforestation is
pushing many species to the brink of extinction. Mother orangutans are often
shot or burnt alive on the spot, with their babies ripped from their body for
the illegal pet trade. Shockingly an article from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation reported on a case where an orangutan called Pony was forced into the
illegal sex trade, where she was often raped routinely by palm oil production
workers.
The devastation of the world’s
rainforests are not only a huge loss to the wildlife, they are a loss to
humanity as a whole. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 70 per
cent of the anti-cancer plants identified so far are rainforest plants. A new
drug development possibly for treating HIV, is Calanolida A, which is derived
from a tree discovered on Borneo. It was only discovered in 1991. According to
the United Nations, 25% of Western Medicine comes from rainforests ingredients,
yet scientists have tested less than 1% of tropical plants. The rainforests are
potentially our largest and most powerful chemical laboratories, if we destroy
them it won’t be like mothballing a factory, we simply will not be able to able
to open them again. The irreversibility of deforestation of the world’s rainforests
would be a catastrophic loss to medical science.
Africa is also on the brink of
losing many of its iconic species. There are now fewer than 400 African Lions
left in West Africa, the numbers of elephants in Africa have dropped from nearly
10 million in 1950 to less than 500,000 today. With the rising price and demand
for rhino horn, lion gall bladder and ivory in Asia, wildlife is now worth more
dead than alive.
However, there is some hope. WWF
has embarked on a bold initiative called Tx2 to double the number of the
world’s remaining 3,674 tigers by the next Chinese year of the Tiger in 2022.
The Chinese year of the Tiger is symbolic because China has been one of the
greatest consumers of Tiger parts, such as Tiger rugs and Tiger bone wine. The
WWF aim to double the number of tigers by protecting and connecting key tiger
habitat, terminating the trade and demand for tiger parts in Asia and most
importantly establishing political will, public support, community support and
financing of key tigerland conservation.
Another way of saving nature is
to think of it as a commercial commodity.
Under capitalism, the only way to promote and protect something is to
make it more valuable in its natural state than it is when exploited and
consumed. Conservation travel could be a way of saving what we have left.
Namibia is a country that has become an icon for this and is one of the
greatest wildlife recovery stories ever told. What the government said in
Namibia is that if you can build new communities and organise yourself in a
responsible way to manage your wildlife, you can also own it and have reap the benefits. What were formed were new conservancies where communities worked in
partnership with wildlife travel companies and received a share of the profits
from tourism. 44% of Namibia is now
conserved through parks and conservancies largely in part to the economic
incentives from tourism. A black rhino
in Namibia can now bring in over $111,000 of income a year to a community and
Namibia is now also the only country in Africa where lion populations are on
the increase. The reason why, is that in Namibia, wildlife is worth more alive
than dead to the people. Wildlife conservation has transformed lives in Namibia
providing jobs, healthcare and schools to the community. The WWF has also stated
that HIV risk factors have also reduced dramatically inside conservancies. Namibia has simply said, we will live with
wildlife and tourism has made this possible.
Undoubtedly, much of what happens
in the future is down to us. The diminishment of biodiversity diminishes
humanity as a whole. If the forests die we die, if the oceans die we die, if
the bees die we die. Conserving what we have left is all we can do. If we do
not take care, if we do not act, if we do nothing, the only nature that the
world will know, will be like visiting a museum. Our grandchildren will grow up
in a world where there is nothing left; they will be standing in a line paying
somebody to enter a park, to see what the world used to look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPu4CqfmTA
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33209548
http://orangutan.or.id/ponys-new-life-2/
http://orangutan.or.id/ponys-new-life-2/
