International Day of Biodiversity – let's put conservation at the heart of politics
Unless biodiversity loss goes on the agenda of every minister from transport to trade, our generation will fail the next one
By Janez Potočnik, Guardian.co.uk
We might think of ourselves as an intelligent species but our self-destructive behaviour, at least as far as nature's delicate infrastructure is concerned, shows little evidence that this is true. The well-documented fact is that we are at risk of destroying this precious planet for future generations, or at least saddling them with an enormous financial and environmental legacy of having to fix the problems we couldn't.
This callous disregard is directly linked to growth. During the 20th century, the human population grew by four times and economic output by 40 times. We increased our fossil fuel use by 16 times, our fishing catches by 35 and our water use by 9. At the same time – and it is no coincidence – we have been living through an alarming global decline in species and natural habitats at up to 1,000 times the natural rate. In the EU alone, up to one quarter of animal species is threatened with extinction and 88% of our fish stocks are over-exploited. Most of our ecosystem services are 'degraded' – ie no longer able to deliver those basic and largely unknown, yet vital services such as crop pollination, clean air and water, and control of floods or erosion.
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