STATS & STORIES Storytelling for Biodiversity Southeast Asia & beyond
PUBLISHER ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity 3/F ERDB Building, Forestry Campus University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines www.aseanbiodiversity.org © 2014 ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity ISBN: The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) is ASEAN’s response to the challenge of biodiversity loss. It is an intergovernmental organization that facilitates cooperation and coordination among the ten ASEAN Member States and with regional and international organizations on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of such natural treasures. WITH SUPPORT FROM The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, is a non-profit cooperation enterprise for sustainable development and operates in more than 130 countries worldwide. Most of the activities are commissioned by the German Government. GIZ works closely with the public and private sector as well as civil societies to carry out results-oriented international cooperation. Its considerable experience with alliances in partner countries is a key factor for successful projects. Since September 2010, GIZ through the Biodiversity and Climate Change Project (BCCP), has been supporting the institutionalization of ACB’s core program on biodiversity and its nexus with climate change, contributing to an ASEAN-wide strategy. www.giz.de AUTHOR: Philipp Gassner ‘GreenChallenge Accepted - Interface expert for the strategic communication of sustainability - beyond the ivory tower’ Green: Call Philipp a resourceful, enthusiastic and conscientious interface expert with a passion for knowledge, people and the environment. Challenge: He’s dedicated to get the science of sustainability across interfaces. On his mission he combines • Content as cross-disciplinary environmental scientist with • Method from science communication, knowledge and project management, and consultancy. Accepted: Philipp frees science and sustainability from the green ivory tower: He turns data into drama, numbers into narrative, and stats into stories - translating knowledge into practice in order to change institutions. GreenChallengeAccepted.org @GrnChllngAccptd facebook.com/GreenFoTainment linkedin.com/in/PhilippGassner EDITORS: Dr. Monina T. Uriarte, Mr. Rolando A. Inciong, Ms. Leslie Ann V. Jose, Ms. Agnes R. Pantastico LAYOUT: Mr. Nanie Gonzales, Mr. Eisen Bernard V. Bernardo DISCLAIMER: This publication may be reproduced for educational or non-profit purposes without special permission, provided acknowledgement of the source is made. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of ACB or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or contributory organizations. The designations employed and the presentations do not imply the expressions of any option whatsoever on the parts of ACB or contributory organizations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area and its authority, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. For all correspondence relating to this publication, please contact: contact.us@aseanbiodiversity.org Most articles were first published in the BusinessMirror or the ASEAN Biodiversity Magazine.
Foreword
T
he Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which entered into force on 29 December 1993, has three objectives: the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources. The Tenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD in 2010 adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, together with the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Aichi Target No. 1 states that: ‘By 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably’. The challenge to meet the first target is to increase public awareness on the importance of biodiversity. In this context, the CBD promotes awareness raising for biodiversity issues and concerns. The International Day for Biological Diversity, every 22nd day of May, and the UN Decade on Biodiversity, are but two examples of these efforts. People always like to listen to a good story. Storytelling has the power to engage and move people. Biodiversity facts and figures, when presented in story form, can be easily understood. This publication, Stats & Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity Southeast Asia & Beyond, is a unique attempt to tell stories about biodiversity. It hopes to contribute to the promotion of biodiversity conservation using simple and clear language. And what better way to start with ‘once upon a time’.
Mr. Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias Executive Secretary CBD
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Message
J
ust like the rest of the world, the ASEAN region faces the daunting challenge of biodiversity loss. Such challenge is a crosscutting concern which recognizes no geographical, social, cultural and political boundaries. As such, halting biodiversity loss is not the sole turf of governments and environmentalists. It is the concern of all sectors. An equally challenging task is to make biodiversity an easyto-understand term. The world of biodiversity is filled with scientific and technical terms and would thus be unattractive to ordinary people. To engage more sectors in conserving biodiversity, specifically meeting the Aichi Targets, there is a need to make biodiversity a public by-word. Biodiversity needs to be demystified. It is in this context that the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and Germany, through the GIZ-assisted Biodiversity and Climate Change Project, are publishing Stats and Stories. Author Philipp Gassner, a technical person himself, has simplified complex biodiversity issues and concerns through his adept story-telling craft. Stats and Stories is our contribution to achieving Aichi Target No. 1: “By 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably.� Stats and Stories is our contribution to demystifying biodiversity.
Atty. Roberto V. Oliva Executive Director ACB
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Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Message
“B
iodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our life.” This was the message for the International Year of Biodiversity
(2010). Whose life? “Biodiversity” as a concept is not relevant to most people and perhaps never will be. So, how could we ever promote biodiversity and its conservation in our societies, develop concepts for the sustainable use of biodiversity elements, and incorporate the value of biodiversity and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits in concepts of green and sustainable economies? People do relate to biodiversity and its conservation if the concepts are referred and translated to “my life”, “my job”‚ “my health”, or “my future”. Translation is communication. Communication is naming things by a name, it’s storytelling, among others. It’s both pre-requisite and a tool for change. Communication prepares the fertile ground for information exchange, consensus among divergent opinions, knowhow and decision making. But there is no shortcut between ‘Said’ and ‘Done’. Said is not yet heard... Heard is not yet understood... Understood is not yet approved... and Approved is not yet done! Recognizing this, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) provides a plan to fill the gap between ‘Said’ and ‘Done’. Its over arching framework, the Strategic Plan, is for all to engage in biodiversity management and policy development. It underlines the importance of biodiversity for Mankind as well as the steps towards a sustainable future for upcoming generations. On its journey to a sustainable future, the CBD is supported by the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity in translating and promoting sustainability and biodiversity in the ASEAN region, striving for a unified response to the challenges ahead. This publication aims at decoding and demystifying Biodiversity, this web we call life. This publication intends to show the reader the full range of what biodiversity is, what biodiversity means and how important biodiversity is in the lives of our ancestors, of ourselves, and for the future of our children. These press articles represent a collection of stories about” my life”, “my job”‚ “my health”, or “my future” unfolding the amplitude of Biodiversity - stories which will continue to unfold through time. Forever.
Dr. Berthold Seibert Project Manager GIZ Biodiversity and Climate Change Project
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Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Photo by Jan Brendan Singlador
Once upon a time... Communicating Biodiversity
G
reen is the new pink. Sustainability is en vogue. And quite rightly so. Illustrations come by the bookful. Take climate change, pollution, the sixth global mass extinction, land degradation, and threats to food security. You name it, we have it. The world is hitting the environmental buffers. This is more and more jeopardizing meaningful development, with Southeast Asia’s dwindling treasure chest of biodiversity at the forefront. However, simply gazing at these symptoms will leave us stumped for an answer – numerous global efforts don’t bear fruit. Also, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the key agreement on sustainable development, faces many barriers. Instead, green ideas have to drill down on the root causes. In a nutshell, we are currently not living off of our ecological annual interest, but drawing down the accumulated natural capital, leaving future generations with a huge debt. Us humans, we are both the problem and the solution for sustainable development. And we simply are not moved to action by data dumps - à la 350 ppm [CO2], N (animals, critically endangered)=3079 or 36.9 ha/min deforested. Instead, human knowledge is based on emotional stories. People are storytelling organisms that lead storied lives. All too often, the public, scientists and politicians stare at each other over a gulf of mutual incomprehension. Surely, anecdotes don’t make science. Data is important. It informs the story. But it is not the story. Without a compelling story, great ideas – also the green ones – are dead on arrival. To get green ideas across, we must start our agenda with ‘Once upon a time…’ and use the molding power of stories. If we want to create
real behavior change, we must turn data into drama, numbers into narrative, and stats into stories.
WHAT’S A BIODIVERSITY STORY? A story is a narrative account of an event, with a key element of truth, even if it is fiction. The protagonist’s tale, let’s say a lazy lemur’s life, might be imagined, the destruction of his habitat is real. Stories grab us because they add emotion, characters and detail to bare facts. Stories are as old as language and our brains are built to learn from stories, as we have done over thousands of generations. Stories capture our attention and create empathy as well as help us understand and remember message. Stories work for big business, as the equity story of the Islamic Bank, London shows, which doubled the business’ value to 200 million British pounds1. So why shouldn’t it work for conservation, too? That’s what the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) thought, which now tells stories of Love. Not Loss.2 But neither love nor a message without a storyteller. Storytelling engages an audience and conveys its message as entertaining as possible. Storytellers bring remote issues closer to the audience, turn complexity into vividness and build faith in the ability to solve the problem. They speak to our emotions instead of our rational mind, and turn apocalypse into happy endings. Then again, happy endings and messages for everybody are heard by no one. Stories must always be custom-made for the beliefs, attitudes and knowledge of the audience. Without taking into account what the listeners assume to
Veit Etzold, Equity Storytelling - Think - Tell - Sell: Mit Der Richtigen Story Den Unternehmenswert Erhöhen, 2014, http://www.springer.com/springer+gabler/ management/unternehmensf%C3%BChrung/book/978-3-658-03888-5. 2 IUCN, “Love. Not Loss.,” 2014, https://iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cec/cec_how_we_work/love__not_loss_/. 1
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
be true, how they feel about it and what they already know, a story is likely to fall on deaf ears. The stories of this publication, for instance, are tailored to the growing number of middle class educated populace in Southeast Asia, being interested in issues of sustainable development. But they are also written for facilitators, communicators, educators in the region, and their strategic communication. To turn a story into an earworm, it must be seen as a means to an end. And communication without complementing rules, enforcement, or infrastructure won’t lead to a happy end.
THE EPIC JOURNEY OF THE CBD To come to a happy end, a story needs a hero. Let’s call the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the hero of this story for now. The CBD has 194 Parties, among which are the ten ASEAN Member States. Once upon a time there was a great evil in the world. All the flourishing flowers and amusing animals were in danger. Something had to be done! In 2010, the noble members of the CBD came together in faraway Aichi and agreed that biodiversity is very important for all people. They wanted to put a halt to its loss. Since the CBD had many wise fellows among them, they came up with a plan for a long journey to save their world. The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 to be precise. Their journey had a vision: ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’, which they knew couldn’t be reached overnight. Instead, they had to take the rocky road step by step, goal by goal, and target by target. The very first target that ‘by 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably’, is the guiding star and rationale of this publication. Here the CBD acknowledges that the lack of public awareness on the importance of biodiversity is a vital, if not the most significant barrier for the journey to achieve the CBD’s objectives. This publication will follow the epic journey along the Five Strategic Goals and 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, with a special focus on Southeast Asia – home to four of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots.
Four years later, as we approach the mid-way mark of the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity, Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO4) provides an important measure of how we are faring. The good news is that Parties are making progress, and concrete commitments to implement the Aichi Biodiversity. However, GBO4 also shows us that this effort needs to be redoubled if the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 is to be implemented and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets achieved. Additional pressures will be placed on the lifesupport systems of our planet by a greater population, by climate change, and land degradation. The work of the Parties will need to overcome these.
PLOT AND CONFLICT Every story needs a conflict. Boy meets girl. Girl marries boy. And they live happily ever after. Boring! Luckily, or rather sadly, there is plenty of conflict in biodiversity conservation. Conflict unravels throughout the plot of a story and turns it into a roller coaster ride for the characters. Remember one of the most gripping stories there are– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, which oscillates intensely between what is and what should be throughout the 13 minutes3. Characters always ‘have a dream’, while they may be flat, minor characters; or round, and major. The major character is the protagonist opposite his antagonist. They are revealed by how they respond to the conflict, and what they learn from it. This happens in the meta-plot4, which begins with the vision stage. The hero is called to the coming adventure, starting in the dream stage. With his first achievement, he comes to the false impression of invulnerability, which is unveiled in the stage of failure. The hero meets the valiant, leading to the climax where hope is apparently lost. But, against all odds the hero wins, and demonstrates the lessons learnt in the moral. This meta-plot is usually elaborated in one of seven Basic Plots5. Needless to say, also our CBD’s epic journey follows a meta-plot, picturing the Five Strategic Goals of the CBD6: Each goal with its Strategic Targets along a particular Basic Plot. •
Duarte, “Analysis of Dr. King’s Speech,” Duarte, 2014, http://www.duarte.com/mlk-sparkline/. Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (London ; New York: Continuum, 2005). 5 Ibid. 6 CBD, “Aichi Biodiversity Targets,” Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010, http://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/. 3 4
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Contents
Goal C
Simply Complex - The Quest.......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Nature’s Invisible Hand – Simply Complex.......................................................................................................................................... 7 Speechless Diversity – Talking ‘bout an Evolution............................................................................................................ 10 The World’s Oldest Science Dying – Taxonomists as Endangered Species....................... 12 No Place like Home– Habitats from Oceans Deep to Mountains High................................ 14
Vision and Dreams
Trees and the City – Trends of Urban Biodiversity. ....................................................................................................... 17
Goal D
Our Web of Life – A Comedy....................................................................................................................................................21 Mangroves: Mangling Multitaskers......................................................................................................................................................................22 No Water Without Wetlands Part I..................................................................................................................................................................25 World Health Day for a Healthy World – In Mother Nature’s Drugstore.......................... 27 I Want to Fly Away – Destination Flyways.......................................................................................................................................30
Achievement
Art to Save – Nature’s Aesthetic Value.....................................................................................................................................................33
Goal D
Mining our Ecosystems – Rags to Riches............................................................................................35 Mining our Ecosystems – Of Flatulence and Overconsumption Part I.................................. 36 Steering the Earth-Ship.............................................................................................................................................................................................................39 Saving the Ocean’s Web of Life..............................................................................................................................................................................42 Every Litter Bit Hurts.................................................................................................................................................................................................................44
Failure
Farm to Fork – Leaving a Smaller Foodprint Part I....................................................46 A Healthy Risk? Ancient Answers.......................................................................................................................................................................49 (Car-)Bon Voyage – Small Islands in Big Trouble...............................................................................................................52
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Goal A
Yes, we can! - Overcoming the Monster.....................................................................................................55 Mining our Ecosystems – Of Flatulence and Overconsumption Part II............................... 56 On a Shopping Spree – How Much’s the Nature?.............................................................................................................59 From Reef to Ridge - A Sunday Stroll through the Philippine’s latest ASEAN Heritage Park..........................................................................................................................................................................................62
Second Achievement
Born to be Wild in a Warming World........................................................................................................................................................66 Marine Conservation – From Seaweed to Flying Dinosaurs........................................................................... 69 An Environmental Gender Agenda –Sharing the Caring for the Future................................ 72
Goal E
Green is the new pink – Voyage and Return................................................................................75 On the Bright Side – Hope for the Patient Earth in Hyderabad.......................................................... 76 Giants of Biodiversity – A Belly Full of Ecosystems.................................................................................................. 79 Spare a Dime for Biodiversity.....................................................................................................................................................................................81 Farm to Fork – Leaving a Smaller Foodprint Part II................................................................................................... 83
Moral
No Water Without Wetlands Part II...............................................................................................................................................................85
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Simply Complex: The Quest
Vision and Dream ‘I have a dream’, is the motto of this first stage of the story. The protagonists find themselves in an ideal world. Vision and Dream are most prominent in the plot type The Quest, wherethe hero and his companions set forth to obtain an important object, facing many obstacles and temptations along the way. The most famous examples are Homer’s Iliad, The Wizard of Oz, and The Lord of the Rings. Remember the Hobbits’ idyllic Shire full of green grass, butterflies and happiness? Such a world is also ours– with all its blooming biodiversity. Five stories tell the diversity wonders of our ecosystems, species and genes, in the spirit of Goal C. Where did they come from? What are they like and how can we safeguard them?
Goal C: To improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity
Target 11 By 2020, at least 17 percent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes. Target 12 By 2020, the extinction of known threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline, has been improved and sustained. Target 13 By 2020, the genetic diversity of cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Photo by Nikki Sandino M. Victoriano
Men’s visible hand: planted mahogany trees, Bohol Province, Philippines
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Nature’s Invisible Hand – Simply Complex
S
tuck in a traffic jam? Trouble with your partner? Stressed by your job? Zoom away and relax for a moment in wonderland– a place of rainbows and unicorns. But where can we find such a mystic place?The narrow strip of lush evergreen forests along the mountains of the Annamites called Truong Son in Viet Nam, or Sai Phou Louang in Laos, might just be it! Entangled in the rainbow-magic monsoon forests along the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail, look closely and you might just get a glimpse of a unicorn.
a relic of the last Ice Age and one of the world’s rarest mammals. Only 11 have been recorded alive. The first one during an expedition led by Dr. John Mackinnon, the co-director of the ASEAN Regional Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, now known as ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, who remembers: ‘I knew it was so ‘wow!’ so ‘new’!’ Also with an undeniable wow factor is the Kangaroo rat, which is so adapted to desert life that it won’t take a single drink of water in its whole life. Or the scallops, which have more than 100 single eyes –commonly
The Polite Animal
blue ones. Or take the clam ‘Ming’, the world’s oldestrecorded animal, born 507 years ago when Leonardo da Vinci was just painting the ‘Mona Lisa’. Sadly Ming just passed away, some 70 million years after the Dino Deinocheirus, an odd mix of a sloth and camel, with 2.4meter-long arms and 20-centimeter claws. Not wow enough? Then you might like the Glowing Jellyfish, or rather the glow-in-the-dark ice cream, which a British company is making from the jellyfish’s luminescent protein.
An Asian unicorn to be precise! And its name is well deserved, owing to its long, sharp parallel horns. Undeniably, the chocolate brown Saolas or Pseudoryxng hetinhensis do have a certain mystique about them. Known as ’polite’ animals, they walk in a gentle, quiet and slow manner. When they sleep, they have their forelegs tucked under their bodies, necks extended and chins resting on the floor. Then again, to witness this wonder you have to be lucky, very lucky. The eight million-year-old cousin to the cow, goat and antelope is
Photo by M. Hummelt
Snapshot of the rare Asian Unicorn, Saola
The Economy of Nature Glow-in-the-dark, 100 eyes, unicorns! Marveling at the resourcefulness of nature’s incredibly ludicrous and squandering inventions, one cannot help but wonder: what’s the point and how is this even possible? By sheer chance? Surely not! Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith offers an answer. Exactly 238 years ago, on 9 March 1776, he published The Wealth of Nations. In this fundamental work in classical economics, he illuminates how our incredibly complex, inventive and powerful economy works and developed – a similarly puzzling mystery to nature’s rich biological diversity. In a nutshell, each enterprise is doing its best to prosper, yet without the ‘benefit’ of a centralized planner. Something very simple – individual competition – results invisibly to our eye in something very complex – an efficient economy.
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
But how can Smith’s famous metaphor of the invisible hand of the self-regulating market explain our rich natural biodiversity? English naturalist Charles Darwin wondered too, and coined the term Economy of Nature, according to which life on Earth evolves without the guidance of a designer. Instead, in his book Origin of Species, he explains the ‘invisible hand’ of nature, better known as evolution.
Playing Evolution “The survival of the fittest” – rings a bell? Well, let’s see. To grasp this concept, take a friend and play a little game. You have to guess a word in 20 questions only with yes or no answers. Out of about one million possible words of the English language that seems impossible, or is it? Just try and see what happens: ‘Is the word an animal?’ ‘No’. ‘Can I eat it?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Is it a fruit?’ ‘No’. Step by step you get to the answer, quicker than you think. This is how it works: initially you ask for a category of words, which may be wrong. Thus, in the next round you randomly vary the category and repeat asking, coming closer to the word every step. This is the same with nature: a random genetic mutation causes a variation, for instance, slightly thicker fur on a formerly bald animal. In a hot climate this variation is useless, or even a hindrance. The environment will answer with no. In a colder climate, however, the variation is very beneficial, helping to survive the cold. Thus, the variation will be passed on to the next ‘round of questions’, inherited by the following generation. This way of the environment saying yes is called selection. But instead of passing on variations in words like in the game, evolution uses genetic code, also known as DNA. This does not only happen in one individual but the whole genetic pool of many individuals. Repeated over and over again, the animal species will become very furry – or glowing in the dark or have 100 eyes.
Stunning Simplicity Put simply, the stepwise progress of evolution works through hereditary variation plus variation in success of reproduction (selection) plus repetition.
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Thus, the common understanding of evolution as the ‘survival of the fittest’ can be rephrased as ‘passing on the code of the most successful reproducer’. However, this does not only happen in reproducing animal or plant species. It is a universal principle in many systems, such as culture. Our taste for music, art or food is stored (e.g. in a cookbook), multiplied and passed on (e.g. by a publishing house), and modified (e.g. by the cook). Or take evolutionary algorithms which are used daily for instance by hackers to break password protection or by automated trading systems in the financial sector. Just like Smith’s invisible hand, ‘Darwin’s theory of evolution was a concept of such stunning simplicity – variation, selection, repetition– but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life,’ English writer Douglas Adams put it. Does life get ever more complex then? There are indeed increasingly complex blueprints, like the ones of our eye or brain. But that does not necessarily make it more successful. In fact, the most basic life forms are still dominant on Earth, such as the estimated nine million bacteria species which have been around for billions of years.
Going Bankrupt This notion does not only explain the immense biological diversity around us, but puts us in line with the millions of peer species – inviting a certain humbleness. Sure, throughout history humans tried to push the pause button on their own evolution by building buffers, like houses or medicine, against the natural selection around them. And instead of growing their own thick coat of fur like other animals, men simply learnt to take it off them. But mind you, that it is exactly this evolution born diversity around us that makes the global ecosystems resilient to all kinds of threats. If one species fails, the next one steps in. If conditions change, gene pools can adapt. Biodiversity acts as an ecosystem insurance, we are all too dependent on. Which brings us back to our unicorn: the latest was photographed in Viet Nam last September 2013 for the first time in the 21st century. Let’s hope it was not the last time. •
Photo by Lim Fung Yenn
Biodiversity is often referred to as the web of life. It is the unique combination of life forms and their interactions with each other that have made Earth a habitable place for humans.
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Speechless Diversity – Talking ‘Bout An Evolution
H
e must have felt lonely. Very lonely, as he couldn’t talk to anybody.At least not in his native language. The New Guinean Lua had indeed only a single speaker in the whole wide world, as recorded in 2000. Also, other residents of the island won’t have a big debate club. The language Bo is spoken by 85 people, Likum and Hoia Hoia by 80, Ak by 75, Karawa by 63, Abom by 15 and Guramalum has only three speakers. In contrast, New Guinea features around 1,000 languages, making it the world’s most linguistically diverse place, where it is not unlikely to be greeted with Hello, Tabeaya, Aelak, Koyao, Selamat, Kawonak, Nayak, Brata or Nareh. Being ennea lingual certainly dwarfs growing up with two languages. Around 7,000 languages are counted globally. But why? Wouldn’t a single global language make life so much easier? It would at least have avoided famous translation mistakes like the fast food slogan ‘finger lickin’ good’, which came out in Chinese as ‘eat your fingers off ’. Also the Dairy Association’s campaign ‘Got Milk?’ would certainly not have translated to: ‘Are You Lactating?’ in Mexico.
Murmuring Mates This would also not have happened to animals which communicate, but don’t formulate words. While birds only have their songs, primates are a bit more sophisticated with vocalization, hand gestures and body language; however, they don’t have a spoken language. In contrast, our ability to express complex and infinite thoughts with spoken language is one of the ways we are separated from our primate counterparts by evolution. And evolution has its funny ways: just take feathers. They were an adaptation to keep freezing birds warm, and were only later used for flying. Likewise, between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago language developed as a result of other evolutionary processes in the brain. Cognitive structures that were used for things like tool making or rule learning happened to be also good for
10
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
complex communication, as linguist Noam Chomsky and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould argue. Nevertheless, language is not a mere, random byproduct of evolution. Think of the turtle and its shell which is an evolutionary adaptation, making a population change over time to better survive. Survive, for example, a bird in its brand new, cozy feather dress, picking at the poor reptile. A shell-protected animal would be more likely to survive than its naked fellow, and the innovation of the shell passed on from generation to generation. That’s natural selection at work. According to the scientists Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom, similarly, Homo sapiens benefited big time, when they began to communicate while hunting, farming and defending themselves. ‘Watch out Arrg, there is a huge sabertoothed tiger over there!’ This gave a distinct survival advantage over their mumbling, murmuring mates, helping language use to spread. Moreover, language helped with successful social interaction. It is hard to imagine using Facebook without any language.
Tree-Climbing Kangaroos This might explain one language but not 7,000. To better understand this diversity, let’s go back to the second largest Island of the planet. New Guinea is not only linguistically diverse, but also in terms of biological abundance, harboring, for instance, the tree-climbing kangaroos and more orchid species than found anywhere else in the world. As seen with the turtle and the birds, both language and biological diversity are products of evolution and have evolved in remarkably similar ways. As a result, biodiversity hotspots, such as tropical forests, feature high linguistic diversity, whereas deserts for example have few languages. Higher biodiversity can support larger cultural diversity. Both diversities depend on the same environmental factors like temperature, rainfall or topography. When animal populations get isolated long enough from each other, for instance, by a mountain range, they split in new, different species. If this happens to communities, they may form new, different
languages. Language diversity is traditionally preserved by indigenous peoples who passed down their knowledge orally from generation to generation. In this way, 90 percent of the world’s languages are spoken by less than 100,000 people. These languages are key to maintain the encyclopedia of traditional indigenous knowledge, cultural identity, traditional heritage and customary laws. Such laws are, for instance, the base for systems of forest governance that in turn foster the sustainable use and protection of biodiversity.
Virtual Villages Protecting this biodiversity goes hand in hand with maintaining the rich diversity in culture and language.
Language rights for indigenous peoples can be a first step, ensuring the recognition in constitutions and laws, to be educated in one’s mother tongue and to establish and have access to media in indigenous languages. A new kind of media is tested in the village of Erindiroukambe, in the Namibian Kalahari desert. 3D visualizations of the village on tablet computers are supposed to help residents embed their knowledge in a virtual village, stored for future generations. Kasper Rodil, at Aalborg University in Denmark, is currently developing a drawing app for the tablet ‘which imitates the way elders draw diagrams in the sand to explain what they mean’. Let’s see, perhaps soon Facebook will be used in Bo, Likum, HoiaHoia, Ak, Karawa, Abom and Guramalum. •
Photo by Aldrincuadra
Hope for the future stewardship of cultural and biological diversity.
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The World’s Oldest Science Dying – Taxonomists as Endangered Species
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arastratiosphecomyiastratio sphecomyioides, Micropachycephalosaurus hongtuyanensis, Aquila chrysaetossimurgh. Put yourself in Noah’s position, when he had the tedious task to select two of every kind for his Ark. Would you be able to spell, let alone identify this fly, dinosaur and eagle? It might be a bit easier for the bug Orizabus subaziro I, which can be read either forward or in reverse direction, the beetle Agra schwarzeneggeri, the spider Calponia harrisonfordi or the ant Proceratium google. But have you ever heard of them? Unlike Noah in the Genesis, you could now just flash your Smartphone, open the DNA Barcode App, scan every animal passing by, and the name would pop up on your screen, and you could tick it off the list. This app works just like the scanner of a supermarket, which distinguishes, for instance, different cans of tomato soup and shows their price, using the little black stripes of the Universal Product Code (UPC). Instead of the black stripes on a can, this new gimmick uses snippets of the DNA, the genetic information of every living being, to tell you whether you deal with the cicada Zyzza or the sponge Zyzzya. Two items may look or sound very similar to the untrained eye or ear, but in both cases the barcodes are distinct. Filling the Ark is dead easy now.
The World’s Oldest Profession Sounds a bit too much like science fiction? Sorry to say, you are right. Even though science has made tremendous progress and we know have an electronic catalogue of almost all known plants and animals, such scanner of the ‘Barcode of Life’ is still a long way ahead. But more on this later. For now, luckily the good old taxonomists are still out there to help you. Taxonomists are the stamp collectors among the scientists, as the physicist Ernest Rutherford would have said, who by the way dismissed all of the science that falls outside physics as mere “stamp collecting”. Well, they do not quite collect stamps, rather animals and plants, or more so, their names. And doing so, taxonomy, the art of naming and sorting things, is the
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world’s oldest profession: ‘So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals’, according to the book of Genesis (2:20). This naming has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate. It would always have been important to know the names of poisonous and edible plants and animals, in order to communicate this information to other members of the family or group. Following Noah, one could call Shen Nung, Emperor of China about 3000 BC, the second biggest taxonomist. He is said to have tasted hundreds of plants with the goal of learning their medicinal value. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, 384-322 BC, used a less culinary tactic but dwarfed his Chinese colleague with his claim to classify no fewer than all living things. It took, however, another 2,000 years to master the discipline of taxonomy. More influential than ABBA, and more celebrated than Björn Borg, the perhaps most famous Swede Carolus Linnaeus invented taxonomy as we know it. Already by the age of eight, he was given the nickname ‘the little botanist’ due to his keen interest in flowers. But he struggled, like many others, with the higgledy-piggledy scientific names, used in the early 18th century. The humble tomato for instance was called Solanum caule inermi herbaceo, foliispinnatis incises acemissimplicibus. Try to remember that next time you ask for tomatoes at the market. Instead, the little botanist gave all the plants a much easier name in two parts, and the tomato became Solanum lycopersicum. Even a Chinese grocer, who calls the vegetable, would now know what you want: a nice red tomato.
Our Global Life Support System In biology, a tomato is known as a species, the basic unit of classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. A Dalmatian and a Boxer could interbreed, since they are both members of the species ‘dog’, even though their pups might be funny to look at. A zebra and a horse could not, they are two different species. The
total number of such species in the world is unknown, but probably come to between 5 and 30 million. If you add bacteria species, this number would be much higher, since just one teaspoon of soil can have a staggering one billion bacteria. Together this fantastic variety can be described as biological diversity or biodiversity. We humans entirely depend on biodiversity for survival. Just take the wood from different trees, clean water from wetlands species, oxygen from green plants, food from all kinds of animals and fish, or the mere beauty of a butterfly on a flower. Combined, these services from bio-diverse ecosystems build our global life-support system. How many of these services have you used today? How many of these species have you seen already? Perhaps the Auroch, Tarpan, Tasmanian Tiger, Quagga-zebra, Steller’s Sea Cow, Bluebuck, Pyrenean Ibex, Falkland Islands Wolf, Atlas Bear, Caribbean Monk Seal, Bali Tiger and Javan Tiger, Eastern Cougar, or the Western Black Rhinoceros? Most probably not, since all these animals are prominent peers of the ten thousands of species, snuffed out every year. In contrast, each year, we also celebrate the discovery of new species, but only about 15,000. That means we are losing species way faster than we can yet discover and name them. We lose them before we even knew they were there, with all their services and potential, such as new medicines against cancer or HIV. An out crying shame. Two out of three ecosystems on Earth are damaged, while most extinctions happen silently and are undocumented. Identification of large, charismatic animals may be easy. Everybody can spot an elephant. However, the majority of organisms – and organisms going extinct – are insects, plants, fungi and microorganisms. But could you tell the 70,000 or so different ant species apart? How do decision makers then decide where to establish protected areas if they do not even know what is being protected? How can developing countries ensure that they reap the benefits of the use of their biological diversity if they do not know the biological diversity of their own nation? It is crystal clear that we need to learn more about our fanciful biodiversity with its entire unique species. But is it on the cards? Cataloguing all unknown species could cost US$263 billion, according to a recent estimate in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution –money worthwhile spent to preserve our live-support system, our drip and ventilator, if you may. And just a quarter cut
of the annual US military budget would easily raise the money, no worries. The much bigger challenge is the fact that taxonomists themselves are an endangered species. We simply lack the qualified species experts needed. This is the main stumbling block to identifying the millions of unknown creatures out there. Even worse, most taxonomists work in industrialized countries, which typically have less animals and plants than the tropical developing countries. The lack of trained human resources and inadequate capacities on taxonomy is one of the main obstacles to the protection of biological diversity.
Making Taxonomy Cool Again Young people consider taxonomic research as a low career prospect. Taxonomy is just not cool enough, if kids even know about it. But this could change when people become more and more equipped with taxonomic expertise, tools and information. Well, the App shop still does not have the DNA Barcode App in stock, but modern taxonomy already uses database technologies such as the Catalogue of Life. This catalogue attempts to list every documented species and already has 1.4 million entries, covering more than 74 percent of all known species. The combination of this catalogue and the DNA Barcode App could make playing Noah really easy, and taxonomy cool again. Just walk around the forest, scan animals and plants, and if they are not listed, it is your unique chance to name a new species. But sorry to say, Carmenelectra shechisme, Han solo, Oedipus complex or La cerveza are already taken. •
ACB photo
Southeast Asian taxonomists are trained to identify the region’s rich biodiversity.
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No Place Like Home – Habitats from Oceans Deep to Mountains High
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id pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home,’ asthe famous 19th century song ‘Home! Sweet Home!’ goes. Just how sweet and valuable a home is? As with many things, you might not realize until you lose it. The millions of currently homeless typhoon victims can tell you a thing or two about it. But not only for us humans is a place to call home essential, also to every other species on God’s green Earth. Animal or plants call the area they populate ‘habitat’. But what makes a habitat a home? Nice furniture and a cozy fire place? Let’s see and go on an expedition across our green Earth’s habitats.
Shelter on Flotsam Fragments Habitats can be tiny. Less than five millimeters across is perhaps the most peculiar and modern-day habitat. Despite its miniature size, millions of bacteria find a home here, and water striders even lay their eggs on it. Curious what that could be? By accident, humans have created a new home, the ‘Plastisphere’. As we dump millions of tons of plastic waste into the ocean every year, much of it ends up as microplastic. Don’t be fooled, it cruelly harms most marine animals that unintentionally swallow it, but it is also hosting microbes not found in open water. Among them also
Photo by Yohana R. Frias In Gumaca
Tree replanting is an urgent activity to protect our habitats, be it forests or mountains.
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the nasty ones, like Vibrio bacteria that cause cholera. In this fashion, such plastic micro rafts impressively show one feature of habitats: providing shelter.
The Oldest Habitat? Shelter to a diverse community of organisms, which could even include fish, might also be provided by the Earth’s possibly oldest habitat. If not the oldest, then it is at least the most extreme: Lake Vostok was buried quietly underneath 3.700 meters of Antarctic ice for 15 million years, till scientists shouted ‘Drill baby, drill’ in the 1990s. And drilling they did, most recently last year. The possible habitat they found was ice cold, pitch-black, under extreme pressure from the ice above and showed toxically high levels of oxygen. Doesn’t sound much like a cozy habitat, does it? Indeed, scientists are still not sure whether the genetic traces of microorganisms and fish they drilled upon are just contaminations. If the lake was indeed sterile, it would make the only body of water on Earth empty of life. Life always demands for some basic environmental factors like soil, moisture, range of temperature, and availability of light as well as biotic factors such as the availability of food, which habitats provide.
Habitats Driving Wind and Weather Habitats can provide much more. Their own weather, for instance. Wouldn’t it be odd to need a private weather forecast for your living room? Well, the weather forecast for the world’s second biggest living room is not too exciting: slightly overcast, 365 days a year. Weather makes its way into Cloud Ladder Hall, a giganticcave in China and gets trapped inside. Anyway, the clouds don’t matter that much, as the six millioncubic meter hall is equally dark as Lake Vostok. It shows, however, that habitat crucially provide a climate for the species inhabiting it. And not only the climate inside but also way beyond a habitat, as the next stop on the expedition will show. Like motherhood and apple pie, all species need water. Water from rain that is recycled by one of the worlds’ biggest habitats: Forests. In forests, water evaporates, rises to the air, rains again and creates winds, which bring even more water with them. If forest
habitats are lost, the rainfall in the continental interiors may decline by up to 90 percent. To remind you, Sahara, the world’s biggest desert, was a lush wetland habitat just 6,000 years ago. Beyond the regional environment, forest habitats support a stable climate for the whole wide world as storage of incredible amounts of CO2. What happens when our climate losses this stability was dreadfully witnessed by the sufferers of Typhoon Haiyan. While tropical storms are likely to get more powerful in a warming world, they ironically speed up the warming themselves. Take Hurricane Katrina, tearing up around 320 million trees when it hit the US east coast in 2005, thus releasing over half the amount of carbon absorbed annually by forests in the US. A percentage likely to be much higher in the tropical Philippines. Luckily there is a cure offered –how could it be otherwise – by a habitat. Mangrove trees in Southeast Asia are cutting greenhouse gas emissions while protecting us against deadly tsunamis or typhoons. Shielding mangrove habitats in Northern Samar, Philippines helped reduce damage from the November 8, 2013 storm, as they did during the 2004 tsunami all over the region. Considering this, it is worthwhile investing in such habitats, in addition to immediate disaster relief, to reverse the trend of the Philippines losing about onepercent of mangroves a year. Mind you, these regional habitats harbor 51 of the global 70 mangrove species diversity.
Diversity in Potential and Threats Diversity is also the buzzword of the last habitat on our journey: from evergreen rainforests to perpetual ice and snow, from more than 12 meters of annual precipitation to high deserts, and from sea level to almost 9,000 meters in altitude. It covers around 27 percent of the Earth’s land surface, occurs on all continents, in all latitude zones. Of the 20 plant species that provide 80 percent of the world’s food, six originated here: maize, potatoes, barley, sorghum, quinoa, tomatoes and apples. You name it, this habitat has it. But how is this even possible? By adding another dimension, altitude, compressing a wide range of environmental conditions into a relatively
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short distance. Often,this habitat provide islands, suitable to species which only occur here –so-called endemics – isolated from surrounding unfavorable conditions. We are of course talking about Mountains. This diversity in mountain habitats is also home to very distinctive human communities. Some 720 million mountain people are directly dependent on the habitat for their sustenance and well-being, but also billions of lowland people benefit from mountain energy, timber, biodiversity, recreation and spiritual values. And water: as the water towers of the world, mountains provide freshwater to more than half of humanity.
Habitats as Key ‘Mountains are the key to a sustainable future’, the motto of last 2013’sInternational Mountain Day held on 11 December. And for a sustainable future all concerned stakeholders need to be involved, knowing about the fragility of their mountain habitat, as well as all the other places people, plants and animals call home. As the song aptly ends: ‘Sweet, sweet home! There’s no place like home, there‘s no place like home!’
Wikimedia Commons
Mountains and Rivers of the world by Alvin Jewett Johnson (1827–1884)
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Trees and the City – Trends of Urban Biodiversity 2014’s New Year’s resolution – quit smoking, more sports, healthy diet. But certainly not living in the jungle! Oddly, this is true for half the Philippines’ population. No, this is not the late effect of a new year’s hangover speaking. The New Year will indeed mark more Filipinos living within the outside jungles: concrete Jungles. The biggest of them all, known as Metro Manila, harbors an estimated 25 million people in its greater sprawl. This quarter of the Philippines entire population, needless to say, don’t live in the trees. However, Bob Marley’s famous metaphor of a concrete jungle is not too farfetched. From a bird’s eye perspective, tangled city labyrinths don’t seem that different to a rainforest or a coral reef. They are
just another of Earth’s living systems. Just like other ecosystems, cities provide shelter, a lot of shelter. Although cities occupy just twopercent of the Earth’s surface, they harbor – like in the Philippines– 50percent of the world’s population. But it’s not only human populations who find a home in cities. Also numerous plants and animals are city citizens, contributing to important urban biodiversity hotspots. On the other hand, cities are hotspots of environmental damage, using 75percent of the planet’s natural resources. City ecosystems are interconnected with, and draw on their surrounding ecosystems for goods and services. Their products and emissions in turn affect regional and global ecosystems.
Photo by Ongbengteck
Urban Biodiversity in Singapore
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Such knock-on effects bring major challenges for 2014 and beyond. By 2050, roughly 70percent of the world’s population is expected to be urban, with Southeast Asia a little less hurried: Cambodia is still only 20 percent urbanized, followed by Viet Nam with 30 percent. Nevertheless, on the average, 44 percent of Southeast Asians are urban dwellers, with Singapore taking the lead wherein every single Singaporean calls the city its home.What such a home feels like, shares Dr. Lena Chan, Director of the National Biodiversity Centre, NParks, Singapore in an interview: Is Singapore symptomatic for the global trend of urbanization? Dr. Chan: Singapore is highly urbanized. Besides being a high density city, Singapore also has to cater for many other land requirements. Solutions to address these challenges are pressingly needed. Singapore continues to work with agencies, communities and individuals to find innovative ways to improve peoples’ lives and the environment that we live in. To improve people’s lives, Singapore became a garden city. Or a city in a garden? Dr. Chan: On 16 June 1963, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, planted a Mempat tree (Cratoxylonformosum). It symbolised the birth of a garden city which set off tree-planting on an islandwide scale. This campaign transformed Singapore into a beautiful clean city with flowers and trees. As Singapore becomes more urbanized, we need greenery that functions more than a decorative purpose to ensure that the environment is sustainable and liveable. Hence, Singapore decided to transform itself into a ‘City in a Garden’ in which greenery would be pervasive and evident even on the city’s buildings in the form of vertical walls and rooftop gardens. Biodiversity would be rich even in urban landscapes, and the community would have an interest and stake in the greening of Singapore. Talking about biodiversity: What is behind the Singapore index on Cities’ Biodiversity? Dr. Chan: Many cities around the world, including
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Singapore, have put in great efforts in biodiversity conservation. How does one know that these efforts are achieving what they aim to do? The Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity, also known as the City Biodiversity Index, is an evaluation tool for assessing the status of a) the biodiversity and ecosystems in a city; b) the ecosystem services that are provided by biodiversity in the city;and c) the governance and biodiversity management practices of the city. The Singapore Index comprises 23 indicators that are measured quantitatively and can be tracked by cities over time. The composite index will help cities to evaluate whether biodiversity has improved as a result of their conservation efforts and management efforts. Cities from Asia, Europe, North America, New Zealand and South America have applied the Singapore Index. How many species are there in Singapore, then? Dr. Chan: Singapore is located in a biodiversity hotspot. There are many native species found in Singapore from a variety of taxonomic groups. The following list gives an indication of the diversity of native flora and fauna still found in Singapore, in spite of its urbanization: 2145 native vascular plant species, 364 bird species (more than the number of bird species in France), 98 reptile species, 66 freshwater fish species, 306 butterfly species (60 butterfly species are found in the United Kingdom), 35 true mangrove tree species, and 256 hard coral species (35 percent of the global total of 731 hard coral species). Many of these species live nestled in the heart of Singapore and not more than 15 kilometers from the busiest shopping areas, in the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. What is its importance to the city? And does it face challenges, considering the half million visitors per year? Dr. Chan: Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (BTNR) is conserved for its primary tropical rainforest ecosystem, especially for the rich native biodiversity that it harbors. It is only one of two primary rain forests in the world located within city limits, and was declared an ASEAN Heritage Park in October 2011. BTNR functions as a green lung by cooling the
ambient temperature, replenishes the oxygen, cleans the air, moderates the water flow, etc. It is accessible for recreation. It also serves as an educational laboratory for schools and researchers. With greater appreciation of its multiple values, BTNR has seen a rise in the number of visitors in recent years, and it is important to manage the challenges posed by high visitorship. These include outreach efforts on how to appreciate nature and how to carry out one’s recreation in a way that is sensitive to the biodiversity as well as to other visitors. Such ‘islands’ of biodiversity are good and well, but aren’t they completely isolated by streets and buildings? After all, flowers or reptiles can’t cross a traffic light. Dr. Chan: Developments potentially result in the fragmentation of sites with natural habitats in cities. It is a growing trend for cities to re-connect these natural areas. Singapore’s efforts to link nature reserves together
with green corridors have grown with the placement of the ecological bridge Eco-Link@BKE. Singapore is not the first city to have done this, and each city has to decide on the appropriateness. In Singapore, we believe that the Eco-Link@BKE will add value to the ecological connectivity of the nature reserves and provide a larger effective area for the survival of our native fauna and flora. The park connectors and planting on our roads also contribute to linking up our natural sites. With 16 million Singapore dollars, the green bridge is not exactly cheap. Moreover, with high competition for space and soaring rents, can we afford green space in cities? Dr. Chan: Singapore has decided that greenery should be a major feature in our urban landscape. We believe that greenery will improve people’s lives and make Singapore a great city to work, live, and play. Pervasive greenery will also give Singapore a distinctive edge in attracting foreign investments in this highly competitive global economy.
Photo by Angie Metin
Gardens by the Bay
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Nevertheless, there are common reports about Singaporeans being terrified of bee hives and the like. How does this disconnection from nature fit to the image as green city? Dr. Chan: It is inevitable that as people congregate in highly urbanized environments, they become alienated from the natural habitats. Human-wildlife interactions are common in cities. However, it is increasingly being recognized that biodiversity is important for an enriching and good quality of life. Public awareness and education programs that inform people of the biodiversity and their roles in our lives will help people understand the importance of plants and animals. It is also crucial that people connect with nature by visiting these natural sites and actively participate in biodiversity surveys, gardening, nature walks, etc. These efforts take time and we are seeing early positive signs that outreach and education are helping people develop a healthy appreciation for nature in their neighborhoods. To realize our City in a Garden vision, community involvement is key. We actively engage the community through various initiatives like Community in Bloom, which was set up to promote gardening on a national level. There are now more than 600 community gardens island-wide.
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Dr. Lena Chan, thank you very much for sharing these insights into the City in a Garden. Cities like Singapore with rich biodiversity are found all over the world – Berlin, Chicago, Curitiba, Kolkata, Mexico City, Montreal, Nagoya, New York City or São Paulo, to list but a few. Then again, what does it take to turn a concrete jungle into a green jungle again? And at the same time reduce their impact on the real jungles, and other ecosystems out there? One answer comes from an ancient Garden City, Babylon, wherein its famous hanging gardens inspired a new way of farming given the limited space and lack of land for agriculture. Then, just add one dimension: vertical farming, the cultivation of plant or animal life within skyscraper greenhouses. Such sky farms reduce the dependence and impact on surrounding areas while reconnecting people to the origin of their food. Importing 90percent of its food, Singapore took this unlikely idea seriously. In 2012, the world’s first threestorey high commercial vertical farm was opened in the city, already producing 500 kilogramsof juicy vegetables per day. Biodiversity can be so yummy. Eating healthy – a sound New Year’s resolution for the world’s concrete jungles. •
OUR WEB OF LIFE – A COMEDY
Achievement The dream is achieved. The biodiverse Garden of Eden provides us with all we need. We live in a land of milk and honey. And much more important Ecosystem Services, which are provided by biodiversity – our web of life. Achievement is the theme of the plot type Comedy. The protagonists are destined to be in love or to achieve, but something is keeping them from being together or getting it. Think A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Mr. Bean, who amusingly struggles to get a grip. A similar struggle is our web of life, as exposed in this chapter and Goal D. No matter if it’s mangroves, wetlands or soil that provide their services, it is always an enduring challenge to use them sustainably and share benefits fairly. Only at the very end issues are resolved. Be it Payment for Ecosystem Services or Mr. Bean, finally managing to park a car, brush his teeth or change his pants.
Goal D: Enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services
Target 14 By 2020, ecosystems that provide essential services, including services related to water, and contribute to health, livelihoods and well-being, are restored and safeguarded, taking into account the needs of women, indigenous and local communities, and the poor and vulnerable. Target 15 By 2020, ecosystem resilience and the contribution of biodiversity to carbon stocks has been enhanced, through conservation and restoration, including restoration of at least 15 percent of degraded ecosystems, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation and to combating desertification. Target 16 By 2015, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization is in force and operational, consistent with national legislation.
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Mangroves – Mangling Multitaskers
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elax in our fabulous, affordable wooden beach cottages with sweeping sea views and crystal clear water full of vibrant tropical fish. Enjoy a cold drink in your hand and the warm, salty breeze on your face as the sun sets over our endless white beach. Awake to the sound of rumbling waves. And tourists all over South Asia did. That it would be the rumbling of a 30-meter wave was not mentioned in the travel brochure. The wave, known as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, turned out to be the deadliest natural disaster in recorded history, hitting Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand the hardest. When booking their holiday to these destinations, tourists would have been happy to tick an insurance option against this kind of disaster. As would be all 200 million people worldwide, living directly along coastlines, and in particular the millions of South Asians affected by tsunamis.
Insurance on the Cheap Alright, better safe than sorry: for the next trip to the beach, we shall take a tsunami insurance. But who will provide this? Surely not AXA or Allianz.The answer waits just around the corner of the beach: a couple of inconspicuous, torpedo-shaped seedlings in the sand. And these will insure against a 30 meter wave? Wading a bit further in the chest-deep, brackish, teacolored water, we can see towering giants: 25-meter tall and densely packed, with webs of entangled prop roots extending like skirts from each trunk. That is more like it. But what might these tall mangling structures be? Mangling is the right catchword. Mangle is the Spanish origin for the word mangrow, today known as Mangroves. Mangroves narrowly refer to the plant family Rhizophoraceae and are, in words of one syllable trees up to medium height that grow along the seashore of the tropics and subtropics. Sure, these trees provide an enjoyable scenery, yet, how on earth can a few trees insure tourists and coast dwellers from a fierce tsunami?
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The 2004 tidal wave did not only leave horrific human tragedy in its wake but also some lessons. Lessons learnt by the lucky inhabitants of three mangrove-sheltered villages of the Cuddalore District on India’s East shore. And even more so by their, not so lucky, neighbors. The former experienced the cushion effect of mangroves protecting their villages. Already 30 trees per 100 square meters reduce the maximum flow of a tsunami by more than 90 percent. Satellite photographs remarkably show, how the latter found their two villages in shreds, due to deciding against this insurance option provided by Mother Nature. And as insurance provider, Mother Nature is now beng taken seriously on the market. Some insurance agencies offer cheaper policies for resorts with beaches seamed by mangroves. Not only to protect from the odd tsunami, but also from much more frequent calamities, such as typhoons and floods. Calamities, which sound all too familiar to millions of oceanfront Filipinos, Indonesians or Indians. Let alone the people of Fiji, Tuvalu, or the Federated States of Micronesia, who live just two meters above sea level. Sea levels which are on the rise as the globe warms and the poles melt. Such rise turns average surf into a flood. And storms, multiplied by the very same global warming, into small tsunamis.
Blue Carbon Locked into the Soil Better be climate change insured then and, of course, by mangroves–mangroves which can yet do much more! They can fix climate change in the first place, and thus render an insurance against it obsolete. Sounds too good to be true? How can a couple of trees in the water mitigate climate change? Well, by addressing the very cause of it, the boosted carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, which lead to the warming greenhouse gas effect. Just like any other tree, mangroves capture carbon from the air and store it in their wood. But mangroves do an even better job. To discover their
GIZ photo
Mother Nature’s true all-rounder: Mangroves in the Philippines
secret, we have to dig deep in the muddy, grubby ground. In the rich, tidally submerged soil, mangroves store about 90 percent of the fixed carbon in the form of organic material, which decomposes very slowly. Thus they continuously lock huge amounts of ‘blue carbon’ into the soil under the sea level: 1,000 tons per hectare, more than three times as much as tropical forest on land.
Mother Nature’s Bank Account This carbon lock is great news for the climate and great news for us. We can kick back and conveniently continue our beach holiday, enjoying the wooden beach cottages, the colorful fish, the sweeping views and the clear water, as advertised in the brochure. Without having to worry about mangroves anymore. Or do we? Sorry to say, but without mangroves the travel brochure would read quite differently: Dull
views, lifeless oceans, filthy water and no wooden cottage. Indeed, mangroves are spot on all-rounders: They are a source of timber and construction materials, e.g. for beach resorts, while, at the same time providing them with sweeping panoramas, promoting wellness and recreation. They filter coastal pollution, prevent soil erosion, and improve biodiversity. For instance, they are home to the endangered Kalimantan Proboscis Monkey. Besides, they capture and accumulate sediments in their roots, which serve as nursery to many species of fish that feed the world. Near shore fisheries, critically important to millions of coastal communities in Southeast Asia and worldwide, and most large-scale commercial offshore fisheries are utterly dependent on mangroves as breeding grounds. No wonder that Viet Nam decided to plant and protect nearly 12,000 hectares of mangroves, spending US$1 million but saving annual expenditures of well over US$7 million on dyke maintenance alone. Try to get such interest rate from your bank.
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If you include the other services provided by mangroves, one square kilometer of mangroves is worth jaw-dropping $900,000 a year. What a nice savings account for every coastal community. But this account has a flip side: by hastily taking too much money out of it – say in form of timber for a beach cottage, worth a couple of hundred dollars – you will lose an incredible amount of yearly interest rate.
ASEAN: Bestowed with Mangroves For the ASEAN region, this foregone annual benefit is estimated at a staggering US$ 2.2 billion by year 2050, with Indonesia expected to suffer the highest losses at US$ 1.7 billion per year. Sadly, many have not realized the vast value of their mangrove account yet. While Southeast Asia’s account contributes 35 percent of the mangroves found on Earth, half of it was already lost during the last decades. With grim symmetry, also half of global mangroves are lost, as well as half of Philippine mangroves, or half of Viet Nam’s mangrove rich Mekong Delta. ‘An area of 628 square kilometers of mangrove got stripped away each year throughout the last couple of decades,’ stressed Demetrio L. Ignacio, Jr., Undersecretary of the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources and former Acting Executive Director of the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), in his message as keynote speaker during the Regional Symposium on Mangrove Ecosystem Conservation in Southeast Asia, held on 27 February 2013 in Surabaya, Indonesia. Indonesia contributes around three million hectares of mangroves, an estimated 21 percent of the world’s remaining supply. But conversions to oil palm plantations and shrimp ponds make Indonesia rapidly losing its green fringes. Similarly in the region, mangroves are lost to aquaculture, to urban, coastal and agricultural development. This not only causes a huge financial loss, but also loss in biodiversity, loss in esthetic value, and loss in food and livelihoods– particularly severe for the estimated 600 million people, depending directly on mangrove resources. And what is more, loss in carbon storage. Almost 1.2 billion tons of carbon is emitted annually
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from mangroves, 10 percent of carbon emissions from deforestation globally.
Mangroves for the Future ‘Our biggest challenge is to make the public aware of these true values of mangroves,’ summarizes Environment Undersecretary and former ACB Executive Director Demetrio L. Ignacio. The ACB addresses the problem in numerous ways, with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Biodiversity and Climate Change Project (GIZ BCCP). But how do they want to save mangroves with all their values? By planting them, easy as that! And you can almost watch them grow. On suitable ground, some species can reach up to two meters within two years. A cakewalk! What is more challenging is to protect your newly planted seedlings, as well as old-growth mangrove forest. As we have seen, they are just so versatile in the goods they provide that people get easily lured into making the fast buck, rather than use the full mangrove potential. To realize this potential, mangroves conservation needs to be mainstreamed into development planning, what the initiative Mangroves for the Future tries to do. Set up after the 2004 tsunami, it offers grants to communities to protect their mangroves, which has been implemented already in about 90 projects across South and Southeast Asia. In these projects, people are trained to understand how best to use and protect their precious mangroves. Such understanding of mangroves is crucial in the bigger picture. Mangroves research is a little bit behind compared to other tropical forest issues. The multitalented plants simply challenge the talents of scientists, as well as decision makers. Forging collaboration between science and policy is thus high up on the agenda of ACB. Let’s all take action and help the little torpedo shaped seedling to protect us from waves – by protecting it from the wave of deforestation. Help it to provide shelter, livelihood, food, water and a stable climate. Help it to grow in its role as a true multi-tasker of nature. •
No Water Without Wetlands Part I
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re you reading this article over your Sunday morning breakfast? Bon appétit! And are you washing it down with a glass of water? What you just drank will fill up three bathtubs of water! Wait, three bathtubs and still thirsty? Clearly, the water in your breakfast was well hidden – virtual, so to say. We drink, in one form or another, nearly four liters of water daily, and use about 150 liters for washing and other purposes. However, the food we consume each day requires at least 2,000 liters to produce, 500 times as much. Your breakfast’s virtual water footprint: 140 liters for coffee, around 80 liters for toast, 120 liters for eggs, 240 liters for milk, coming in total to 1,100 liters or 13,391,400 droplets.
A Droplet’s Journey Where does this vast amount of water come from? Let us rewind the journey of one of these droplets to find out. If you are in Metro Manila, the tap water comes from the Angat reservoir, located north of the city in Bulacan Province. The water embraced in the glass of milk had to cover a longer distance to your table, most likely from New Zealand’s pastures. Interestingly enough, around 80 percent of accessibly freshwater used by humans is directed towards agriculture. Our globalized agricultural system means that much of that water use is not in the country where the product is
Photo by Kyaw Kyaw Winn
‘Wetlands are not competitors for water but rather essential components of water infrastructure, providing a clean source and store of freshwater’
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being consumed. Thus, many countries, in particular the industrialized, are essentially exporting their water use, just as they export carbon emissions. For instance, it has been estimated by the Water Footprint Network that Europe exports 42 percent of its water footprint. Another leg of the journey in the water cycle will shed some light on how the water ended up in a large reservoir or a lush green meadow. As you might have guessed, the little droplet first evaporated, travelled through the troposphere, and returned to earth as rain or snow, feeding rivers or groundwater bodies, which can then be used for agriculture, drinking or sanitation. Hang on, did we not miss a step here? Almost certainly the droplet would have passed a wetland on its way, the primary resource from which humans derive water. A minor detail? Certainly not, since ‘wetlands take care of water’, which was also the slogan of last year’s World Wetlands Day.
Wetlands as Water Infrastructure The day’s focus is on the critical link between wetlands and water: without wetlands there will be no water – and without water there will be no wetlands. Undeniably, access to clean and adequate water supply is critical for human survival, far beyond your breakfast: 41 percent of the world’s population lives with severe water stress, a number predicted to rise to two-thirds by 2025. The same time when even the tropical Philippines are predicted to be facing water shortage, partly due to population growth. Today, providing clean water could save most of the 1.8 million children who die every year from diarrhea. In contrast to this immediate importance of water, less well understood is that wetlands are fundamental regulators of water regimes. Without adequate management of wetlands from the mountains to the sea, there is no water of the right quality and quantity where and when it is needed. ‘Wetlands are not competitors for water but rather essential components of water infrastructure, providing a clean source and store of freshwater’, says Anada Tiéga, Secretary General of the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
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The New Insurance Company Beyond being a caretaker of water, wetlands are one of the most biologically productive natural ecosystems, comparable to the glut of coral reefs. Wetlands include marsh, fen, peatland and other areas where water primarily controls the environment – whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, salty or brackish. These environments serve as a habitat for myriads of associated plants and animals, including many endangered and threatened species. Likewise, such plant communities, and the surrounding soil, function like a big carbon jar, thus playing a crucial role in moderating global climate. The degradation peatlands, a common phenomenon in Southeast Asia, equals alone seven percent of all fossil fuel CO2 emissions. To see yet another ecosystem value of wetlands, we can ask some residents of the urban communities, situated on the edge of Vientiane in Lao PDR. They will happily tattle about the That Luang Marsh providing important resources and agricultural land for their local communities both in the city and in the bordering rural areas. Moreover, the wetland offers substantial flood protection, through the retention of storm runoff generated by the city, and water treatment for domestic, agricultural and industrial wastewater. Every citizen in Southeast Asia’s deluge plagued metropolises, be it Manila or most recently Jakarta, would certainly appreciate similarly functional ecosystems around their homes. The goods and services provided by relatively small That Luang Marsh alone are worth just under US$5 million annually, a number that can be up-scaled many-fold for a megacity. Compared to the flood damage in the billions, wetlands provide a dirt cheap prophylaxis. Since likely climate change scenarios load the dice in favor of more extreme weather events, it is worthwhile thinking wetlands’ protective services as a new generation of insurance policy, provided not by AXA, Sunlife and Co., but Mother Nature herself. As the third most vulnerable country in a warming world, particularly the typhoon tortured Philippines would benefit big time from this full coverage climate collision insurance. As the saying goes: Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. • Part II on page 85
World Health Day for A Healthy World – In Mother Nature’s Drugstore
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little headache from last night’s party? Just have a quick aspirin and you will feel better in no time. The medicine box is empty and the pharmacy closed? No need to worry. A short stroll in the nearby forest will do the trick. Even if you do not see the painkiller pills growing on the tree, be sure they are there: a tiny bit of the bark and leaves of a willow tree, et voilà, your headache should be gone. Already some 400 years BC, the Greek Hippocrates knew about this trick, becoming the father of Aspirin, and by the way, modern medicine. The first records of traditional remedies, such as the oils of cedar, cypress, licorice, myrrh and poppy, date back even further to 2600 BC, and they are still being used today. Once you are in nature’s own pharmacy you might as well stay for some more shopping. How about some microbes, such as Penicillin, the almost exclusive source of all antibiotics? Or some Artemisinin from the sweet wormwood plant, the most effective anti-malarial drug used today? The latest thing: Paclitaxel from the Pacific Yew tree, used in treating breast, ovarian, and other cancers. Maybe some venom of the cone snail C. magus, called zinconotide, 1000 times more potent than morphine, but not addictive? This shopping list could go on and on. And the best thing about it, Mother Nature will not even send a bill for this treasure chest of medicine, unlike every other pharmaceutical company – even though her profit could be overwhelming. Natural products have been the source of more than 60 percent of new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the past three decades, while undiscovered cancer treatments from marine organisms alone could be worth between a jaw-dropping US$ 563 billion and US$5.69 trillion, according to a recent study. Take the example of the cone snails whose 140,000 substances show potential in the treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and heart attacks.
In the Mall of Biodiversity Apart from medicine, what else do we need to stay healthy? Let us continue shopping in the mall of biodiversity. Next to the pharmacy, we find the grocery store with food shelves filled to the top, thanks to biodiversity. Diverse ecosystems play a crucial role in human nutrition, as they ensure the sustainable productivity of soils and provide the genetic resources for all crops, livestock, and marine species harvested for food. Access to sufficient nutritious variety of food is clearly a fundamental determinant of health. On the way, we also should get some vaccinations against a whole range of infectious diseases. Intact and diverse ecosystems provide an important natural control and thus prevention from the emergence and spread of diseases in animals, plants and humans. These include expensive livestock illnesses, zoonotic outbreaks and global pandemics. In contrast, human impacts on
Wkimedia Commons
Conusgeographicus. Cone Snails’ 140,000 substances show potential in the treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and heart attacks.
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biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change or water management helped the recent infamous outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, avian influenza or malaria. Some pampering for our social, cultural and spiritual health? No problem, a stop at the park will fix this. Access to greenspace has been associated with improved health outcomes, shorter hospital visits, reduced antisocial behavior, or diseases of affluence such as diabetes or obesity. Next door there is an insurance agency where we can get a low-cost insurance against all kinds of natural disasters threatening our health and well-being –some mangroves as tsunami protection, a forest to prevent landslide and a wetland to buffer floods. That should do.
Climate Change Coverage Wait a minute, there is a promotion for a climate change insurance, provided by nature in the form of diverse and thus resilient ecosystems. This comes in handy, since the planet warms gradually, but the effects of extreme weather events – more storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves – will be abrupt and acutely felt, all certainly not good for our health. Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) points out five major health consequences of climate change: • First, rising temperatures and more frequent droughts and floods can compromise food security. Malnutrition, much of it caused by periodic droughts, is already responsible for an estimated 3.5 million deaths each year. • Second, more frequent extreme weather events mean more potential deaths and injuries caused by storms and floods. These are often followed by outbreaks of diseases, such as cholera, especially when water and sanitation services are damaged or destroyed. • Third, both scarcities of water, essential for hygiene, and contaminated excess water will increase diarrheal disease, already accounting for about 1.8 million deaths each year. • Fourth, heatwaves can directly increase morbidity and mortality, mainly in elderly people with cardiovascular or respiratory disease. 2003’s heatwave for instance had a terrifying death toll
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of 70,000 in Europe alone. • Finally, changing temperatures and patterns of rainfall are expected to alter the geographical distribution of insect vectors that spread infectious diseases, like malaria and dengue.
A Smart Investment for Climate Change Living in Southeast Asia, such a climate insurance is particularly important, since the region will be affected way above average. Decreasing fresh water, rising sea levels, increasing floods and storms, and intensifying risks of hunger and diseases render the Philippines, for example, the third most threatened nation by climate change worldwide. In a nutshell, global warming is likely to compromise all the invaluable health services, we have windowshopped before. Thus, our climate change insurance seems like a smart investment. However, as with any other insurer, the insurance premium will depend on our preload. An unhealthy lifestyle such as smoking or drinking will increase the risk for our health and thus the extent of the premium. Accordingly, deforestation, oil spills or CO2 emissions can and should be set against the value of intact nature. The better we treat our ecosystems, the lower will be the premium, the safer will be the protection against climate change impacts and the better will be the consequences for our health. It is time for action.
Healthy Planet, Healthy People ‘While the reality of climate change can no longer be doubted, the magnitude of consequences, and – most especially for health – can still be reduced’, says Dr. Chan. Protecting human health needs to be anchored at the heart of the global climate change and biodiversity agenda. This can start at the local level, where traditional knowledge plays an important role, not only for natural medicine but also for sustainable agriculture and food security. Climate change mitigation, happening on the ground, offers many win-win opportunities for enhancing population health. Take the example of the Philippines Department of Education which is mainstreaming climate change education into its public school curriculum.
Photo by Zaw Min
Children in Myanmar share a feast of vegetables, meat and rice. Biodiversity is a source of food for nearly 600 million people in the ASEAN region.
Regionally and internationally, consideration of the health impact of climate change can help political leaders move with appropriate urgency, as UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon’s puts it. ‘We must respond with urgent action to stabilize the climate, achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and encourage individual action’. The project BiodivHealthSEA, for example, focuses on local impacts and perceptions of global changes in health and biodiversity in Southeast Asia. On a larger picture, we need to make invisible health and insurance services visible – economically tangible.In comparison, this year, wealthy nations will
donate more than 13 billion Euros to procure food and medicines and to improve sanitation and freshwater access for the world’s poorest. As we have seen, other investments may be just as valuable, if not more so, for ensuring health and well-being. There may be no greater strategic investment in health than in the protection of biodiversity and climate. Health is our most basic human right and one of the most important indicators of sustainable development. Without an intact eco and climate system, we may end up paying the hidden price for nature’s health services – giving us a much bigger headache than last night’s party. •
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I Want to Fly Away – Destination Flyways
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ake only memories and leave only footprints’ charms the travel brochure in bright letters. Also the scenery sounds to die for, doesn’t it? ‘A romantic landscape of coastal tundra, near to crystal clear coastal lagoons and bays.’ Let alone the food: ‘Enjoy our three course menu with a fresh variety of larval invertebrates, midges, mosquitoes, flies, beetles, and spiders. Perfected with a juicy smoothie of selected grass seeds and berries.’ It’s definitely time for a holiday. Mr. Piper couldn’t agree more. Have you met Mr. Piper? Mr. Sand Piper. He is a bit lonely and bored by his wintery home in Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam, and by the same old cousin of shrimps and other boring seafood. So he doesn’t hesitate long and books the advertised adventure trip to northeastern Russia along the Bering Sea coast of the Chukotsk peninsula and southwards down the Kamchatka peninsula.
After 8,000 exhausting kilometers, with his neighbor annoyingly close to him and the board entertainment system broken, Mr. Piper finally arrives at the Arctic Circle in the final days of May. The brochure didn’t promise too much: excellent food, stunning scenery and on top lots of lovely girls. The lonely days are over. He immediately begins displaying the best suit he brought. Travel in style he always says. And before long he meets his dream girl, they get married and live happily ever after. Too good to be true? It was! His wife leaves him only three weeks later and heads back home. Poor Mr. Piper stays behind with their children they just got. Surely by now you guessed that Mr. Piper is a bird, if the larvae diet didn’t already give him away. He is a migratory Spoon-billed Sandpiper to be more precise. And after his chicks reach fledging age, he, too, departs,
Photo by Smith Sutibut
Mr. Piper, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Eurynorhyn chuspygmeus) is only one of the hundreds of bird species travelling the East Asia-Australasian flyway.
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Photo by Howard Ignatius
Three million birdwatchers make eco-tourism one of the fastest growing travel sectors in the world.
with them following 8,000 kilometers south on their own a few weeks later.
Lay Over Stepping Stones So to say, Mr. Piper is one of the one billion international tourists every year, spending US$ 1.03 trillion in 2011 alone. But this industry is dwarfed by the billions of migratory birds that set out to travel the world. Mr. Piper doesn’t like to travel alone. He flies together with 200 fellow waterbird species using twice a year the East Asia- Australasian Flyway, connecting Russia to Southeast Asia and Australia. As they travel along, conveniently they don’t have to worry about passports and visas, since they don’t mind any political borders that they cross. However, one thing they couldn’t get rid of are layovers. But instead of trying to sleep on an uncomfortable bench in airport departure halls, they use networks of sites that act like ‘stepping stones’ along flyways for resting, feeding, breeding and wintering. Thus spanning continents and oceans, used by a myriad of bird species, flyways represent one of the most spectacular and valuable phenomenon of the world’s natural heritage.
Pollen Luggage This heritage is used by plenty of migratory animals that are key components of the ecosystems that support all life on Earth. For instance their luggage: instead of sunscreen and a camera, they bring lots of pollen and seeds with them, contributing to ecosystem structure and function. Moreover, they regulate the number of species in ecosystems and provide food for other animals. Animals like us humans – through subsistence, recreational and commercial hunting and fishing. In this way, they also have a great significance in many cultures – in legends, stories, religions, medicine and customs, or in the way we measure time and experience seasons. Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of people preferring to watch them over eating them. Mr. Piper and company attract a lot of so-called ecotourists such as whale watchers or bird spotters. The latter already being three million people, give a hint that ecotourism is one of the fastest growing travel sectors in the world. Quite aware of this, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) partnered up with the World Migratory Bird Day, May 10-11, 2014. The celebration’s theme ‘Destination Flyways: Migratory Birds and Tourism’ promotes building local sustainable tourism by linking together
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key migratory bird sites, local communities and the global wildlife watching industry –with benefits for both people and migratory birds.
tourists, deforestation and water scarcity at the Western Indian coast or the loss of Mr. Pipers habitat in Saemangeum are but some reminders.
Seawalls and CO2
No Passport, No Boarders
To grasp the importance of this effort, we could ask Mr. Piper who is one of only 100 breeding pairs remaining in the wild. Some shorebirds show annual declines of nine percent and a third of the bird species in the flyway are already critically threatened. Why? Mind you, this region is also home to 45 percent of the world’s human population, putting many bird sites under threat from land reclamation and degradation. Just take one example of a stepping stone being lost: Saemangeum, the largest seawall in the world, eliminated one of the Yellow Sea’s most important shorebird refueling habitats, which hosted half a million migrating shorebirds. But Mr. Piper’s peers also face more indirect threats, such as habitat fragmentation and degradation caused by climate change. While Mr. Piper emits only a few kilos of carbon dioxide on his 16,000-kilometer travel, humans are not as frugal. For the same trip, the average airline passage would emit more than 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide. And since they are produced at cruising altitudes high in the atmosphere, they trigger a series of chemical reactions and atmospheric effects that have a multiplying warming effect. Including this effect, one passenger emits an equivalent of close to four tons. This is four times the emissions of the average Filipino, a year. Thus, civil aircraft, ironically fundamental for international tourism, accounts for two to six percent of global warming with emissions having risen by 83 percent since 1990. Unfortunately, this is not the only environmental impact of tourism consuming vast amounts of energy, water, land and habitats. Mount Everest’s damaged habitats and slopes littered with garbage from countless
Luckily, governments, conservation organizations, scientists, and others around the world work together to conserve Mr. Piper’s and other migratory birds’ habitats. For instance, habitats in the East Asia-Australasian flyway which the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity deals with. Its protected area management, supported by GIZ, the German Development Cooperation, focuses on important stepping stones in the region. Lots of such stones are also to be found in 119 States in the African-Eurasian flyway, used by 255 fellow bird species of Mr. Piper. The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds aims to conserve those, from the northern reaches of Canada and Greenland, across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia to the southern tip of Africa. However, since birds don’t have a passport and don’t know political boarders, international efforts are also crucial. The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme is concerned with the conservation of wildlife and habitats on a global scale. As is BirdLife International, a partnership of 116 independent national NGOs. Within this framework, sustainable tourism has its role to play: planning and management can dramatically reduce the impact on environments and bird habitats, and help locals to conserve and benefit from their biodiversity. But an even more important role plays the sustainable tourist, respecting local cultures, supporting local economies and being environmentally conscious. The brochure was right after all: Take only memories and leave only footprints. •
Stats and Stories – Storytelling for Biodiversity
Art to Save – Nature’s Aesthetic Value
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he world’s true artist one could deem Nature herself, as the primal creator. And ‘standing at the junction of art and nature are environmental artists, who are often balanced on an intermediary edge, searching and synthesizing creative, unimagined new ways to redefine our relationship with nature,’ writes art blogger Kimberley Mok. Environmental art is as old as nature. Whenever artists painted onsite, they developed a deep connection with the surrounding environment and captured these close observations into their canvases. Just think Monet’s impressionist or Henri Rousseau‘s naive accounts of the environment. In the 1970s, environmental art then turned into a movement, which critiqued a society out of harmony with the natural environment. This critique opposed outmoded sculpture with new site specific forms, such as Land art, an avant garde notion about
sculpture, the landscape and our relationship with it. Land artists were not only portraying the landscape, but engaging it; their art was not simply of the environment, but in it as well. European sculptor Chris to gave just one example, when he famously wrapped the coastline at Little Bay, south of Sydney, in 1969.
Home of the Yo-Yo A long history of sculpture can also be found in Paete, province of Laguna, Philippines. The Wood Carving Capital of the Philippines is famous for its pagukit, described by Philippine National hero, José Rizal, and now found all over the world, including sculptures in the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, or the modern yo-yo, believed to be invented in Paete.
Nature lets us rest and refresh. Designed by environmental artist Yvette Co and executed by sculptor Cesar Cagayat from the Philippines’ wood carving capital, Paete.
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Not a yo-yo, but a scene from the Philippine’s treasure trove of biodiversity, artist Yvette Co created from a storm struck 100-year-old tree. As a representative of Southeast Asia’s biodiversity, just like Cristo’s coastline, the Narra tree itself turns into environmental art in a Philippine interpretation: a six-foot eagle in a lush and rich forest habitat, chases after a snake coiled on a trunk, preying on the eagle’s treasure, her one offspring. The scene, followed by a lizard and watched by a rat, shows the plentiful and delicate web of life, the spectator himself depends on. Who could articulate our out of tune relation with, and utter reliance on nature any purer than environmental art.
Pure Aesthetic Values Executed by Paete sculptors Roel Lazaro and Jerry Moralita, the artwork was part of the exhibit ‘Carvings
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and Paintings to Save the Forest’. The exhibit was realized by the University of the Philippines and Yvette Co, who re-experienced her love for the science of agriculture and nature, and wants to reconnect people to it. Hosted by the Municipality of Los Baños, led by its Mayor Caesar Perez and in collaboration with the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, the event was suitably placed next to Mt. Makiling. The mountain is a vital habitat, harboring the rich biodiversity depicted in the artworks, and was thus inaugurated as the 33rd ASEAN Heritage Parks (AHP) Conference in October 2013. AHPs are representatives of Southeast Asia’s ecosystems and an urgent contribution to the protection of its plentiful values: its natural resources we can eat, breathe or drink; its economic assets we can sell or trade; and like what the environmental artist reminds us, its pure aesthetic values we can simply enjoy and marvel – be it mighty eagles, rainbows or unicorns. •
MINING OUR ECOSYSTEMS: RAGS TO RICHES
Failure After the protagonist achieved what he wanted, it won’t be long before losing it all. This is the essence of the plot type Rags to Riches, ofthis chapter and Goal B. However, the loss of the protagonist, and of us all, doesn’t come out of the blue. Biodiversity loss has many direct and indirect causes. This leg of the journey leads us through the most crucial ones, such as habitat loss on the Earth-Ship, the destruction of the Ocean’s Web of Life, the Foodprint of agriculture, and pollution, where Every Litter Bit Hurts. Let’s hope that just like in Cinderella or David Copperfield, the protagonist can go from rags to riches and overcome his failure upon growing as a person.
Goal B: Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use
Target 5 By 2020, the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests, is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation is significantly reduced. Target 6 By 2020, all fish and invertebrate stocks and aquatic plants are managed and harvested sustainably, legally and applying ecosystem based approaches, so that overfishing is avoided, recovery plans and measures are in place for all depleted species, fisheries have no significant adverse impacts on threatened species and vulnerable ecosystems and the impacts of fisheries on stocks, species and ecosystems are within safe ecological limits. Target 7 By 2020, areas under agriculture, aquaculture and forestry are managed sustainably, ensuring conservation of biodiversity.
Target 8 By 2020, pollution, including from excess nutrients, has been brought to levels that are not detrimental to ecosystem function and biodiversity.
Target 9 By 2020, invasive alien species and pathways are identified and prioritized, priority species are controlled or eradicated, and measures are in place to manage pathways to prevent their introduction and establishment.
Target 10 By 2015, the multiple anthropogenic pressures on coral reefs, and other vulnerable ecosystems impacted by climate change or ocean acidification are minimized, so as to maintain their integrity and functioning.
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Mining Our Ecosystems – Of Flatulence and Overconsumption Part I
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arting dinosaurs are probably not among the first thoughts that come to mind when thinking about today’s urgent global matters. Notwithstanding, looking back a few million years to the Mesozoic – the dinosaur era – precisely this could have been considered a high-ranking environmental problem. A recent study shows that the long-necked sauropods, one of the dominant dinosaur groups, had gut bacteria to help them digest their food, akin to other herbivores. These bacteria also produce methane, which the animals released in their farts, contributing to climate change. Thus, the global sauropod population pumped out 520 million tons of methane a year, about the same as the total current emissions of the greenhouse gas. Considering that methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, this warmed the planet by about 1 °C, contributing to the fact that the climate in the dinosaur
era was much warmer than today – for instance, there was no polar ice. Sixty-five million years after the dinosaurs went extinct, we witness the same problem all over again, with livestock slightly different from sauropods: the 53 billion cows, sheep, pigs and chickens we eat every year produce 40 percent of the global methane and more than one fifth of all greenhouse gases – even exceeding the transport sector. Additionally, they require 33 percent of the global arable land, use 40 percent of global grain production and – by 2025 – half of the global irrigation water, thus exerting enormous pressure on global ecosystems and their biodiversity. Bearing in mind that every citizen of the industrial world eats 80 kilograms of meat per year, these exemplary numbers give a good hint on how our consumption goes hand in hand with our most serious environmental problems.
Photo by Jeho Bitancor
“Sa Akin Ang Lahat”, oil on canvass, 36” x 48”, 2012. Exhibited at Nineveh Artspace, Sta. Cruz, La-
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The Planetary Footprint However, meat consumption – though compelling – is only one example for the current overconsumption, as the chief driver of biodiversity loss and climate change: think of the demand for cheap timber, fish, soy, mobility housing, heating and cooling, and the ever growing Cloud. Since 1950, world population has tripled, while our use of materials such as metals and oil has quadrupled and greenhouse gas emissions rose fivefold. We are currently using 50 percent more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce and unless we change course, that number will grow fast – by 2030 even two planets will not be enough. This ‘planetary footprint’ is the inseparable product of three factors: how many of us there are, how much each of us consumes, and how we produce what we consume – that is, the prevailing technology. More to the latter factor below. The huge clout of the over consumption equation population times per capita consumption rate – can best be exemplified using the notorious champ of the world’s census, China. If China’s per capita consumption rates do rise to First World consumption levels, and if nothing else about the world changed, then that increase alone would translate (as multiplied by China’s population) into an increase in total world consumption of 94 percent. In other words, China’s achievement of First World consumption standards will approximately double the entire world’s ecological footprint. And mind you, UN middle projections do not see the population peak coming before mid-century, with 10 billion people globally in 2100.
Whose Fault: Population or Consumption? So, if we could manage to freeze or even reduce the global population today, would that solve the problem? The following thought experiment might shed some light on this. What are the consequences, if, hypothetically, everyone of the billions of people below the social justice line –and thus consuming very little – rises above it? For instance, supplying enough calories for the 10 percent of the world’s malnourished would mean raising world production by a mere one percent. Delivering electricity to the 20 percent of the world’s energy poor, would raise
carbon emissions by just one percent. Lifting everyone above the global poverty line ($1.25 a day) would require only 0.2 percent of global income. In a nutshell, it is not the needs of the majority of the world’s population that threaten the biosphere, but the overconsumption of a few. Fifty percent the world’s carbon emissions are produced by just 10 percent of its people, while 50 percent of the world’s people produce just 10 percent of its emissions.
The Ecological Bank Account To better understand the link between this excessive resource use and its environmental impact, just imagine, you inherit a bank account with a large positive balance, for which you assume familiar interest rates. You would expect the account to throw off large interest payments each year. Unfortunately, while our world’s natural capital is impressive to the eye – corresponding to the large balance of the bank account– that balance had accumulated very slowly (as if with low interest rates) over millennia. We are currently not living off of our ecological annual interest, but drawing down the accumulated natural capital, like biodiversity, that has taken ten thousands of years, and exhaust it within a few decades –leaving future generations with a huge debt. Inadvertently, we are not using these resources sustainably, as resources that can persist indefinitely if harvested no faster than the resources can renew themselves. We instead use them in the way that miners exploit oil and mineral deposits. The essence of mining is to exploit resources that do not renew themselves with time, and hence deplete those resources. If, however, one exploits topsoil, fish, or forests at rates exceeding their renewal rates, they will eventually be depleted to extinction, like gold in a goldmine.
Hitting the Global Destruction Line At present consumption rates, ironically these renewables are likely to disappear long before coal or iron reserves. This consumption driven ‘mining’ of our ecosystems brings us dangerously close to the global destruction line, as set by the nine planetary boundaries identified in Stockholm in 2009 by a group of Earth system scientists. They categorized the levels beyond which we endanger the Earth’s living systems, with
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climate change and biodiversity loss as the top two of nine indicators. The space between these two lines is the ‘safe and just space for humanity to thrive in’, and we are already living above the line on the first three indicators, and close to it on several others – pushing us irrevocably over the destruction line. Scientists already speak of the sixth global mass extinction, following the prehistoric ‘Big Five’ – periods in Earth’s history when abnormally large numbers of species died out simultaneously or within a limited time frame.
From the Limit of Growth to the Good Things In no means is this consumption driven destruction an issue out of the blue. On the contrary, it is on the global agenda at the latest since the 1970s, when the Club of Rome coined the mantra of the limits of growth – and consumption for that matter. Thus, one has to ask why the last 40 years have not seen a paradigm change, leaving the world leaders now shouting for accelerated (and consumption-based) growth louder than ever, just during the biggest financial and environmental crisis in history. The traditional debate about conservation, climate protection and development ignores the biggest driver involved, which is economic activity, or rather the growth in natural resource and energy consumption that accompanies it. This is also precisely, since the end of the Second World War, the means by which people escape poverty. However, as people leave poverty behind, global consumption and production of waste has escalated. Like the USA, Europe or Japan, economic growth in the newly industrializing countries, and especially in the ASEAN region, is being built on surging demand for consumer goods. These products are almost universally regarded as a good thing, as adding to human freedoms and human well-being; and for the poor, they are the promised fruits of the process of ‘development’. Meanwhile, the atmosphere warms and biodiversity shrinks before the combined onslaught of people and wealth.
Over-exploitation of Biological Resources in the ASEAN This debate is also of particular importance for the ASEAN region, firstly, since it is mega-biodiverse,
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harboring 19 percent of the global biodiversity assessed by the IUCN, and for instance 30 percent of the coral reefs. At the same time, the 10 ASEAN Member States are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, while an intact biodiversity poses immense opportunities for climate protection and adaptation to climate change. These natural resources are, secondly, put at peril by the region’s economic growth, which is increasingly based on domestic and foreign consumption. Let us look at two notorious examples for over exploitation, beginning with illegal wildlife trade. The ASEAN region has long been targeted by illegal wildlife traders as a hotspot in the lucrative, multi-billion dollar global trade of wildlife, in which both live and processed goods of most species are traded, ranging from tigers and elephants to rare orchids and indigenous medicinal herbs, from rare marine species to endemic reptiles and songbirds. The scale of illegal wildlife trade is alarming. Experts estimate the value of illegal wildlife trade at US$ 10 to 20 billion annually. Data from the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network show the rich biodiversity of Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar as being particularly targeted. A significant proportion of wildlife trafficked through the ASEAN region is purchased by wealthy consumers from outside the region, i.e., China, Europe and the United States. Moreover, illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing adds to threats brought about by known and quantifiable stresses, like official (over) fishing. The growing demand for fish drives the collection of these resources way beyond their capacity to recover, leaving 90 percent of fish stocks fully or overexploited. A recent report estimated the value of IUU at the global scale to be between USD 10 and 23.5 billion annually, with PHP26.5 billion worth of losses in the Philippine in 2008 alone. This makes evident that current human lifestyle and consumption patterns are now, more than ever, critically incompatible with sustaining the region’s and the world’s remaining natural flora and fauna, and a stable climate. •
To explore why humanity weighs more than 5,400 Titanics and why the US is among the saddest countries on the Happy Planet Index, read part II on page 56.
Steering the Earth-ship
Wikimedia Commons
Photograph of an Earthrise from Apollo 8
“F
irst, I couldn’t eat the food! It’s not noodles, it’s potatoes. Potatoes, potatoes. Fried potatoes, European style. From the beginning, I said I don’t want to eat potatoes. But after maybe 300 days we had to eat powders mixed with cold water instead and I said: I want potatoes”, complained Wang Yue, in an interview with the New Scientist, on his return to Earth in November 2011. You read right: the Chinese researcher and his five colleagues were the first humans to travel to the planet Mars, which took them a mind-boggling 260 days and another 260 days back. Even though 17 months in windowless isolation, with poor food, was not exactly a small step for the volunteers; it was a giant leap for mankind – on its way to colonize the red planet.
Agreed, it is a bit late for April Fool’s day, but if you have followed the news, there was no manned spaceflight to the red planet – yet. The Mars 500 mission was only a simulated round trip to Mars without stepping foot off Earth. Nevertheless, the idea is as old as science fiction, and neither Ronald Reagan, nor George Bush, nor German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun were shy to proclaim the quick colonization of our brother planet. The idea is not even rocket science – it is rather straightforward. Currently, mankind is using 50 percent more resources than Earth can sustainably produce and unless we change course, already in 20 years two planets will just be enough. So do the math: if we trash the first planet, we need to get a second one. Then we can live on happily ever after. Business as usual, easy as that. Or is it?
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A Pocked-Sized Mirror Image of Earth As a matter of fact, Mars is the most hospitable planet in the Solar System other than Earth, given its proximity and surface conditions which are similar to Earth, such as the availability of frozen ground water or an existing atmosphere. It is the most hospitable planet, however far from being welcoming, if you are not a big fan of nights below -80 °C, reduced gravity or month-long sandstorms blocking out most of the light, and if you do not need oxygen. ‘No big deal’ Reagan or Bush might have said, ‘a little terra forming and we will be fine’. And so man tried. Not ‘earthshaping’ in a strict sense, to deliberately modify a strange planet to be similar to the biosphere of Earth, in order to make it habitable. But only practice makes the master, right? Instead of Mars, scientists chose Arizona to spend $200 million, play a little genesis, and built ‘Biosphere 2’. The name is akin to Earth’s life system, Biosphere 1 if you will. Covering an area of two and a half football fields, this research facility is the largest closed system ever created. The millions well spent, the scientist crafted a perfect pocked sized mirror image of Earth, featuring rainforest, an ocean with a coral reef, mangrove wetlands, savannah grassland, fog desert, and an agricultural system. On the sixth day of creation, how could it be otherwise, mankind entered Biosphere 2, to ‘have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’. And the crew of eight people, sealed inside for two years from 1991 to 1993, did. Soon, the scientists had to learn the hard way, just how enormously complex the web of interactions within the different life systems was. CO2 levels fluctuated wildly, oxygen dropped, most of the vertebrate species and all of the pollinating insects died, while insect pests, like cockroaches, boomed. Lacking oxygen and running out of food, suffering from malnutrition, fatigue and psychological conflicts, the biospherians could not stay autonomous. Although Mission 2 in 1994 achieved complete sufficiency in food production, a severe dispute within the management team ended the experiment after a few months. What can we learn from this unique experiment
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and personal hardship of the researchers, making the potato problems of the Mars astronauts look like a stroll in the park? That human psychology thwarts a peaceful co-existence, be it within miniature Earth or the real one? Beyond doubt. However, more importantly, the tryout presented lessons learnt by the bookful about Earth, its fragile living systems, and its place in the universe.
A Birds-Eye View on the Blue Planet Earth The most memorable view on this very place in the universe was certainly provided by the Soviet satellite Sputnik in October 1957. For the first time, we were able to see simply how small and delicate our little blue planet in the vastness of space is. This marked a step towards the ‘birds-eye’ principle of Earth System Science, the ability to obtain a panoramic view of the Earth by observing it from a distance. From this distance, the Earth System could be observed as what it really is –a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components. A coupled human and ecological system. The processes within this system are studied by Earth System Science, emerging as a holistic super-discipline, with Biosphere 2 as a prime example. Just like in the experiment, scientist soon realized what this close interlinkage between nature and society also meant. As foreseen in the book of Genesis, mankind now has dominion over every creeping thing that creeps upon the Earth. Since the industrialization in the 18th century, human exploitation of the Earth’s resources has increased dramatically and is now so pervasive and profound in its consequences that it is influencing the very dynamics and functioning of Earth itself. And this does not even require rockets from Cuba or Pyongyang. With human population growth, modern technology, over-consumption, fossil fuel use, land cover changes, and the dispersal of chemicals, mankind started to make more than history – it made geological history. We opened the Anthopocene, the era of ‘men’, as Eva Lövbrand from the Center for Climate Science and Policy Research, Sweden puts it. And, unlike the six daring scientist of the mockup Mars 500 mission, we are really steering ‘spaceship Earth’ through the Anthropocene era.
Wikimedia Commons, Christian Leichsenring
The planetary boundaries
A Second Copernican Revolution Understanding this astonishing fact, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. decided to take the pulse of the planet via NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth program. The resulting international partnership to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) aims to exchange and coordinate the data obtained from all Earth observation satellites. It sets out to monitor the entire Earth, to provide ‘the full picture’, which was, according to the renowned climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a second Copernican revolution. Just like in the 16th century, Copernicus removed the Earth from the center of the galaxy, now the humancentered world view gets questioned. The understanding of ‘nature’ and ‘society’ as distinct domains dissolve, the ‘natural order of things’ is challenged. Humbled by the scale, complexity and vulnerability of the Earth we now need a new ethical framework for Earth stewardship. An eco-centric philosophy, so to speak. An understanding of the world as an intrinsically dynamic, interconnected
web of relations in which there are no dividing lines between the living and non-living, or the human and non-human, says Lövbrand. And in which Men is certainly not the dominator but on a par with all other elements of the global ecosystem.
The Fragile Cargo of Spaceship Earth Indeed, if we do not manage to safely steer spaceship Earth and its cargo, there might only be one escape capsule. This job advertisement of Mars One, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, which intends to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023, all of a sudden sounds tempting, doesn’t it? You are resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful? You have a deep sense of purpose, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust? You are over 18 years old? And you are looking for a lifetime adventure? Look no further, you have found your dream job: as an astronaut on a mission to Mars. And be sure, on the 260 day flight there will be plenty of potatoes. There is just one catch: Mars One only provides a one-way ticket! •
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Saving the Ocean’s Web of Life
I
magine a refreshing dip in the ocean during your weekend getaway to the beach. The sun is shining, no cloud in the sky and the water temperature is some cozy 45 °C. A bit too warm for you? Animals of the Ordovician, 480 million years ago, thought so, too, when marine water temperature was that hot, due to a ‘super greenhouse effect’ with very high CO2 levels in the atmosphere. It took another 40 million years and a temperature drop of 15 °C for complex living organisms to develop in the sea, similar to the ones in present day equatorial waters. This example from fossil records shows just how strongly climate change affects marine biodiversity. A recent study on the distribution of 11,000 marine species in relation to water temperature supports that also the current human induced climate change has huge consequences for our marine ecosystems. And a 15°C change is not even necessary. In the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, a 0.05-0.1 °C temperature anomaly proved to be already enough to significantly alter its biodiversity – the variability among living organisms and their habitats, including the diversity within species, between species and within ecosystems. Biodiversity is essential for human well-being, as it provides valuable services, such as food, medicines or clean air. At the same time, it is under threat from exposure to environmental degradation, pollution and unsustainable resource exploitation, like overfishing. Climate change poses a new
John Cook, skepticalscience.com
Where global warming is going
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challenge as it often exacerbates the impacts of other pressures.
Climate Change Means Ocean Change Rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation. Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the global warming (Fig. 1) and are thus particularly affected. A grim example of what we have to expect is the 1998 El Niño event, when exceptionally high temperatures caused the bleaching and death of 16 percent of all corals worldwide. Mass coral bleaching is triggered by elevated water temperatures, as witnessed during the last 50 years’ increase by 0.7 °C around the world (Fig. 2). Experts agree that under current scenarios, 90 percent of coral reefs will have dramatically changed or disappeared by mid-century. If, and when they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world’s marine biodiversity, causing a domino effect on other ecosystems. Moreover, higher temperatures favor the spread of alien species, such as virulent green algae affecting water quality, species richness and fisheries. However, direct impacts of climate change on oceans are in no way limited to elevated sea temperature. It also includes ocean acidification, due to more dissolved CO2, and sea level rise, due to melting ice masses. Today, water is about 30 percent more acidic than in pre-industrial times, depleting carbonate ions – the building blocks for many marine organisms; while 30 percent of coastal wetlands are threatened by the increasing sea levels. Likewise, accompanying impacts such as changes in salinity, dissolved oxygen, circulation patterns, frequencies of extreme weather events, increased thermal stratification and reduced upwelling change our oceans and their ecosystems fundamentally. One consequence is the decline in phytoplankton, a critical part of our planetary life support system, which produces half of
the oxygen we breathe. In this fashion, dead zones or areas too low in dissolved oxygen to support life, which were rare 40 years ago, now number several hundred and threaten global ecosystems and fisheries. At the same time, over a billion people rely on marine ecosystems as a source of food and over half a billion people are dependent on oceans and coasts for their livelihoods. Ocean biodiversity is also of utter most importance for the resilience and stability of ecosystems. In 1983, a sudden collapse of the Caribbean coral reefs occurred, following several centuries of overfishing the diverse herbivores, leaving the control of algal cover almost entirely to a single species of sea urchin. When this species disappeared, the reefs shifted irreversibly with huge economic losses, illustrating how vulnerable the system had become. This makes the case for the high insurance value in biologically diverse ecosystems and the importance of conservation, especially under climate change scenarios.
Terrific Triangle The ASEAN region, harboring a part of the coral triangle, is mega-diverse: it supports 75 percent of global coral species, six of the world’s seven marine turtle species, and 51 of the 70 mangrove species worldwide, with many species endemic to the region. The annual estimated value of ecosystem services from coral reefs comes to $112.5 billion; mangroves account for $ 5.1 billion. At the same time, the region is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in combination with other human activities, leaving, for example, 98 percent of Philippine coral reefs at risk. Intact biodiversity poses immense opportunities for climate protection and adaptation to climate change, particularly true in the ASEAN region. Conserved or restored habitats can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ecosystem-based adaptation, which integrates the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services into an overall adaptation strategy, can be cost-effective and generate social, economic and cultural co-benefits and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity. Nevertheless, this tangible value to society has not yet been fully appreciated. National development strategies consider only some aspects of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development; scientific knowledge
remains sparse and the general awareness about the issue limited. These common regional challenges call for a joint approach. Only if national efforts are effectively coordinated, do we stand a chance to conserve the region’s unique marine biodiversity and the services it provides to us, also under climate change scenarios.
The Road Ahead Despite the complex nature of the nexus between climate change and biodiversity, particularly in the marine context, solutions are at hand. Priority must be given to reducing non-climatic stresses, such as pollution, over-exploitation, habitat loss and fragmentation, and invasive alien species. This relies on a wider adoption of conservation and sustainable use practices, strengthening of protected area networks, and facilitating adaptive management through improved monitoring and evaluation systems. In Southeast Asia, 646 marine protected areas cover only an estimated eight percent of the coral reefs and only 14 percent were rated as effectively managed. We need to recognize that this situation needs to be urgently improved, since recovery of marine ecosystems can take decades. Ultimately, to conserve our oceans’ diversity, functionality and heritage, we need to address the root cause of climate change. Without swiftly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, we will soon find ourselves taking a swim in much hotter and emptier oceans. •
Modified from World Fish Centerreefbase Project
Coral Reefs of Southeast Asia and the Coral Triangle
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Every Litter Bit Hurts
W
hat do space and the ocean have in common? Their vastness, that we know little about it, and that both resemble the mess in a teenager’s room. Rather than piles of tossed out toys, used underwear and dirty dishes, in space one will find a junkyard of spent rocket stages and dead spacecraft. These end up in Earth’s orbit ever since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in 1957. The number of pieces of space debris has risen to a burgeoning blizzard of over 500,000 fragments in orbit. Even though this space garbage is going to have a major impact on the future economics of space flight, it is of somewhat less concerning to humanity than the equally messy oceans.
A Beachcomber’s Paradise Just how messy they are, an unintentional experiment showed when the Japanese tsunami in March 2011 swept about 4.8 million tons of debris into the sea. ‘You don’t often get a chance to take an entire city, put it in the ocean, and see what happens to all the stuff,’ Marcus Eriksen says. The scientist and adventurer sailed after the tsunami garbage on its 7,000 kilometers journey across the Pacific to find out all about marine debris. This debris included a rusting Japanese Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a set of golf clubs and a 50-meter fishing boat, found by beach combers in British Columbia. But beachcombers can only comb five percent of the floating debris. The much bigger part ends up in the Earth’s five great subtropical gyres – enormous, slow-moving whirlpools on the ocean’s surface which accumulate debris for years from currents and winds. Thousands of kilometers across, the biggest of these gyres is known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Located between two huge population and industrial centers – Asia and North America –the patch serves as Earth’s mighty bellybutton, covered in thin confetti of plastic. More than three million tons of confetti. In the world’s oceans that sums up to hundreds of million tons. And indeed the marine garbage problem
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is a problem of plastic, making up 85 percent of all debris in the sea.
Six Million Tons of Trash to our Web of Life Our economy is based on the one-time use of throw away plastics. ‘Instead of hunting and gathering, we now shop. And every time we shop, we accumulate plastic: a toothbrush, a vat of butter, a bag of chips, a candy bar wrapper, they’re all made of plastic,’ illustrates another sailing environmentalist, Josh Berry. Over six million tons a day make their way to the sea, 80 percent of it from land. The rest stems from the 10,000 containers lost by container ships each year or ghost nets, fishing nets left in the ocean, and the like. Once waterborne, debris becomes mobile blown by the wind, or following the flow of ocean currents, ending up in gyres and after decades on the seabed. Problem solved? Not quite. Unlike in the deep space, the trash in the oceans is of a bigger concern than the threat to the odd satellite, orbiting the blue planet. Its name is well deserved, since blue oceans cover two thirds of the Earth and provide over a billion people with food. You wouldn’t want to trash the place where your food comes from, would you? Beyond global food security, oceans are essential to the health and survival of all life, power our climate and are a critical ecosystem of the biosphere. The marine ecosystem makes up a large part of biodiversity, the global web of life. Just take the ASEAN region, harboring the mega-diverse coral triangle. It supports six of the world’s seven marine turtle species, 51 of the 70 mangrove species, and 75 percent of global coral species. The ecosystem services such reefs provide globally come to an estimated annual value of $112.5 billion. Beyond this money, the region is also crucial to the global cycle of plankton, tiny floating marine creatures, which regulate the global climate and feed all other marine animals. But now, for every kilo of plankton per cubic meter of seawater, the great garbage patches contain
Wikimedia Commons
Payatas Dumpsite, Metro Manila, Philippines is one of the sources for the 80 percent of marine debris that comes from land.
approximately six kilos of plastic. That means that there is more trash in the oceans than living beings and, even worse, it is passed up the food chain to reach all marine life. A sad fact which endangers the vital biodiversity, the very same beings make up.
Hitching a Hike on a Floating Motorcycle Coral is smothered by plastic, fishes get trapped in drifting ghost nets, birds die from eating plastic. Ninety-five percent of the sea bird Northern Fulmar, found dead on beaches have plastic in their stomachs. Marine debris harms an estimated 100,000 sea turtles and marine mammals, and millions of other sea creatures each year. For instance, plastic shopping bags can clog digestive tracts, causing starvation tricking the animal into thinking it is full. However, much of the plastic is ending up as microplastic – fragments less than five millimeters across. On the bright side, this microplastic is hosting life, creating a new niche in the vast oceans. The tiny fragments in the Atlantic Ocean have been colonized by microbes not found in open water, a community dubbed the plastisphere. Trashing is a good thing than? Hardly, since on the flipside, the plastisphere can also work as a mini raft, transporting dangerous species around the world, like the Vibrio bacteria causing cholera. And such rafts can be much bigger, like our Japanese Harley-Davidson, on which invasive species can be hitching rides around the
globe. Hotspots like the bays of San Francisco or Manila amount to global zoos of invasive species, which break the Earth’s natural barriers, muck up the area’s marine environments, cost billions of dollars to manage, and endanger local biodiversity. Another way, biodiversity is put at peril are a thin layer of industrial chemicals and petroleum, coating the plastic particles, creating little poison pills that fish eat and absorb. And if fish are feasting on these toxic morsels, then be sure, we are too.
Clean up the World To show the scope of the problem, during the 2013 International Coastal Cleanup Day, 35 million volunteers netted on 28,516 kilometers of global waterways and beaches a staggering five million kilograms of trash, equivalent to the weight of 41 blue whales. What to do with all this garbage showed activist David de Rothschild. He built a raft, the Plastiki, from old plastic bottles and sailed into, where else but the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If that is too adventurous for you, perhaps you are lucky and find a friendly floatee. Some 350,000 of them are travelling the world’s oceans since 1992 when some containers with child’s bath toy were washed overboard a cargo ship. As friendly as the red beavers, green frogs, blue turtles and yellow ducks might seem, they still are among the ocean’s silent killers. •
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Farm to Fork: Leaving A Smaller Foodprint Part I
H
ow would you react if you sit at the dinner table and without warning somebody takes away one third of your dish? One third of your rice, one third of your beef, one third of your veggies, and what’s worst, one third of your ice cold beer. No, this is not the latest diet advice from a lifestyle magazine, to lose a couple of pounds. Neither is it a swoop of your food-jealous neighbor’s fork. It is daily reality. More than one third of the food produced every day does not end up on our plates or in our stomachs – they get lost or wasted. That sums up to 1.3 billion tons. To grasp the dimension: this is five times the combined weight of all humans in the world or 3,000 Empire State buildings. A whole city made from garbage every year. Hard to imagine? Let’s follow your dinner from farm to fork to see if and how that is possible.
Our Food’s Journey On a visit to a local farm, the very beginning of the food supply chain, we can witness numerous reasons why the food does not reach our plate. We better be quick, since some clouds are forming in the distance, foretelling a storm. Have you checked the weather forecast today? The farmer certainly has, since he is utterly dependent on the weather. Weather extremes like storms or draughts are the main reason for the loss of his harvest. Unfortunately, climate change is loading the dice for ever more increasing extremes, as typhoonplagued Philippine farmers will readily tell you. Such extremes are often followed by pest infestations, resulting in further loss. But also malfunctioning machinery or on-farm losses in storage, due to widespread rodents, parasites or fungi, particularly in low income countries. Such inherent losses are complemented by selective harvesting, due to economic factors, such as regulations and standards for quality and appearance. If a tomato is not round, red and shiny enough, it may well not be sold, and thus not harvested.
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Say, the tomato is deemed suitable and leaves the farm, even now it is not save, since it is still a long way to your table. Direct production losses are followed by postharvest loss. Again, heat, humidity and pests can spoil food. You don’t want rotten tomato or some moldy rice with your beef, do you? Such vegetables and rice are lost. This does not only apply to your dish, but happens on a large scale. Up to 45 percent of rice vanishes this way in China, and as much as 80 percent in Vietnam. Other low income countries experience similar challenges: poor infrastructure and transportation, lack of refrigeration, and inadequate packaging result in high losses.
Just too Much to Finish? But even if such infrastructure is in place, as is the case in most industrialized countries, it is still not dinner time. Beforehand, you or your chef have to go to the shops. And here we are, one step further along the food supply chain, the retail level, where loss is largest in developed countries. Nevertheless, inadequate market facilities, such as unsanitary conditions and lack of refrigeration, make it a problem of low income countries, too. Just think of the last visit to the market with tomatoes sweltering in the sun. Similarly, up to 55 percent of fruits and vegetables are lost due to poor temperature management during display. Say, your chef managed to snatch a bunch of tomatoes, there is yet a lot that can go wrong. Often, planning, communication and coordination is lacking, in particular in central kitchens. He might have just bought too many tomatoes, since less guests showed up than expected, or the kitchen help already did the shopping. Much greater factors at this stage are, however, again quality standards that overemphasize appearance as well as the interpretation of best before, sell-by or use-by dates add. The bottle of beer was already expired? Sorry, we have to ditch it, and you have to go with tap water. Nonetheless, at the time of disposal food is often still edible, and drinks drinkable.
FAO Data of food loss and waste.
Sounds familiar from your fridge, where there rot some veggies in the back? Or from the last party, where there was just too much cake to finish? Poor planning and leftovers in households contribute to the biggest wastage in the food supply chain, especially in the industrialized world. Just take the allegedly green Germany as example, where 61 percent of food waste occurs at the household level. Combined, all these indeed amount to the staggering 1.3 billion tons, lost or wasted every year – the equivalent to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crop. It is highest in North America with 294 kilograms of food lost per person and year, and lowest in Southeast Asia with still 125 kilograms of food – mainly fruits and vegetables. And the problem is on the rise. US per capita food waste has progressively increased by 50 percent from 1974 till 2009, symptomatic for industrialized countries and emulated by developing and transitional countries.
The Hidden Costs on Our Bill What does this ever-increasing problem mean then, besides leaving the table still slightly hungry? It means that our global agriculture and food production system is very inefficient. This inefficiency produces high costs.
Lulu Pinney
For you, in order to have the same sized dinner as usual, the bill will be on third higher. How much higher this is, showed a recent assessment of yearly discarded, purchased and edible food in the US, accounting for $43 billion. Quite a big tip. However, our food does not only have obvious, economic costs one can see on the bill, but also well hidden environmental and social costs. For instance, 70 percent of our fresh water globally goes into producing food, like your dinner. Each kilogram of your beef requires 15,000 liters of water, of your rice 3,000 liters, and of your tomatoes 240 liters. Then wasting food not only uses water, but also land. Around half the world’s 100 million square kilometers of fertile land is already used to grow food. A twentieth hectare is needed to supply your rice and a whole hectare for your beef. In a nutshell, food is responsible for about one quarter of climate impacts from private consumption and about one third of other environmental impacts, such as deforestation, land degradation, or biodiversity loss. If food is wasted or lost, the environmental impacts related to its production have been in vain. In addition to the undue environmental impacts, the disposal of food discards causes pollution: the leftovers of your dinner will end up on a landfill, making up
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the largest component of materials sent there. In the landfill, the residues of your dinner break down, resulting in the production of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and releasing nutrients, which can pollute water bodies. Such pollution, climatic change, deforestation and biodiversity loss are particularly relevant to Southeast Asia, the ultimate biodiversity hotspot, and very vulnerable to the effects of global warming, as the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity calls attention to. The Philippines itself provides a sad example for environmental costs of food waste: it is the third most vulnerable country to climate change, large parts are
Percentage population of undernourished world map
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deforested, air and water is polluted, and 90 percent of coral reefs, as the prime source of protein, are endangered. Can we really afford such undue costs? This would be at least hard to explain to the about 925 million undernourished people worldwide and the 2.6 million children dying of hunger every year. Mind you, that food security is still a major concern in large parts of the developing world, and global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. To quote the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Achim. ‘In a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense – economically, environmentally and ethically.’ •
Wikimedia Commons
A Healthy Risk? Ancient Answers
O
ne hot summer day in ancient Sicily thousands of years ago, Noble Damocles is guest at a banquet of his tyrant king Dionysius. Surrounded by magnificence, power and authority, Damocles envies the ruler and exclaims: ‘My king, you are truly extremely fortunate’. Promptly, Dionysius offers to switch chairs with Damocles, so that Damocles can taste that very fortune. When Damocles accepts the proposal and sits down in the throne surrounded by every extravagance, Dionysius had arranged a huge, razorsharp sword hanging above the throne, held only by a single hair of a horse’s tail. Sounds like quite a health risk to take, doesn’t it? Let’s have a closer look. We can define risks as undesirable consequences of actions, where two things matter: the extent of the damage and the probability of occurrence. In Damocles’ case, the potential damage of the risk is the highest possible, namely the loss of his life, while the probability of occurrence is extremely low, for according to the myth the thread did not break. Whereas the ‘Sword of Damocles’ has become a byword for a happy situation overshadowed by danger, risks to our health don’t always have to be as extreme. Of course there might always be meteorite on its way to –very improbably – wipe all the life from our green Earth. Yet, everyday life health risks are much more tangible. For instance, to increase the probability of one’s death by one in a million, one can choose to travel six minutes by canoe, eat 40 tablespoons of peanut butter, fly 1,000 miles by jet, smoke 1.4 cigarettes, or live 2 days in New York’s polluted air. Your peanut butter eating habit aside, the latter gives an indication where many health risks in our lives come from: the environment. Environmental hazards are responsible for an estimated 25 percent of the total burden of disease worldwide.
Pollution from Pandora’s box And air pollution ‘is the single biggest environmental health risk’ with around seven million deaths a year, according to a report the World Health Organization (WHO) issued last month. However, much worse affected than New York is Southeast Asia – now the most polluted region in the world with more than five million deaths from air pollution. Does this pollution stink from Pandora’s box, we have opened? Pandora was the first woman on Earth, created by Zeus, the Greek ‘Father of Gods and Men’. One day, men didn’t behave well and Zeus is furious with vengeance. Thus, he gives Pandora a wedding gift of a beautiful jar, with instructions to not open it under any circumstance. But urged by her curiosity, Pandora can’t help but open it and all evil contained therein escapes and spreads over the Earth. As such evil, the health risk of air pollution can be seen: once freed, it can have persistent and ubiquitous consequences.
Climate Change Oracles Thousands of years after their creation, people in Greece are often in doubt about important questions in their lives. On such hesitations, the blind seeress Pythia can shed light. She is the most famous oracle and lives in the city of Delphi. One day, a weary king comes to the temple and asks the oracle if he would win the battle. She smiles and tells him a great king would win the battle. That was exactly what he had wanted to hear and he goes away happily. However, when he leads his men into battle, they lose and he is killed by the other king – the great king. Pythia’s prophecies are enigmatic and ambiguous. They might reveal that a major danger is impending, but they won’t tell how high its probability, severity or distribution might be. The oracle is characteristic for
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many environmental health risks nowadays, which have high uncertainty with regard to both risk dimensions. Take climate change, already causing an estimated 150,000 deaths annually. These occur, for instance, from more frequent extreme weather conditions, like Typhoon Haiyan, or from affected patterns of food production, impacting on malnutrition. The same is true for biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems: for many of the world’s poor, one of the greatest environmental threats to health remains lack of access to safe water and sanitation. Water resources, are replenished and purified by water ecosystems. When they are lost human health and well-being is undoubtedly put at risk, while exact probabilities, the severity or distribution remain yet unclear.
Cyclops Diseases While sailing home from the Trojan War, the hero Odysseus and his men come ashore to restock their food and water. They are thrilled to find a cave full of sheep, build a fire in the cave, and cook some sheep on a sharpened stick. ‘Uaaagh’, suddenly echoes through the cave and a one-eyed giant appears at the mouth of the cave, swinging a club. Swiftly, Odysseus grabs a sharpened stick and blinds the Cyclops, who is restricted by his one eye. Odysseus and his men get safely away by pretending to be sheep making bah-bah sounds until they crawled to safety. The Cyclops’ limitation to perceive only one part of reality with his one eye describes also many health risks. When viewing them, only one side can be ascertained while the other remains unsure. It is often the case that risks are greatly underestimated whose magnitude can be grasped but whose probability of occurrence is uncertain or continuously changes. Prominent examples are vector-borne diseases. Mankind has always co-habited with innumerable other living forms. While many of them support us, some few can transmit infectious diseases between humans or from animals to humans. Such ‘vectors’, are for instance mosquitoes, ticks, flies, or fleas. These benefit from tropical climate, inefficient water management, low priority for health impact in development activities, unplanned urbanization and widespread poverty, but also factors of a changing environment. Altering temperature
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and rainfall conditions as well as deforestation and loss of biodiversity, affect both the transmission and control of the most common vector-borne diseases including malaria, dengue and leishmaniasis. Especially in Southeast Asia, malaria is still endemic in 10 of 11 countries, making up 40 percent of the global population at risk of malaria. With 17 percent of all infectious diseases, causing more than one million deaths annually, also the global magnitude of vector-borne diseases is clear. ‘Vector-borne diseases have significant impact on socioeconomic status of communities, and they vigorously fuel the vicious circle of poverty,’ says Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of the WHO Southeast Asia, indicating the severe effects of such environmental health risks. Nevertheless, cyclops-like, we can’t fully grasp the probabilities of environmental impact. But there is no need to turn to stone.
How to Kill the Beast Medusa is a beautiful, young woman with magnificent long, silky hair. One day, while she is in goddess Athena’s temple, she fools around with the god Poseidon which angers Athena. She is so mad she changes Medusa’s beautiful hair into hissing serpents and makes her into a horrible looking monster. Medusa is now so horrible that any living thing that looks upon her turns to stone. In ancient Greece, the world was full of dangers. Some novel phenomena affect people today with the same fear and dread. Instead of turning into stone, however, there are solutions at hand. Remember, Medusa was defeated in the myth with a smart strategy, using a mirror, rather than looking directly in her eyes. Such strategies are emphasized by the WHO, which is reinforcing the linkages between health and environment. An example is ‘Integrated Vector Management’, promoting greatest disease control benefit, while minimizing negative impacts on ecosystems e.g. from the excessive use of chemicals. After all, the best risk management is prevention: healthy ecosystems for healthy people. Let’s take this wakeup call seriously and avoid Cassandras’ destiny: Cassandra was a beautiful young priestess at Apollo’s temple, with great ambition. One day, the mighty god Apollo swings by and is delighted by Cassandra. He is fond of making a deal.
If Cassandra kisses him, he would give her the gift of prophecy so she could see into the future. Cassandra does not hesitate. As soon as she is able, she looks eagerly into the future. But she does not like what she sees: Apollo is helping to destroy her beloved city of Troy. She spits in his face. Apollo is furious, and since he
could not take away his gift, he adds to it. From that time on, Cassandra could see the future, but no one believed a thing she said. Later, when Cassandra warned her people that the Trojan horse was a trap, nobody paid the slightest attention. They laughed at her and widely opened the doors. •
Wikimedia Commons
Don’t get turned into stone by Caravaggio’s Medusa
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(Car-)bon Voyage: Small Islands In Big Trouble
T
he award as the sexiest volcano alive goes to Eyjafjallajökull. As a tongue twister, it definitely beat Mount Pinatubo to it! Go ahead, try it yourself: But as a volcano, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines won the race, with its eruption in the summer of 1991 deemed 10,000 times larger than Eyjafjallajökull’s four years earlier. Still, Eyjafjallajökull earns the trophy since it is the world’s first carbon neutral volcano, too. Sounds odd, considering that volcanic eruptions emit millions of tons of carbon? Well, one way for carbon neutrality is a carbon offset – the reduction in emissions of carbon made in order to compensate for an emission made elsewhere, be it a car, a factory or a volcano. But who would pay to offset a volcano? The owner? Officially, Eyjafjallajökull belongs to Iceland. Already short on cash, the country luckily wasn’t charged for the volcano’s emission. Instead, Eyjafjallajökull took care of itself. Its ash plumb grew from the east coast of Canada and the US, to as far west as Siberia and Mongolia,
grounding countless commercial airline flights. Thus, the planes were kept from emitting CO2– more or less the same amount as Eyjafjallajökull released. Hence, the first carbon-neutral volcanic eruption.
Chilly 100 ppm But why even talk about carbon neutrality? Let’s see and go on a journey 300 ppm ago. For those who wonder: ppm is short for parts per million, in this case, 100 parts of carbon dioxide per one million parts of air. A hundred out of a million doesn’t sound a lot. And it isn’t. That’s why scientists call the period of the planet 850 million years ago ‘Cryogenian’ or ‘Snowball Earth’, nearly frozen from the poles to the equator. The problem at hand is the fabulous fusion reactor in the sky, also known as the sun, sending us its rays which penetrate the Earth’s surface and escape back to space. Luckily, there is a warming blanket around
Wikimedia Commons
One of many small Islands at peril: Fakaofo Atoll in the Tokelau Group, photographed from 30,000+ feet on October 19, 2005.
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the planet, also known as greenhouse gases, reflecting some of the escaping rays back to the otherwise frosty planet. The most famous of such blankets is carbon dioxide, CO2. But 100 ppm CO2 only makes a rather thin blanket leaving the planet freezing with only 4 °C and 85 percent ice cover. A true snowball! Here come our friends in, the sexy volcanoes. Take Mount Pinatubo. On first sight he is a very cool guy, or rather a cooling guy: in addition to CO2, he exhales sulfur dioxide, too. If CO2 is a blanket, sulfur dioxide is a mirror, increasing the global cloud cover so much, that the sun’s rays were reflected and the Northern Hemisphere cooled by 0.6°C for two years. But if you get to know Pinatubo, Eyjafjallajökull and their buddies, you see that they are hot indeed. Or rather heating. Their enormous CO2 emissions, that would make every smoky coal plant jealous, rendered the Earth’s blanket ever more cosy and thick.
Cozy 230 ppm Thick and thin blankets came and went throughout the history of the Earth, driven by volcanos among other heating or cooling phenomena. Like a yo-yo, our planet was fluctuating between two dominant climate states: the greenhouse Earth and the icehouse or snowball Earth. Since nobody wants to live on a snowball, Earth fortunately continued to warm and ended up with a cozy 230 ppm thick CO2 blanket. Under this blanket, you could measure a pleasant 13.6ºC about 10,000 years ago during the so-called Holocene. The ice covers from the last big ice age melted down to 15 percent, making space for Homo sapiens, the modern humans, to spread to all parts of the world and develop civilizations. Not being sidetracked to stay warm in the cold anymore, Homo sapiens tried to by worthy of its name, and smartly invented lots of stuff like agriculture, and the steam engine. The former helped the hunter and gatherer society of some 15 million people globally to grow to billions; the latter provided the energy for them to move and produce stuff – and more and more CO2 blanket for Earth’s atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Thus, this gloriously smart invention marked the industrial revolution and the dawn of the so called Anthropocene–the Age when humans started to compete with the sexy volcanoes to have a global
impact on the Earth’s ecosystems and atmosphere, now having 290 ppm CO2 and 13.7 °C.
From 290 to Dripping 400 ppm 290 ppm, 13.7°C. Cozy enough for people to thrive. However, this is when we should have stopped! This is when things went wrong. How wrong, shows a peep on the ‘Keeling Curve’, famously displaying rising CO2 levels as a steep, linear curve. A curve that reached the symbolic threshold of 400 parts per million on 9 May 2013. How does 400 ppm feel again? Hard to say, since the last time the atmosphere showed such levels about 4.5 million years ago, humans were not yet around to let us know. What we do know, however, is that back then the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert, coral reefs suffered mass dieoffs, temperatures were 4°C warmer than today, and polar temperatures even 10°C. What that means for the leftovers from snowball Earth, the polar ice covers, you can easily experience on a hot day if you don’t lick your ice cream fast enough: it melts and drips. Not on your fresh white shirt as chocolate ice-cream tends to do, but in the oceans. Their levels were up to 40 meters higher than today.
skepticalscience.com
Observed Sea Level Rise Vs Ipcc Projection
As 40 meters are hard to imagine, let’s start with 8.2 mm. That’s the annual sea level rise Australia’s National Tide Facility has measured on the Carteret Islands, Papua New Guinea. The 0.6 square kilometers island with a maximum elevation of 1.5 meters 2,600 people call their home. Or called, to be precise. Coupled with climate change’s tendency towards more severe weather patterns,
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the island is predicted to be completely submerged next year. Not wanting to wait till they had to swim away, in May 2009, the entire community of Carteret was forced to leave their home for good, becoming the first official climate change refugees.
Reggae, Mambo, Reggaeton And they won’t be the last. Just remember the recent catastrophic climate events, such as the ‘Dust Bowl’ like North American drought 2012-2014, costing $35 billion in the Midwest alone, or typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, killing thousands in the Philippines. Such auspices are felt by the so-called Small Island Developing States (SIDS) first – and not by coincidence. Their small size and isolation makes them vulnerable to environmental disasters and climate change, while the 32 SIDS of the Caribbean, the Pacific, Africa, the Indian Ocean and South China Sea contribute little to climate change themselves. Their combined population of 63.2 million people lives in an intimate relationship with nature and the oceans. Fish contributes at least half of total animal protein intake in some small islands and Pacific Tuna fisheries alone more than 50 percent of their export. Coral reefs provide an estimated $ 375 billion per year in goods and services to the world. Also on land, small islands are rich in biological diversity and home to many endemic species, found nowhere else on Earth. The Seychelles, Comoros and Mascarene islands in the Indian Ocean for instance hold numerous critically endangered bird species, amphibians, reptiles and insects. Thus, Small Islands make a contribution to global biodiversity that is out of proportion to their land area. But they are not only biodiversity hot spots. Reggae, Mambo, Reggaeton, Bob Marley, Tito Puente or Rihanna all come from Small Islands, making them cultural hotspots, with 28 World Heritage Sites.
400 ppm: Leave or Change But in a 400 ppm-world, these hotspots are at peril: coral reefs are slowly bleaching in warming water to finally die off. Of the 724 recorded animal extinctions in the last 400 years, half were of island species, and at least 90 percent of the bird species that have become
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Wikimedia Commons
The eruption column of Mount Pinatubo on June 12, 1991
extinct in that period were island-dwellers. And also human island-dwellers like the people of Carteret have to leave. Leave or change? There is hope that small islands can be the change they want to see in the world, as President Mohamed Nasheed, his cabinet and colorful fish made clear. You heard it right, they were surrounded by reef fish, when they famously met underwater in October 2009, to highlight the threat of global warming to the Maldives.
Tropical 1000 or Safe 350 ppm? These threats will increase as CO2 levels keep rising. And they are rising at an unprecedented speed. Naturally, an increase of only 10 ppm would need at least 1,000 years. But the world’s scientists agree in the latest emissions scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that we could reach 1,000 ppm already by the end of the century. Such levels were last seen 100 million years ago during the ‘Cretaceous Warmth’ with average temperatures of 22 °C. All of the Earth’s glaciers were melt, tropical plants and reptiles were found close to the Earth’s poles and one third of today’s land areas were under water, including the center of the United States. Let’s rather go back to 350 ppm, which are considered safe for people and the environment as we know it, including Small Island. We should learn from them, or from Eyjafjallajökull, how to finally become carbon neutral. •
YES, WE CAN! – OVERCOMING THE MONSTER
Second Achievement of Dream People are the problem. But people are the solution, too. They can Overcome the Monster as this plot type is called. Spirit Goal A and the following chapter address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss: the protagonist sets out to defeat the antagonistic force which threatens him and his homeland. Just like in Dracula or James Bond we can kill the beast, be it in the form of Overconsumption or a Warming World. It doesn’t have to be garlic or a wooden stake, and there might not be a silver bullet. But Valuing Nature, National Parks and Sharing the Caring are a good start.
Goal B: Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use
Target 1 By 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably.
Target 2 By 2020, at the latest, biodiversity values have been integrated into national and local development and poverty reduction strategies and planning processes and are being incorporated into national accounting, as appropriate, and reporting systems. Target 3 By 2020, at the latest, incentives, including subsidies, harmful to biodiversity are eliminated, phased out or reformed in order to minimize or avoid negative impacts, and positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity are developed and applied, consistent and in harmony with the Convention and other relevant international obligations, taking into account national socio economic conditions. Target 4 By 2020, at the latest, Governments, business and stakeholders at all levels have taken steps to achieve or have implemented plans for sustainable production and consumption and have kept the impacts of use of natural resources well within safe ecological limits.
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Mining Our Ecosystems – Of Flatulence and Overconsumption Part II
Happy Planet Index 2.0.
If all people would live like people in this country per year, one would need as many planets as stated by the number
Farting dinosaurs told us a story of the planetary footprint and how we stretch our ecological bank account, also in the ASEAN region. Part II shows what can be done about it. Peak stuff ? Having explored that the very foundation of our consumption and growth based economic system is intrinsically linked with today’s suicidal devastation of our very ecological basis, the outlook is certainly not the brightest. Nevertheless there are numerous roadmaps and already proven ideas, how to get to the bottom of this conundrum. There should be no illusions, however, that this can be accomplished at the drop of a hat and without substantial efforts. For instance, the often quoted concept of “peak stuff ” that beyond a certain level of economic development, people simply stop consuming so much, will fail the reality-check. This hope, also known as economic ‘dematerialisation’, states that technology and the course of economic evolution will allow prosperity to keep rising without a linked increase in our use of energy and materials. Even though some developed countries, like the UK,
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in fact display certain symptoms of decreasing ‘total material requirement’ with slightly falling water use, car ownership or calorie consumption, this will only apply to the billion or so people living in rich countries out of the global population of seven billion. At the global level, a peak stuff it is non-existent.
Leapfrogging inefficient technology Can the third factor of the planetary footprint equation and technology perform as our ace up the sleeve then? It has always had a hand in determining how many of us can survive on the planet. For instance, industrial society raised the carrying capacity of our planet substantially by exploiting fossil fuels, not least to produce artificial fertilizer for global food security. But do not the problems of overconsumption and resource depletion, we face today, stem from such very innovations? Notwithstanding, a further technological
revolution might still help us use resources more efficiently, without trashing vital ecosystems. And again China leads by example, leapfrogging inefficient processes used in developed nations. According to the World Bank, the Chinese economy’s carbon intensity has dropped by almost 70 percent over 30 years. Nevertheless, mere process efficiency won’t be enough.
A Transparent Consumer Market A marked based approach, within a strong governance framework, might be more promising, as put out in the idea of giving cash value to finite ‘natural capital’, just as we do to finite material resources. Doing so, we would put a price on forests, soils, water supplies and other essential ecological services –an approach the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, a regional intergovernmental organization based in the Philippines, coordinating national and regional efforts on biodiversity conservation and sustainable management in Southeast Asia, is promoting within the region. Since September 2010, GIZ, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit, through the Biodiversity and Climate Change Project, supports ACB in this endeavor. Its focus on biodiversity and economy supports policies and actions for valuing biodiversity in the context of ecosystem services, raising awareness and integrating ecosystem services into sustainable development planning within a ‘Green Economy’, also the buzzword of the recent Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Likewise, rethinking our tax system would also help. An environmental tax reform, shifting taxes from labor and income to resource consumption, could be a big incentive to change our habits faster and more profoundly. Even easier than complex incentive structures would be the introduction of more consumer transparency. It is hard to imagine that the regular shopper in the supermarket has the attention to knowingly and purposely wreck the planet. More likely the consumption choices are a product of unawareness of the environmental impact of the selected product, the deliberate deception of the shopper by advertisement and the retention of information on the resource demand of the product by the respective company.
Two solutions are at hand. Certification, such as the one applied by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for timber, or the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for fish, warrants transparently the sustainable production of these products. In addition, a “traffic light labelling” would show in a clear manner the environmental impact, for example, of a package of cheese, with a green, yellow or red light for parameters, such as CO2 emissions or water consumption. That certification and labelling can successfully influence consumer behavior for the better proves Germany’s organic food sector with a yearly revenue of Euro 6 billion already in 2008 – a trend that is increasing.
Sufficiency for a Happy Planet Finally, much discussion revolves around GDP, even though this plainly is a poor measure of sustainable development, as it fails to reflect the state of natural resources or ecological conditions, and focuses exclusively on the short term, without indicating whether national policies are sustainable. Rather pick a metric that emphasizes citizen well-being in combination with the environment, such as the Happy Planet Index and you will be surprised to find the usual pecking order turned on its head, with countries such as Costa Rica topping the league, and the US on the sick list. Similar approaches embrace the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) and the Millennium Consumption Goals (MCG), both helping to ensure that the basic needs of the poor are met, preserve and strengthen earth’s natural resource base on which human society depends, and enhance global prosperity. A more quirky indicator for global overconsumption could be the total mass of humans living on Earth, which biologists of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say is a better way of measuring our impact on the planet than simply counting our numbers. According to the latest estimate, humanity weighs in at 287 million tons, or more than 5.400 Titanics. As we have seen, a comprehensive strategy for biodiversity and climate protection, and sustainable development must essentially take into account sufficiency, that is, approaches to self-limitation, modesty in consumption, and deceleration – even if this requires a longer-term societal shift in awareness.
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A first step to cut our total human mass could be to put one steak less on the next BBQ, thus also slowly reducing the headcount of our ‘modern-day sauropod flock’, and all the problems involved. At stake is nothing
less than the 6th global mass extinction, similar to the last one the very same sauropods experienced 65 Million years ago, with the only difference that this time it might include another species- Homo sapiens. •
Wikimedia Commons, Super Cyclist
Map showing countries shaded by their position in the Happy Planet Index (2006). The highest-ranked countries are bright green; the lowest are brown.
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On a Shopping Spree: How Much’s the Nature?
‘T
his is where we make most of our planets, you see’, as Arthur Dent, protagonist of the Sci-Fi classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is welcomed to a planet factory, moving through massive chunks of whole worlds being built. Fiction aside, what would it take to build such a world? The occasional ocean, a couple of cows and fish, many mountains, a few fluffy clouds on top, a bunch of bushes and trees with apples and pears, et voilà. A quick run to the mall should do. At the latest in front of the checkout, you might wonder how much your shopping spree will be. Let’s see: five billion liters of oceans, two million tons of trees, 10,000 cows, and 67 cubic kilometers of clouds? Hard to sum up, isn’t it? Well, if we want to compare different forms of capital, apples and pears so to say, we obviously require a common measurement standard. That’s why they came up with money, no need to reinvent the wheel. So how much would the ocean be, or the forest? Easy as that, just look up the price for the ocean’s fish or the forest’s timber. But timber is not all a forest embraces. It provides many other benefits to society: the mere pleasure of wandering about it, the carbon it stores, or the oxygen it produces. Unfortunately, oxygen does not have a price nor a market – it is an externality.
Chocolate Externalities To get a better grasp of this economic lingo, just imagine living next to a chocolate factory. Every morning you wake up to the divine smell of chocolate, nonetheless you surely won’t pay the factory for this joy. On the flipside of this positive externality, the factory can also produce negative ones, for instance poisoning a river with its chocolate sludge. For this, society will have to pay, not the factory, since pollution is not traded on a market and therefore doesn’t have a price. No price means no cost for the company and no incentive for its manager to reduce the pollution of the river.
Likewise, most environmental goods, and externalities do not have a market. The creation of an artificial market is the only solution to generate a price, which can then guide decision makers. For decision makers in climate change this is already being done. After hearing the simple message of the renowned Stern Review ‘damages from global warming are way more expensive than its prevention’, formerly priceless CO2 is now traded on the stock markets, at least in some parts of the world, like the EU. For carbon this is fairly easy. One tone costs a few dollars. But how much is the wide array of values of ecosystem services and biodiversity?
Sufficient Reason to Value The answer is more than € 1 trillion – close to the combined GDP of all ASEAN countries. And this is just one year’s worth of biodiversity loss, as Dr. Luke Brander, a lead author of the study on ‘The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity’ (TEEB), explained. You see, externalities sum up. Only after identifying these, they can be demonstrated and captured. On its way to do so, the TEEB initiative is hosted by the United Nations Environment Program and supported by the European Commission and many countries. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), for instance, has been a global player in TEEB from the start and is translating it to a regional level. And what better region than Southeast Asia, where externalities – not from chocolate factories but from deforestation, overfishing and pollution – threaten a third of worldwide coral reefs and mangrove forests among other unique ecosystems. These sustain the livelihoods for nearly 600 million people – sufficient reason for GIZ and the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity to support the valuing of the services of the region’s biodiverse ecosystems through the Biodiversity and Climate Change Project (BCCP).
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Worth a Journey through Southeast Asia Many of these can be found in the 33 ASEAN Heritage Parks (AHP), which were the focus of the 4th AHP Conference, organized from 1 to 4 October 2013 in Tagaytay, Philippines. During the conference, Mr. Norman Ramirez of ACB introduced the ASEAN TEEB study, showing specific case studies in Southeast Asia’s key ecosystems. On a brief journey along them, and other regional studies, the listeners were taken to learn what came to light. Departure in Thailand: if you ask Thai shrimp farmers how much they can make of a coastal strip, they will readily tell you that nine years’ worth of timber harvest from mangroves merely generates US$ 500 per hectare, while a shrimp farm in its place will bring in US$ 10,000. A clear business case for cutting the mangroves. Wait a minute, what about externalities? Factoring in positive externalities, like storm protection from mangroves, and negative ones of the shrimp farm, like restoration costs, it looks quite differently: mangroves create benefits of US$ 12,000 per hectare while shrimp farms even cost society, namely US$ 10,000 per hectare. This is no news for Thailand, guided for the past three decades by its King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s philosophy of Sufficiency Economy. This Economy is very similar to The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in its attempt of happiness development, balancing economic activities with their negative externalities. As Thais would say, TEEB is ‘Old whisky in a new bottle’, Ms. Piyathip Eawpanich, GIZ Deputy Director of the ECO-BEST Project remarked. Still, the project, aiming to enhance and communicate the TEEB idea in Thailand has no easy task in selling to the variety of park rangers, economists and people this ‘new bottle’ of the valuation of ecosystem services. Moving on to the Mekong region, such services even include Elephant Draught Power, narrated Dr. Lucy Emerton, Chief Economist of the Environment Management Group, Sri Lanka. Since elephants are commonly used to transport timber from the forest, they are a so-called provisioning service of the ecosystem, and sure enough economically valuable. Together with supporting services like seed dispersal, cultural services like ecotourism and regulation services such ascrop pollination, the Mekong’s biodiversity adds US$ 7.3
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billion to the region’s economy per year. Emerton’s study impressively shows that every dollar spent on conservation leverages US$ 40 of payback. This is confirmed by studies in Indonesia’s AHP Leuser Forest or Viet Nam’s Hon Mun Marine Protected Area, which make it very clear: short term gains of unsustainable resource exploitation are always dwarfed by long term losses. In 2050, lost mangroves could cost US$ 2 billion, loss of reef related fisheries even US$ 5.6 billion to the region – a year.
It Pays That conservation pays off, Vietnam indeed realized, where the ASEAN trip ended. The country successfully internalized externalities of deforestation by introducing PES. Yet a new acronym? What is behind it then? ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ essentially means getting paid to do nothing, said Emerton. Her colleague Pham Hong Luong of VNFOREST agreed and explained how this scheme works: every landowner gets paid US$ 20 per hectare of forest if they don’t clear cut the trees, hence avoid externalities. A small, but fruitful incentive that resulted in significant national forest cover increases. That such incentive can work on a much bigger scale shows a glance to the North. Since 1999, the Chinese government has invested more than $100 billion in PES after realizing that environmental damage detracted three to 10 percent from the country’s GDP. Identifying, demonstrating and capturing these externalities, China is now on track for its goal of restoring 40 million hectares of forest – an area bigger than Japan – by 2020, via paying 120 million farmers to plant trees. The country has clearly understood the message of TEEB: as the dentist or with climate change, prevention and conservation pay off. This holds good globally: a study, recently published in the journal Science, estimates the costs of the maintenance and establishment of conservation areas to effectively protect the world’s biodiversity: $ 80 billion a year. Sounds enormous? Only at a first glance. It is less than 20 percent of global spending on soft drinks, and only a tiny fraction of the value of these ecosystems. The value of valuation becomes clear: nonvaluation automatically means the attribution of zero
value to goods – be it chocolate sludge, elephant draught power, or oxygen from a tree. If you don’t value it, you won’t save it. Or rather, ‘if you don’t love it, you won’t save it’ as Noralindabinti Haji Ibrahim, Senior Forestry Officer in Brunei Darussalam concluded the TEEB session of the AHP conference, pointing to the critique of the
monetization of nature. Beyond doubt, TEEB is an important tool, but biodiversity needs clear thresholds, given that it cannot be simply substituted. As the saying goes: ‘When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.’ Mind you, manufacturing a new planet remains Science Fiction and nature is clearly not a shopping mall. •
ACB photo
A dollar sign in Brunei’s jungle waters and mangroves?
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From Reef to Ridge – A Sunday Stroll Through An Asean Heritage Park
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lummeting down a 500-meter deep valley on your Sunday trip is perhaps not the most tempting outlook for most readers. But once you become finally conscious about the fact that you are safely strapped to a reassuringly strong steel cable, spanning the whooping 1.5 kilometers between two mountain ridges, you might actually enjoy this unique zipline experience in Misamis Occidental, Mindanao. As soon as the adrenaline rush settles down a little, it is worthwhile taking a glance around: the mountain Barangay Hoyohoy behind you, Barangay Guimad in front of you, Ozamiz, 850 meters lower on the coastline to the right, Mt. Malindang to the left and Labo River, running down the mountain range beyond you. In next to no time, you will make out a remarkable difference between the lush and vivid rainforest on the left hand side, and the landscape on the right hand side, featuring bare land and endless parallel rows of monotonous palm plantations.
ASEAN Heritage Parks as Answer to Staggering Deforestation Sadly, the latter represents much of the present day Philippines, and Southeast Asia for that matter. Only about 15 percent forest cover are left in the once entirely woody Philippines, with one-third lost just between 1990 and 2005. In Southeast Asia, deforestation accounts for jaw-dropping 555,587 square kilometers between 1980 and 2007, equivalent to the total area of Thailand. We cannot afford to lose forests as the livelihoods for hundreds of millions of indigenous people, the warrant of a stable climate and ultimately for its intrinsic value and beauty. A beauty worth defending. It is imperative to preserve the indispensable values of our natural ecosystems and resources, which brings us back to the left hand side of the picture: the Mount Malindang Range Natural Park, part of the 10 to 15 percent of the world’s land surface that is categorized
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as protected areas. The Philippines features 240 of such protected areas, which proved to be the single most effective way of conservation. Since environmental problems, however, are not confined to individual countries like the Philippines, protection beyond national boarders is essential. For Southeast Asia, such supra-national protection is realized through the network of ASEAN Heritage Parks (AHPs), areas of high-conservation importance, preserving an inclusive and representative spectrum of ecosystems in the region. The 33 AHPs in the 10 ASEAN Member States are established to facilitate greater awareness, appreciation, and conservation of the ASEAN’s rich natural heritage, and to generate collaboration among the states in its conservation. The launching of Mount Malindang in 2013, as the fourth Philippine AHP, provides a rather suitable occasion for a nice Sunday stroll up the green slopes of this stunning mountain range, giving a prime example for the features, importance and challenges of AHPs.
A Snapshot of Mt Malindang’s Ecosystems from Shore to Top To begin the trip, we have to put our bathing trunks on and immerse ourselves into the aquatic landscape of the park. The coastal zone consists of shallow marine waters, which harbor colorful coral reefs, thriving seagrass beds, a seaweed ecosystem, diverse mangrove forest, and nipa swamps. Here we can marvel the voluptuous richness of 59 seaweed species, 60 algae species, over 100 plankton species, among manifold fish, sponges, sea fans, anemones, worms, shrimps, lobsters, crabs, shells, slugs, nudibranchs, clams, octopods, starfish, sea-urchins, feather stars and sea snakes, to only name a few. This habitat type serves as important sanctuary for fish and nursery for their young; it supports the marine food web and protects the shoreline from erosion. Considering that
Wikimedia Commons
Much remains to be done in effectively managing protected areas in the ASEAN region.
87 percent of the province’s population lives within 50 kilometers of the coast and directly or indirectly depends on marine natural resources, this ecosystem is of utter most importance, but also at peril: much of the coastal area is already converted to residential area, coconut farms or rice fields. Well-toweled, we shoulder our bag and leave the coast to follow along the river system of Mt. Malindang, equally influenced by human settlement and utilization. Despite the domestic and irrigation use of water, fishing and the mining of gravel and sand, the two main streams of the park, Langaran and Layawan River could so far maintain a fair water quality. It is important to recognize that energy and material flows link the aquatic system intimately to the terrestrial ecosystem, which we enter now. This is especially true for the agro-ecosystem in lower altitudes, consuming high amounts of irrigation water. The system features 73 species of cultivated crops, including vegetables, cereals, agro-forestry and grass-
dominated areas, besides 164 animal species. It is also home to the majority of the over one million people, who depend on the Malindang Range. Already less populated is the adjacent natural Lowland Dipterocarp Forest, from 220 to 500 meters above sea level, featuring 175 plant species, with 25-meter high trees, and over 250 different animals. Increasing human encroachment for cultivation, and unregulated extraction of forest products, such as firewood and timber, however, convert this ecosystem to much less diverse mixed forest or plantation forest. These plantations are mostly monocultures, dominated by Cocos and Acacia. Likewise, also the Dipterocarp Forest from 450 to 900 meters is affected and the remaining forest can be found only in small and discrete patches. Moreover, areas cleared by logging cannot be cultivated here, due to the steep slopes. Following along Layawan River uphill, where the vegetation becomes more and more dense, we will encounter the Subanen, the indigenous ‘river people’
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community of Misamis Occidental. They comprise 75 percent of the occupants of the natural park and are traditionally hunters and gatherers, but most have settled down to plant corn, vegetables, bananas and coconuts. Thus, they shape the agricultural systems of higher altitudes, using mainly the traditional form of shifting cultivation, which involves a short period of agriculture with subsistence crops like cassava, followed by fallow. Besides providing food and material for shelter, the forests are also a source of traditional medicine to them, some of which remain available and are used to this day. One example is the bark of Almaciga, used to treat stomach-ache. The Subanen still enjoy an intimate relationship with nature, and take only what is needed for their subsistence. Furthermore, they protect the mountain by reporting poachers and by supporting the Protected Area Office in its conservation efforts. Fernando Magante, provincial tribal coordinator for the Subanen, laments that Malindang’s rich biodiversity is increasingly affected by incidences of illegal logging. He hopes that the declaration of the park as an AHP will strengthen the commitment to defend the park and their home. After this first exhausting ascent, let us catch our breath and cool our feet in picturesque Lake Duminagat. This eight-hectare crater lake, located at the heart of the park is not only an important water source for the adjacent rural villages, but also a silent witness of the geologic history of Mt. Malindang. A series of volcanic eruptions over some two million years followed by severe erosion has formed this deeply dissected mountain range of lavas and built-ups. Other indicators of Malindang’s fiery past are the hot springs of Sebucal and Tuminawan, extensive volcanic rocks and the carbonized woods are Mansawan. Sufficiently refreshed, we now leave the Subanen and ascent the very steep slopes of the Submontane Diperocarp forest. It features over 160 plant and 150 animal species, many endemic to Mindanao and found nowhere else in the world. This forest type provides important ecological services, above all the stabilization of the steep terrain. The steepness makes the forest also poorly accessible to illegal logging, the fortunate reason why only its lower parts have been logged. At a similar altitude, up to 1,400 meters, we will come across a true forest giant, Agathis philippinensis,
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eponymous for the Almaciga Forest. The tallest representative reaches remarkable 45 meters into the cloudy sky and has a circumference of 11 meters, rendering it also a sought-after and now threatened source for timber. From 1,400 onwards we cross the threshold to the biodiversity hotspot of the park. The very dense Montane Forest harbors with over 270 plant species alone, a big share of Malindang’s 2,283 recorded species, a number which is estimated to be higher by magnitudes. The most prominent inhabitant is the Philippine Eagle, which, contrary to its synonym ‘Monkey Eating Eagle’, mainly feeds on flying lemurs. Thirty-six individuals of the about 400 remaining and highly endangered pairs of eagles in the country find shelter in the park. To protect this heraldic Philippine animal, the private Philippine Eagle Foundation works together with the local communities and prepares the release of eagles, hatched in the Davao Eagle Center. The Philippine Eagle is however in no way the only noteworthy bird in the park, which is lucky enough to host 162 different bird species. Sixty of them can be found at the last leg of our hike from 1,700 meters to the cold and windy 2,424-meter peak of Mt. Malindang, where, according to Loreto Ocampos, congressman of Misamis Occidental and also a keen mountaineer, the only sound you hear is the chattering of your bones. This altitude is dominated by the Mossy Forest. On our way through this enchanted world of dwarfed trees with gnarled trunks and prop roots covered with mosses and ferns, you begin to appreciate why the Subanen consider this place sacred and use it for religious ceremonies. Luckily, this forest remains fairly intact and gives a very neat example of the enduring 18,000 hectares of primary forest of the park’s 33,700-hectare forested area. On the way back, we have time to recap the extraordinary diversity in species and habitats, caused by the plentiful environmental conditions along the slopes of Mt. Malindang, and supporting a huge number of people. However, as we have also witnessed, there are many man-made threats putting the ecological integrity of the park at peril. As Herminia Ramiro, the Governor of Misamis Occidental, put it, ‘it is not the righteous people who will protect their village from the storm, but it is the swamps and forests surrounding it, which provide
the protection. In turn, it is the mission of righteous people to safeguard these swamps and forests’. A gloomy reminder of this was last year’s devastating flood in Metro Manila where a million or so residents affected would certainly agree and appreciate the intact ecosystems around them, holding back the torrential water masses.
Good Governance to Protect our Web of Life Having seen the significance of preserving ecosystems, such as Mt. Malindang, what is the best way to achieve this? Nereus Acosta, secretary and presidential adviser for environment protection, tried to answer this question. He cogently pointed out the four elements of good governance for sustainable development in the Natural Parks and beyond: ‘Its natural capital, the people dependent on it, the technology to protect it, and the economy supported by it’. He further emphasized three capital Cs as prerequisites for ecological protection: Conservation, like motherhood and apple pie, comes first, now strongly supported by the declaration of areas as AHPs. To achieve this, Capacity needs to be strengthened, both carrying capacity of the ecosystem,
as well as the caring capacity of the stakeholders involved with its protection. And last, but not least, Cost is an essential factor of appreciating the value of the services ecosystems provide us with. For instance, the major export of Misamis Occidental, the seventh poorest province, is fresh oxygen from the forests, a commodity, which does not have a price tag, and thus a low visibility for decision makers. The concepts of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), applied in the natural park, are a promising way out. ‘Preserving this heritage and thus the ecological security of the country and the region, is at least as important for national security as the Scarborough Shoal,’ Mr. Acosta highlighted. ‘We can talk political security, employment and investment – at the end of the day we return to what sustains life and fuels our economy – ecology, which is more than just natural resources. If we hit the buffers of ecology, we get disconnected from the global web of life. If we cannot protect the support system of life, there is no life to sustain.’ And we have to be aware, that in contrast to the 500-meter zipline fall into the Labo River valley, there is no harness and safety cable for our quickly plummeting biodiversity – the ecological support system of all life on earth. •
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Born to be Wild in a Warming World
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idden a Tamaraw lately? Then guess yourself lucky, as for this unique experience there are only two options: either as an old timer fan, exploring Asia’s wilderness in a Tamaraw Asian Utility Vehicle, built by Toyota in the 1970s. Or on the back of its namesake Tamaraw, the Mindoro dwarf buffalo. What both share is their ruggedness – and their minuscule number of lasting examples. The former lives on in the successor car models Revoor Innova. The later, and its 350 remaining peers, however, can only be found on Mts. Iglit-Baco in the outback of the Philippine Island Occidental Mindoro, as its name Bubalus mindorensis already suggests. A bit further south, likewise the Indonesian Toyota Kijang shares its design with the Toyota Tamaraw. Yet the name lending Barking DeerKijang looks quite different to the Tamaraw, the largest land mammal endemic to the Philippines. The one-meter tall and compact Tamaraw is slightly hairier, and has shorter horns than the national animal of the Philippines, the water buffalo Carabao. The Carabao, however, only dwarfs the Tamaraw a little, both in size and fame. Toyota aside, the Tamaraw is a mascot of a many sport teams, features the TV show ‘Born to be Wild’ and can be found on the old Philippine one-peso coins. Nevertheless, this national symbol of the Philippines not only disappeared from the coin but also from the wild. The Tamaraw is now listed as one of the world’s most endangered animals. Still in the early 1900s, around 10,000 of these fierce and solitary individuals, truly born to be wild, grazed the tropical highland forests of Mindanao. But this forest has been lost more and more during the last century to farming and high human population growth. Now there is yet another factor in the equation, endangering the iconic animal: climate change – ironically sped up by the emissions of the many Tamaraws and Kijangs on Asia’s roads.
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ACB photo
Born to be wild: Bubalusmindorensis
Escaping the Final Nail in the Coffin Climate change adds to the global challenge of biodiversity conservation. It is threatening individual species – like the Tamaraw– as well as entire ecosystems, with negative consequences for human well-being. Increasing temperatures and altered precipitation regimes already result in distribution changes of species. When it is getting warmer – uncomfortably warm – animals and plants have two escape options to more pleasant climates: moving polewards, or moving upwards. Both options are very limited for the Tamaraw, once they reached the southern end of their habitat or the peak of Mt. Iglit-Baco. Also drier conditions, as predicted for the Philippines, can make it quite un-intimate for the dwarf buffalo, which appreciates the proximity of waterholes. This is true for many other animals and plants. Twenty to 30 percent of species assessed in a current global review could be wiped of the face of the planet if climate change leads to global average temperature rises greater than 1.5-2.5 degrees – a very likely scenario.
Fury, Adorable and Locking Away Carbon In order to avoid this scenario and the final nail in the coffin of the Tamaraw and its millions of contemporaries, let’s drill down on what is called mitigation, the reduction of climate change. And a very peculiar contemporary might be able to give an answer how exactly this mitigation can look like. Slapping the water with their broad furry tail, these adorable semi-aquatic rodents do not exactly seem to be the saviors of the world but they are very busy in trying so. Beavers are doing their bit for carbon capture and storage. ‘The dams they build, and the wetlands produced as a result, lock away a surprising amount of carbon’ says Ellen Wohl of Colorado State University in an interview with the New Scientist. ‘Beaver dams cause water to breach riverbanks, creating areas of wetland known as beaver meadows, which contain large amounts of sediment and organic material. If the dam breaks the meadows dry out, exposing the material to the air and releasing some of the carbon stored within them.’ In her study in the US Rocky Mountain National Park, beavers accounted for eight percent of the carbon stored in the landscape. Albeit not living in Southeast Asia’s landscapes, beavers remarkably show how one species can have a key role in the functioning of a whole terrestrial ecosystem. Combined, these ecosystems sequester about three billion tons of atmospheric carbon annually, approximately 30 percent of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions. On the flipside, the current loss of such ecosystems and their species, results in 10 percent of all human greenhouse gas emissions. For these emissions primarily deforestation is to blame, but also other land use change triggering soils and peatlands to relieve their stored carbon – five billion tons of carbon in Indonesia’s peatlands alone. Stumped for an answer how to reduce their third highest carbon emissions worldwide, Indonesian decision makers, among others, should consider the role of their ecosystems and species very carefully in their policies. Accordingly, the most widespread land-use based mitigation policy is the United Nations’ Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme. This scheme develops ‘win-win’ mitigation policies that are beneficial for both the climate and biodiversity.
To Learn How to Learn to Live with Climatic Change Having seen that species like the busy beaver make an important contribution to climate change mitigation, this is not enough. Supporting the beaver and its peers with win-win strategies can only slow and halt future warming. The currently occurring warming, however, can already be felt with all its consequences, like more frequent storms or droughts. To learn to live with such consequences requires adaptation, complementing mitigation efforts. To learn how to learn to live with climatic change, another wild creature might shed some light on. The North American Painted Turtle Chrysemyspicta can tell a story about the need for adaptation. Chrysemyspictais one of many reptile species whose sex is determined by temperature. Eggs in warm nests are likely to hatch as females, while males hatch in cooler nests. In a nutshell, males do not stand a chance in a warmer world, if they happen to be painted turtles. A temperature rise of just around 1 °C is all it would take for the species to become 100 percent female and earmarked for extinction. This is very unfortunate for the turtle, as well as all crocodilians, a bunch of turtles and lizards, and some fishes, living in a world about to fail the two degree target. Not to fail too, females adapt: they can shift their nesting dates by about 10 days to ensure their eggs develop at temperatures that produce an even mix of males and females. If that does not do the trick, they might lay their eggs in shadier locations. In case even the shade gets too hot, reptiles need to evolve the ability to cope with warmer conditions. However, climate change is happening so rapidly that an evolutionary response, especially in long-lived organisms, is not likely. What is true for our little turtle also works for an entire ecosystem. Ecosystems can adapt to a warming world. But only to a slowly and not too much warming world, and only if such systems are healthy. Like the Tamaraw’s encroached highlands, other weakened habitats are just overwhelmed by yet another pressure. Take the decades long overfishing of Southeast Asia’s rich coral reefs, for which climate change could be the literal final nail in the coffin, too. On the other hand, most healthy ecosystems have a rather high natural capacity to adapt to climate change. A capacity many
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countries could benefit from, which are now starting to develop and implement adaptation policies to cope with impacts. So far adaptation strategies tend to focus on technological, structural, social, and economic developments, while the linkages between biodiversity and adaptation are often overlooked. However, ecosystem-based adaptation can be a cost-effective alternative to very expensive measures. Just take the habitat of the painted turtle. In order to adapt to more floods from rivers and wetlands in a warmer climate one could build pricy dams, possibly endangering the turtle and its contemporaries even more and taking away other goods and services like fisheries. Particularly relevant to the poor, such goods and services can be, however, maintained with an ecosystem based adaptation mechanism, while providing the same flood protection. Possible preventive strategies, such as reduced deforestation, afforestation or soil conservation are much cheaper than dams and the like. And cheaper is the buzz word if we want to stick with economic lingo. Now ‘triple win’ policies are possible: let’s bring the stories of the conservation of the iconic Tamaraw and Kijang, the mitigation efforts of the busy Beaver and the adaptation of the
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The iconic Mindoro dwarf buffalo
Wikimedia Commons
Painted Turtle together. Unmistakably, links between biodiversity and climate change flow both ways and are interconnected. Only by aligning the conservation of biodiversity with climate change mitigation and adaptation, the world’s species, born to be wild, stand a chance to stay wild. Including our very own species, Homo sapiens. •
Marine Conservation – From Seaweed to Flying Dinosaurs
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reaking news: ‘Large flocks of flying dinosaurs have been spotted all over Southeast Asia. The sky above Metro Manila and Singapore, as well as large parts of Thailand and Viet Nam was darkened today by estimated 50 million creatures. The dinosaurs are believed to migrate from Russia down to Australia, paying a visit to the ASEAN region on their way. Please remain inside and stay calm.’ This announcement shouldn’t terrify but rather sound quite familiar to most Southeast Asians, since it happens twice a year.
Sleep like a Dinosaur Really? The sky darkened by millions of dinosaurs? Feathered dinosaurs, to be precise – more commonly
referred to as birds. But birds don’t share much with Jurassic Park’s star Tyrannosaurus rex, do they? Have a closer look. From their appearance to their sleeping posture they have a lot in common: fossils of more than 20 dino species, like Archaeopteryx, have been collected with preserved feathers. T. rex’s fossilized skin is as soft as that of a bird. With their heads tucked under their arms, dinosaurs even slept like modern birds. Modern birds are the only kind of dinosaurs that survived their famous mass extinction 65 million years ago – most likely resulting from an asteroid impact – due to their larger and more complex brain. Having brains helped them to better adapt to the dramatic change in the environment – until now. Sixty-five million years later, the environment is changing again, thanks to
Aditya Nugraha
Not quite dinosaurs, Mudskippers are one of the many wonders of Southeast Asian marine biodiversity. Photo taken in the mangrove swamps of Tanjung Baru Beach, Karawang city, West Java, where the mudskipper population is threatened by a plan to build a sea port.
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a new player with an even bigger brain – Men. His development and resource consumption now critically endangers many surviving dinos. Just take the Spoon-billed Sandpiper; as few as 100 breeding pairs remain in the wild. Once hatched in the Arctic Circle, the tiny Sandpiper fledglings face their first 8,000-kilometer migration to Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia. Together with 200 fellow water bird species, they use twice a year the East AsiaAustralasian Flyway, connecting Russia to Southeast Asia and Australia. At the same time, this region is home to 45 percent of the world‘s human population, leaving 33 of the bird species critically threatened. Some shorebirds show annual declines of nine percent. Clearly, the feathered dinosaurs in the flyway have more reason to be terrified by us, then we by them.
Hidden Billions From a seabird’s eye perspective, such threats and decline are symptomatic for the rich marine biodiversity of the region, harboring the Coral Triangle, a megadiverse area with 75 percent of global coral species. The Triangle is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in combination with other human activities, leaving e.g. 98 percent of Philippine coral reefs at risk. “This is because only 12 percent of the reefs in the region are protected,” as Ms. Annabelle Cruz Trinidad of the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) set the scene for the marine session of the 4th ASEAN Heritage Parks (AHP) Conference, held 1 – 4 October 2013 in Tagaytay, Philippines. The 33 AHPs represent biodiverse ecosystems in the region, encompassing, however, only four marine sites. How can that be, if marine ecosystems are so crucial for feathered dinosaurs, and the livelihoods of millions, providing hundreds of billions to the regional economy? Because these billions are hidden. “The Philippine Bolinao-Anda coral reefs, for instance, is worth US$38 million per year, consisting mainly of indirect benefits from shoreline protection. Yet, direct use from fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism was only valued at US$ 6 million,” Ms. Trinidad pointed out. And even worse, most reef revenues are not ploughed back into their management. This leaves marine protected areas of developing Asia with a
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financing gap of 85 percent. As always, we are short on cash. But also on the effective use of it, since capacity is often lacking.
Of Floating Fences and Pink Patrols And we are short in fences. Unlike their counterparts on land, marine protected areas cannot easily be fenced against outside threats. Threats come from hunters. Mine-hunters. While luckily there is not a single sea mine to be found on the Philippine Tubbataha Reef, on 17 January 2013 the minesweeper USS Guardian ran aground on the UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef. Destroying the reef on a size of about five basketball courts was certainly no joy to the millions of flying dinosaurs who depend on this last intact seabird rockery of the country they use on their exhausting journey along the flyway to fuel up on fish. Fish and the entire fauna are so plentiful that one can find 80 of all 111 know coral species here. The biodiversity value of this richness dwarfs the mere US$ 600 charged per m2 of destroyed reef, as Ms. Angelique Songco, Park Manager of the Tubbataha Management Office, remarked. It’s exactly this vibrant value, not sea mines, what a different kind of hunters is after. For poachers, the protected and productive atoll is a true magnet within its plundered surroundings. Without floating fences being invented yet, poaching makes strict law enforcement by rangers indispensable. On their difficult job in the middle of the Sulu Sea, 15 boat hours away from their families, they are supported with good equipment, proper training and motivation. “If they ask us to paint their boats pink we do so, as long as they patrol the reef day and night,” Ms. Songco said. This awareness is crucial, since many ask why on earth the armed forces of the Philippines should protect a bunch of fish. “Only in the Philippines you will find that people are still smiling when arrested for poaching’, as happened on an illegal Chinese vessel caught in 2006,” Ms. Songco narrates. But such hard measures can only bear fruit if combined with soft ones, like education, outreach and partnership. Such promotion of compliance works: enforcement costs decreased dramatically in the last decade, locals now even text in when they see poachers coming from the outside.
Planet, People, Profit
2010, bleaching killed large parts of the reef building Acroporacorals. Named in honor of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit of Thailand, Acropora sirikitiae should be at the heart of all Thais. And at the heart of all Southeast Asians, with their destiny closely linked to marine resources. Dangers from the outside, be it warships, poachers or climate change need “regional and transboundary mechanism, based on scientific findings and backed by solid financing,” the AHP Conference session concluded. One example of such regional approach is the East Asian-Australasian
From outside its boundaries come most risks to marine protected areas. Therefore, the economic situation of people living there needs to be considered carefully. Simply locking people out, won’t work. “There is always a triple bottom line: Planet, People, Profit,” said Dr. Rili Djohani, Executive Director of CTI. The Center guides the communities in the region to realize the conservation benefit for entire fisheries. The spillover of fish from thriving protected breeding grounds sustains Flyway Partnership with 15 government partners, many the Coral Triangle tuna industry, worth alone US$ 3 of them in the ASEAN. Dr. Llewellyn Young of billion a year. It becomes clear that the livelihoods the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands highlighted that of over 100 million people are not threatened by without international cooperation on conservation of conservation but maintained, or even increased, if the flyway, many waterbird species will face extinction alternatives to destructive fishing are applied. Just take in the near future. seaweed cultivation. You might not like its fishy taste, For the extinction of the other dinosaurs, the but it is en vogue for cosmetics, medicines and textiles. continued survival of pigeons, puffins and penguins – A trial with 1,000 farmers is promoted by CTI in thanks to their big brains – may be a small consolation. the Indonesian Nusa Penida, a learning site to share Let’s keep it this way. Watching the feathered dinos knowledge throughout the region. taking off into the sunset, let’s hope that our brains Yet another alternative, bringing in US$ 900.000 a too are big enough – for their and our survival. • year in Thailand’s four marine AHPs alone, is ecotourism. Prudently planned ecotourism. Dr. Niphon Phongsuwan of the Phuket Marine Biological Center explained just how carefully ecotourism should be implemented. The Green Fins project of environmentallyfriendly dive operators and the Andaman Marine Protected Areas Network work together as reef guardians. And guardians are desperately needed for Thailand’s reefs, weakened by climate change-induced GIS map by Jerome Alano, ACB bleaching of corals. In Location of the Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines
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An Environmental Gender Agenda – Sharing the Caring for the Future
Photo by Tunaung
A mother gives her child drinking water amid a parched land. The rapidly changing climate patterns have reduced rainfall in many wetlands in the ASEAN region and elsewhere in the world.
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an is tampering with the buttons of the world’s climate machine and is pushing the global ecosystem ever further to its limits. Or is it men? Let’s take a glance at two hotspots of damage to our natural system: on a clear morning, north of the city of Palembang on Sumatra, Indonesia, Ahmad kisses his wife Lia goodbye, to go logging in a forest, which has declined half over the last years. Likewise, worldwide it is largely men, not women, chopping down tropical and boreal forest, thus responsible for 20 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. Or let us follow Joseph, who just leaves his wife Maricel for a day of fishing on the Philippine Island Malapascua, known to have lost most of its coral reefs already. It is men, again not women, overfishing our oceans, leaving 80 percent of global fish stocks fully or over-exploited.
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Now, what can we learn from this? That, as so often, men trigger the gloom and doom in the world?
Social Roles and the Environment Stereotypes like the ability to multitask or reverse park a car aside, there are indeed some well-defined differences between the social roles that men and women play, and the power relations in-between. Notably, gender is not based on sex or the biological differences between men and women. Instead, gender is shaped by culture, social relations and natural environments, as Huisinga Norem of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization points out. Gender roles affect economic, political, social and ecological prospects and challenges faced by both men and women, resulting in different labor responsibilities, decision-making processes, and
knowledge. Such difference are also true for natural resource management, climate change and biodiversity conservation. The World Bank summarizes four main variations: especially rural women and men have different roles, responsibilities, and knowledge in managing natural resources. Ahmad is in charge of timber harvesting, while Lia collects medicinal plants and picks berries, commodities known as Non-Forest Timber Products. Thus, they both use the forest –in a complementary way. Moreover, access to technology, information, and training is mostly targeted to men. Joseph attended a workshop on the impacts of dynamite fishing coral reef ecosystems, while Maricel was too busy cleaning, processing and selling the caught fish. Despite the fact, that the biggest amount of fish is lost post catch, providing a large potential for resource saving practices, as IUCN’s Global Senior Gender Adviser Lorena Aguilar highlights. Gender differences also exist in rights and access to natural resources, including land, trees, water, and animals. Likewise, women are still absent from climate change and natural resource-related decision-making processes at all levels. Joseph, for instance, takes part in an ecotourism initiative for the island, while Lia has no chance to make her voice heard in Indonesia’s climate change negotiations. Such gender differences point at the scale of the problem and its global environmental and social dimensions. To achieve sustainable development, as stipulated for example in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), both men and women have to be considered along the way. But we first need to focus on those that are less empowered: women.
Gender and Environment: A Double-Edge Relation Let us have a closer look at the two-way relationship between women and the environment. Firstly, vulnerability to the consequences of global warming and the destruction of ecosystems varies among gender. Vulnerability is to one part determined by the resources on which individuals depend, and, crucially, the entitlement of individuals to use these
resources. In particular in rural areas, both women and men are highly dependent on biodiversity resources such as fish or wood, while to a large extent, it is only men owning these resources. Moreover, deforestation, as in Ahmad’s and Lia’s forest, means that wood – the most widely used solid fuel – is located further away from their village. In poor communities in most developing countries, women and girls are responsible for collecting firewood, a physically draining task that can take 20 or more hours per week. As a result, Lia now has less time to fulfill her domestic responsibilities, earn money or learn to read. Also her girls are often kept home from school to help gather fuel, perpetuating their cycle of disempowerment. As with biodiversity, climate change will exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and create new ones, affecting women more severely than men. This is partly because in many countries they make up the larger share of the agricultural work force and partly because they tend to have access to fewer income-earning opportunities. Further, women often manage households and care for family members, which limits their mobility and increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters. In addition, the expected increase in temperature-related illnesses and deaths, for example, from malaria and dengue fever is likely to increase maternal mortality. Maricel is thus more vulnerable to climate change than Joseph, since she was not involved in the island’s typhoon preparedness training, she is at a higher health risk during pregnancy and less likely to find new occupation if rising sea levels constrain fishery. Secondly, women play a different role in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation. This is mainly due to the fact that women and men have knowledge about different things and different knowledge about the same things. Things like biodiversity, which comes in the form of the wealth of knowledge. Such traditional knowledge is controlled, developed and shared by women. Lia’s knowledge on biodiversity, such as wild ancestors of food, medicinal plants and domestic animals is much greater than Ahmad’s. She possesses, just like many other women, a large repertoire of “coping strategies” that they have traditionally used to manage climate variability. For instance, she is a saver and manager of diverse
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seeds, more than 600 in her community, increasing her families’ resilience in case of droughts, amplified by climate change. Empowering women to participate as equals in information sharing and generation, education and training, technology or financial assistance, has proved to make resource management and conservation more successful. As men are increasingly drawn to seek remunerated work away from their lands and resources women’s role in the management biological resources is ever more increasing.
The Rocky Road to Empowerment Despite such priceless contribution by women to save our climate and ecosystems, daunting challenges remain: when she was Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Chilean President Michelle Bachelet decries that inequality persists in gender wage gaps and unequal opportunities, in low representation of women in leadership and in continuing violence against women in all its forms. Two out of three illiterate adults are women. Girls are still less likely to be in school than boys. Every 90 seconds of every day, a woman dies in pregnancy. In a nut shell, women face some of the worst inequities in access to social services, land and other productive assets, which deprives them and the world of the realization of their full potential. ‘No enduring solution to the major changes of our day – from climate change to political and economic instability – can be solved without the full empowerment and participation of the world’s women’, underscored Michelle Bachelet at 2013’s International Women’s Day (IWD). On 8th of March, it is important to keep that in mind, while celebrating the tremendous progress made.
Gaining Momentum: The Gender Agenda And indeed, appositely to the 2014 IWD theme, the Gender Agenda is Gaining Momentum. During the past century, women have taken many steps forward towards legal rights, access to education
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or participation in public life – and to being stewards of the global climate and ecosystems. Success can be seen in every region of the world on every level. Take the shores of the severely overfished Zambian Lake Tanganyika, providing livelihood for ten million people, where a local women’s association has turned their backs on fishing and now makes a decent living on rice farming. A story that could inspire Maricel and millions of other fisher folk in the Philippines. Lia can look at India and Nepal, where recent research proves that community forests with a high proportion of women in key decision-making bodies had significantly improved forest conditions. Also on the international level there is progress on this very link. “The third MDG is dedicated to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women. But when we look at the other seven goals, it is clear that none of them are possible without the inclusion of gender considerations” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General. Unlike the UN climate change efforts, the Convention on Biological Diversity acknowledges precisely these gender considerations. The convention adopted a Gender Plan of Action in 2008, stimulating and facilitating efforts to promote gender equality and mainstream a gender perspective from the global to the national level. In the Philippines, for instance, the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan clearly states the importance of gender for the conservation of biodiversity and the equitable sharing of its benefits. Let us hope, that this effort will empower Maricel who ends a hard day’s wearing work of processing fish, as the sun sets over the coral seamed Island of Malapascua. And let us use the 8th of March to raise awareness that doom and gloom can only be prevented – a sustainable future can only be reached – by women and men enjoying equality together, as Ms. Bachelet puts it. Only if the vigor of women, like Maricel and Lia, is included, only then the vastness and variety of the environment can be sustained – in the sense of Virginia Woolf: ‘It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?’ •
GREEN IS THE NEW PINK– VOYAGE AND RETURN
Moral The protagonists went out on a dangerous journey through outlandish places and, after overcoming the perils, return with nothing but experience. What is the experience of the CBD’s Voyage and Return plot? Let’s look at other examples, like the Odyssey or Alice in Wonderland: When the Queen famously shouts ‘Off with her head!’ Alice is fearless, calling the evil soldiers out as just a pack of cards, and is woken up from her dream for tea. Also we don’t have to be afraid. Yes, there are challenges, but they mustn’t turn into a paralyzing apocalypse. Instead we should focus on how we can implement the change we want to see. Goal E and this chapter show how it can be done. Environmental Governance, knowledge and science give Hope for the patient Earth, as do Giants of biodiversity – if we learn to Spare a Dime for Biodiversity.
Goal B: Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use
Target 17 By 2015 each Party has developed, adopted as a policy instrument, and has commenced implementing an effective, participatory and updated national biodiversity strategy and action plan. Target 18 By 2020, the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and their customary use of biological resources, are respected, subject to national legislation and relevant international obligations, and fully integrated and reflected in the implementation of the Convention with the full and effective participation of indigenous and local communities, at all relevant levels. Target 19 By 2020, knowledge, the science base and technologies relating to biodiversity, its values, functioning, status and trends, and the consequences of its loss, are improved, widely shared and transferred, and applied. Target 20 By 2020, at the latest, the mobilization of financial resources for effectively implementing the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 from all sources, and in accordance with the consolidated and agreed process in the Strategy for Resource Mobilization, should increase substantially from the current levels. This target will be subject to changes contingent to resource needs assessments to be developed and reported by Parties.
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On the Bright Side – Hope for the Patient Earth in Hyderabad
Wikimedia Commons
Slowly closing. Image of the largest Antarctic ozone hole ever recorded (September 2006), over the Southern pole
A
uroch, Tarpan, Tasmanian Tiger, Quaggazebra, Steller’s Sea Cow, Bluebuck, Pyrenean Ibex, Falkland Islands Wolf, Atlas Bear, Caribbean Monk Seal, Bali Tiger and Javan Tiger, Eastern Cougar, Western Black Rhinoceros. Are you wondering, why you missed out on these exotic animals during your last visit to the zoo?
Little Chance of Survival The unpalatable answer is that all these animals are prominent peers of the estimated up to 140,000 species, snuffed out every year. A number that has to be taken with a grain of salt, since most extinctions happen silently and undocumented. Nevertheless, experts agree
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that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, also known as the Holocene extinction, which started about 10,000 years at the end of the last Ice Age. As a result of climate change and the proliferation of modern humans, it continues into the 21st century. Two out of three ecosystems on Earth are damaged. In other words, only one third of the Earth is still reasonably intact. If our planet was a living being, it would have little chance of survival.
The Key Document on Sustainable Development To enhance these chances of the patient Earth, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on 5 June 1992
opened the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for signature, which entered into force the year after. Ever since, the international legally binding treaty emboldens and coordinates the development of national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. More precisely, its objectives are the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources. This key document regarding sustainable development is governed by its Conference of Parties, where world leaders come together to negotiate the future of our biological diversity as a common concern of humankind. Ten years and five meetings ago, the 2010 Biodiversity Target and its strategic plan aiming to halt the decline of biodiversity by the end of 2010 was adopted, which the world turned out to have largely failed to meet. On the contrary, loss of habitat and species have even accelerated, with the current extinction rate 10,000 times higher than the background extinction rate. Also the withering results of the toothless Earth Summit Rio +20 earlier this year, one might ask if the sluggish process of global environmental governance is up for the multitude of 21st century challenges. Let us see: apart from the everyday doomsday scenarios there are also messages on the bright side, as the following examples illustrate.
Jute Instead of Plastic The white plague dangles from tree branches, clogs sewers in cities and floats in the sea. Plastic bags are a problem from the beginning to the end of their up to 500 years long life. They are made from petroleum and do not decay in the environment. It may take half a millennium, until the sun has decomposed a bag. By itself, the plastic bag would not be a problem if it was not for their large quantities and careless use. Giant plastic garbage dumps float in the oceans, from which at least 80 percent come from land. Dropped by man, gone with the wind, the bags end up in the sea, with consequences that are not yet clear. Nobody knows what happens when the masses of waste decompose over time, what the consequences are on the global marine food web.
Thus, many countries have announced to fight plastic bags. In Bangladesh, they have been banned since 2000. In China, they may no longer be given away but have to be sold. Since 2008, the population is also encouraged to use reusable and recycle plastic bags. Also in Tanzania plastic bags are banned, in some regions with six months in jail for violations of the law. Moreover, some bags that are made from renewable resources such as corn starch, can be degraded biologically by soil bacteria without residue, putting an end to this threat to the environment and human well-being.
A Ban on Ocean Dumpin From today’s perspective, the practice to sink toxic waste in the sea, popular up to the 1990s, appear like a surreal postmodern-scenario. In fact, this used to be the common method of disposal for such waste, like acids as a product of dye production. Even heavy oil residues from ship tanks were legally emptied overboard, with devastating effects on marine biodiversity and fisheries. It is also hard to imagine that liquid nuclear waste was also disposed in this way for decades, until 1993, when a worldwide ban entered into force, which included the dumping and incineration of industrial waste at sea.
Closing the Ozone Hole During the mid-1980s, mankind could no longer close its eyes to the fact that the ozone layer of the atmosphere, protective against UV light, had become leaky. New data showed that the concentration of ozone over Antarctica had decreased by 40 percent from 1975 to 1985. At that time also the culprit was detected: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were used as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners, and propellants in aerosol cans. Typically, ozone acts as planet Earth’s natural sunscreen, as it absorbs in 15- to 25-kilometer altitude over 90 percent of harmful UV-B radiation. If the ozone concentration in the stratosphere decreases by only ten percent, the UV-B exposure on the ground increases by half. To address this issue, in September 1987, 47 states signed the “Montreal Protocol”, banning the production and use of five particularly dangerous chlorofluorocarbons substances. Today, 196 countries signed the treaty, which the former
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UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has described as “perhaps the most successful international agreements of all time”. As a result the Ozone hole stopped growing and the UN expects that it will close entirely until 2050.
The Forces Destroying Biodiversity Are Huge, The Forces Against That Are Tiny So the good news is environmental policies and legislation can work and make an enormous difference to the state of our planet. Efforts that governments have made to keep the 2010 Biodiversity pledge have soared since 1970 and are respectable. But they clearly have not worked too well. The problem, says Stuart But chart of the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, UK, is that while there have been lots of plans on paper, “they have been inadequately targeted, implemented and funded”. For instance, there are
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manifold protected areas globally, but they have not been given enough money and are not in the most biologically important places. More than 80 percent of governments have promised to tackle invasive alien species, but fewer than half have done anything. The forces destroying biodiversity, all related to human economic expansion, are huge, the forces working against that are tiny. This won’t change until a force emerges that is similar in strength to the forces spreading destruction. To sum up, the total loss of biodiversity is so far not ruinous. In the last 200 years, researchers found, ‘only’ one to two percent of all species have gone extinct, and, as we have seen, courageous environmental governance and leadership can make the difference, urgently needed. This leaves us with enough time to turn the ship around, and steer away from the fifth mass extinction – erasing some of the species on the red list, you will not see in the zoo, let alone the wild anymore. We still have time and the means to fix this. •
Giants Of Biodiversity – A Belly Full Of Ecosystems
T
his story starts with an adventurous walk through a lush, dense and wild mangrove forest, full of humming birds in the canopy and thriving with fish around the flooded roots. Arriving at the coast, one can see fishermen at work – bringing in the daily catch of shrimps from the sheltering mangroves, and colorful fish from coral reefs close by. Kids playing cheerfully in the shallow water, a whale passes in the distance. But hang on a moment – what is this chewing noise? Slowly turning around, a gigantic colossus comes into sight, munching its way through the mangrove forest, filling its enormous belly with trees, shrimps and fish, leaving nothing behind but destruction and misery.
With a sigh of relief, you find out that this giant is not a danger to you, since it is made of papier-mâché and its belly is full of papier-mâché shrimps and fish. To fully understand this colorful story of mangroves, their function, their services to humans and their deterioration, the papier-mâché giants tell, let us track back a little.
The Art of Papier-Mâché in the Philippines Some centuries ago, long before the destruction of marine and coastal ecosystems became a heavily debated issue, the Philippines was still a Spanish colony. Along Laguna de Bay, many haciendas could be found,
Photo by Yvette Co
Mother Nature and the Mangrove Garden
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where the hacienda owners prohibited the townspeople from holding any celebrations. Aside from the costly preparations, they also wanted to restrict pagan festivities and allowed only one annual celebration. The townspeople took advantage of this sole festivity, prepared lots of food, wore colorful costumes, and held a big procession featuring big papier-mâché caricatures of their Spanish landlords – an art form imported from Mexico by Spanish friars. These multi-colored, humongous, comical and sometimes scary 12-footers were called “Higantes” or giants. First, only two or three higantes were made, representing a “mag-anak” (family), but the tradition soon diversified into many motives. The heads of the higantes were, and are still made of papier-mâché, using a wooden mould, newspapers and starch, and painted with the details of the face. Bamboo strips or yantok are used as the skeleton frame for the body, which is then covered with yards of cloth resembling their characters. The head is attached to the body and a person can go inside and carry the higante around. Apart from the Higantes Festival, also known as the Feast of San Clemente, in honor of the patron saint of the fishermen, which is celebrated every November 23 in the town of Angono, Rizal, the art of papermâché is also an unbroken 400-year tradition of Paete, Laguna. Nowadays the 30,000 inhabitants of Paete base their livelihoods mainly on woodcarvings and papiermâché, next to tourism, farming and fishing.
Marine Biodiversity for Sustaining Life and Livelihoods This close connection of the Higantes to fishing, paintings of Marc Chagall and old lithographic prints inspired the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and GIZ, through the Biodiversity and Climate Change Project (BCCP), to create a papiermâché exhibit for the
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Go4BioDiv International Youth Forum in Hyderabad, India in parallel to the 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 11) in 2012. The exhibit, entitled Mother Nature and the Mangrove Garden, was all about ‘conserving coastal and marine biodiversity for sustaining life and livelihoods’, which was also the theme for COP11 and Go4BioDiv. Mother Nature and the Mangrove Garden is a circular 16 square-meter set up of giant papier-mâché human, marine plant and animal sculptures delicately crafted by a team of artisans from Paete, Laguna under the helm of BCCP Consultant, Ms. Yvette Co. The exhibit encouraged people to take on the responsibility of conserving what Mother Nature has provided us.
Endangered Beauty of our Oceans
This is direly necessary as marine biodiversity is globally at peril. Also known as variability among living organisms and their habitats, it includes the diversity within species, between species and within ecosystems. In response to this threat, ACB as a regional intergovernmental organization coordinates national and regional efforts on biodiversity conservation and sustainable management in Southeast Asia. The future lies not only in the conservation of marine biodiversity, but also in the restoration of what has been thriving and healthy in the past. Walk around the Mangrove Garden and see how a perfectly functional mangrove forest can deteriorate with human use and abuse. Moving along, view some examples of how we can do our share in restoring our mangrove forests. Mother Nature has one more reason to smile if we could stop the greedy giant from eating his way through all our ecosystems, the ecosystems we all depend Photo by Yvette Co on. • A hungry Giant of Biodiversity
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Spare A Dime for Biodiversity
‘S
o I must leave, I’ll have to go. To Las Vegas or Monaco. And win a fortune in a game, my life will never be the same.’ you might hear the Bornean River Turtle, the Malayan Tapir or the Sumatran Rhinoceros whistle the famous ABBA song ‘Money, money, money.’ And indeed, as members of the 2,517 threatened species in Southeast Asia, what they all have in common is their need for money. Conservation needs resources. The survival and well-being of all species require healthy ecosystems, whose conservation depends on long-term, extensive and effective funding. ‘Money, money, money. Must be funny, in the rich man’s world.’
Billions in a Blink And fortunately, we do live in a rich man’s world, where money is plentiful. Just look at the global financial markets: the estimated volume of derivative financial products equals a fantastic US$ 720 trillion, dwarfing even the total world’s GDP of US$ 62 trillion. Billions are moved in a blink. Clearly the money is there. It’s just a matter of spending it right, for instance, on the conservation of biodiversity, sustaining the livelihoods of some 600 million people in Southeast Asia alone. However, annually only US$ 19 billion make their way to conservation, while at least $ 80 billion would be necessary for the maintenance and establishment of conservation areas to effectively protect the world’s biodiversity. This is less than 20 percent of the global annual spending on soft drinks.
No Magic Bullet Just take Southeast Asia, harboring immense treasures of biodiversity, which are rapidly lost. Yet, there remains a huge gap of conservation funding, which the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) knows all too well. Based in Los Baños, Philippines the regional organization coordinates efforts on biodiversity conservation and sustainable management. When their
initial funding by the European Commission ended in 2010, the Government of the Philippines stepped in for the core funding, complemented with project-related funding by others, e.g. GIZ, the German Development Cooperation. Still, this money is not sufficient to fund the center’s mandate on the long term. ‘A short attention span of donors, decreasing growth in donor countries and competition with other causes’ are the main reason, explains finance consultant Robert LeBlanc. ‘The amount of available money is stable, but split on more topics. There is no magic bullet’. It becomes clear that ACB, and conservation as a whole, need to tap other sources. Making the business case for biodiversity certainly helps. The private sector starts to feel the impacts of unsustainable value chains. ‘Take cashew butter. When cashew trees are burned ever more for palm oil plantations, food companies have a serious supply problem.’ says LeBlanc. ‘Also, social responsibility is now expected by the shareholders of the 2,000 largest companies at the stock markets.’ Conservation can bring into play such self-serving interests of companies and capitalize on the need to act sustainable. ACB and others just have to focus on their strengths, and how they can assist others on their way to become green – be it scientific research or policy coordination. That’s good news for turtles and tapirs. So let’s have a closer look what their funding options in the ASEAN region could look like.
Rhino Trusts and Turtle Stamps Take the Bakun Watershed in the mountainous northern Philippines which generates a lot of hydroelectric power, the rest of the country benefits from. Therefore, the host communities of the dams receive a national wealth tax they can then spend on reforestation, watershed management, public health, and conservation. The formerly priceless watershed services with all its biodiversity are now paid for by the beneficiaries.
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The beneficiaries of the Bunaken National Park in North Sulawesi pay for the enjoyment of nature’s services. Visiting divers now finance the conservation programs in the park, and have helped to conserve over 1,000 species of fish, dugongs, marine turtles, and other threatened marine species that live in the region. If forests are more your cup of tea, why not buy 100 square meters of rain forest? More precisely, its restoration and protection. The Malua Bio Bank in the Malua Forest Reserve in Malaysia offers with its Biodiversity Conservation Certificates an opportunity for private sector companies working in Malaysia to help fund 34,000 hectares rain forest area that is home to pygmy elephants, orangutans and rhinos. And indeed, the Sumatran rhino needs special attention, with its population rapidly decreasing. That’s why Indonesia and the United States have a longstanding rhino partnership. The joint Sumatran Rhino Trust pays the government of Indonesia $60,000 per rhino captured for a captive breeding program, in order to lessen the impact on wild populations. Well, $60,000 is perhaps a bit much. And what to do with a Rhino in your backyard? So perhaps the next funding model is more appealing and affordable: a couple of cents for the next postcard. Perhaps from
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Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) natural wonders. In 2007, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and national postal service of PNG issued a new series of postal stamps that feature the six species of endangered marine turtles found on the Island. And these are only six of the 1,500 different wildlife stamps issued in 211 countries. Having sold more than one billion stamps, WWF could fund raise millions for the conservation of endangered species.
The Stakes are High Endangered species like the Bornean River Turtle, the Malayan Tapir or the Sumatran Rhinoceros might soon be off the hook, if we are only resourceful enough to tap innovative funding and financing strategies. With dwindling biodiversity and the loss of its services, the stakes are high. In the words of Mr. LeBlanc: ‘If I was sitting next to the president of the USA, I’d tell him to support ACB, and conservation, in his interest’. After all, ABBA’s fund raising advice might not be of much help to a turtle or a rhino: ‘In my dreams I have a plan. If I got me a wealthy man I wouldn’t have to work at all, I’d fool around and have a ball… Money, money, money. Must be funny, in the rich man’s world.’ •
Farm to Fork – Leaving A Smaller Foodprint Part II
‘I
n a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense – economically, environmentally and ethically.’
Lessons Learnt from Genghis Khan Food waste is not only unaffordable, but also unnecessary. Why? Let’s take a glance at Mongolia, one of the fastest growing economies in the world and one that is aiming for a transition to a green economy. ‘It is not a big waster or loser of food, but the traditional and nomadic life of many of its people does have some ancient answers to the modern-day challenge of food waste,’ as Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) points out. The Mongol general Genghis Khan and his soldiers used a traditional food called Borts to gallop across Asia, not reliant on elaborate supply chains. Borts is essentially concentrated beef equal to the protein of an entire cow but condensed to a little ball. This remarkable method of keeping food, without refrigeration, maps out a way to preserving and thus not wasting food. Aptly, Mongolia is the global host for the World Environment Day, with last year’s motto ‘Think.Eat.Save: Reduce Your Foodprint’. It is also the name of a campaign that UNEP and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO), in cooperation with many partners from the public and private sector, launched earlier this year. Every year on June 5th, people across the planet celebrate the World Environment Day to improve the environment now and for the future. This year they come together to show how to reduce your personal foodprint, whether in your home, whether on your farm, whether in the supermarket, in a canteen, in a hotel or anywhere else where food is prepared and consumed.
Think, Eat, Save Leaving a smaller foodprint is a child’s play. With relative ease and a few simple changes to our habits, we
Photo By Kyawkyaw Winn
A worthwhile investment: Our Future
can significantly cut the jaw-dropping food squandering. Just think, eat, save. First, think: As we have seen, food loss and waste stem to a large extend from consumer behavior. Let’s just be a bit better informed and organized, and a bit less picky. A best-before-date does not necessarily
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mean, we have to toss it straightaway. Also, planning of food shopping and proper storage is not too hard. And why not take the slightly miss-shaped tomato next time. Ugly veggies are equally yummy. Valuing food a little more, and putting our values into practice, may well inspire decision makers to do their share. More coordination along the entire food chain and smart investments in food infrastructure would make all the difference. Secondly, eat. Enjoy your dinner, and if your share was just too big, just wrap it and eat it the next day. Likewise, many charity organizations already work with retailers to collect and use discarded food which is still safe, tasty and nutritious. Let’s support them. Last but not least, save. Not only some bucks on your dinner’s bill, but much more. Save our environment from the undue onslaught of modern agriculture. Save yourself the trouble of building cities from food waste, instead save people from going to bed hungry. It has never been easier to save the world. This is your unique chance to slow down climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and starvation, while at the same time enjoying all three thirds of your dinner. Three-thirds of your rice, three-thirds of your beef, three-thirds of your veggies, and of course three thirds of your ice cold beer. Bon Appétit! •
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Wikimedia Commons
An old wisdom: Fight Food Waste, Office for Emergency Management. 1943 – 1945
No Water Without Wetlands Part II Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
Wetlands Warning: ThinkGlobal, Act Local If wetlands play such an important role for the journey of the little water droplet and its comrades to our kitchen table, and beyond, why are they still at such stark peril of destruction and degradation? In 2010, a cover story in the scientific top journal Nature drew attention to the nexus between the use and misuse of wetlands and the dire consequences for mankind. In conclusion, the cumulative impacts of dams, pollution, agricultural runoff, the conversion of wetlands and the introduction of exotic species have led to a situation in which some 80percent of the world’s population, next to five billion people, live in areas where river waters are highly threatened.
In response to these threats to one of our most precious life support systems, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was born on 2 February 1971. It is part of the international architecture including the UN Millenium Development Goals, the Green Economy initiative or the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, highlighting the importance of water management in an integrated, cooperative and holistic manner. Forty-two years later, appositely in the UN International Year of Water Cooperation, this weekend’s anniversary, the World Wetlands Day, shows how Ramsar has set the stage for globally recognizing the value of wetlands ecosystem, increasing awareness and understanding of wetlands’ multiple roles and benefits to humanity. In the last decades national and global initiatives have been intensified to safeguard and
Wetlands are among the most biologically productive natural ecosystems.
ACB photo
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restore the lost or degraded hydro-biological functions of wetlands. A regional illustration for the protection of the staggering 13,204 square kilometers of Ramsar wetlands in the ASEAN countries is the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity. The centre coordinates national and regional efforts on wetland conservation and sustainable management of these ecosystems throughout Southeast Asia. Since September 2010, GIZ, the German development cooperation arm, through the Biodiversity and Climate Change Project (BCCP), has been supporting the institutionalization of ACB’s core program on biodiversity and its nexus with climate change. Zooming back in to our breakfast table: equally important is engagement at the local level. ‘Water is not only the driving force of all nature’, as already Leonardo da Vinci puts it, but also of all humans. Every single
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one of us is utterly dependent on the water wetlands provide us with, rendering wetlands a responsibility of us all. A company can reduce its environmental impact and monitor its water footprint, as can the individual consumer. We can commit to recycle, reuse and conserve water in our private lives whether it is through rainwater harvesting, water-friendly garden design, cutting water usage in our home or supporting our local wetland. Your breakfast can be a first step to ease the droplets long and wearing journey, preserving intact wetlands. For instance, by reducing the purchase of products imported from regions with high water scarcity, or with a large water footprint, such as coffee and meat. Again: Thousands have lived without love, not one without water - and certainly not without the wetlands providing, cleaning and securing it. •