Comments on: Climate change’s ugly cousin – biodiversity loss

By: Biowealth – a lexical leap forward for biodiversity appreciation « ConservationBytes.com

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:32:15 +0000

[...] aspect of biodiversity across better. I’ve reported before that biodiversity loss is the ugly cousin of climate change – the latter has such as catchy (and unfortunately, politically loaded) ring to it, and it hangs [...]

By: The Joke’s On Us « ConservationBytes.com

The Joke’s On Us « ConservationBytes.com — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:44:58 +0000

[...] Clearly other approaches aren’t working. [...]

By: CJAB

CJAB — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:41:02 +0000

Well, yes, of course we’ve heard about the CBD; however, I beg to differ ardently – it is in no way near as ‘main stream’ as climate change. Biodiversity takes very much the back seat in world affairs.

By: kirsten

kirsten — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:16:46 +0000

sooo … ever heard of the convention on biological diversity (cbd.int) it is like the climate change convention.. and it has the cartagena protocol, which is like the kyoto protocol. it is out there, it just isn’t as main stream as climate change right now.

to learn more about all of this email me.
biodiversity@powerhalton.ca

By: CJAB

CJAB — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:38:56 +0000

True. Too true.

By: nemski

nemski — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:54:21 +0000

Our little site gets plenty of comments . . . . and all the wrong ones. Be careful what you wish for. ;-)

By: Response to Corey on Biodiversity « LitFuse

Response to Corey on Biodiversity « LitFuse — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:02:24 +0000

[...] Corey Bradshaw from the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide in Australia writes about how climate change is getting all the attention while biodiversity conservation does [...]

By: Geoff Russell

Geoff Russell — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:06:28 +0000

Yes Justin they can and will cough up. But not to save biodiversity (eg deep cumbungi habitat), but to save the dairy industry. This is a largish export earner (and water exporter) and far and away the biggest user of water in the MDB. Adelaide is spending $1.4 billion on desalinating 50 giga litres while the dairy industry was pulling 4000 gigalitres from the MDB at its peak (CSIRO figures, not ABS). When the last drought started, rice and cotton pretty much stopped planting, but a dairy is like permanent plantings and just keeps going until the bank forecloses … and there has been plenty of that. Conservationists are poor lobbyists compared with farmers about to lose their livelihood. They are seriously focused.

By: Geoff Russell

Geoff Russell — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:56:48 +0000

I’m thinking aloud here, but perhaps the relationship between biodiversity and icon species is a bit like relationship between public health measures and medicine. Good plumbing saves more lives than medicine but few people are interested in it. But they seem to love medical “breakthroughs”. We expect Governments to supply clean water and not bother us with the details but we love TV programs about new medical procedures. The analogy isn’t perfect because conservationists have done a far better job than engineers in making their field sexy, but the cost has been a confusion over whether icon species are a symptom of a good ecosystem or the cause. If people think icon species are an end in themselves, then they won’t focus on the little things and the end result is zoos with animals and nowhere to release them because more work went into saving the animal than the habitat.

By: Justin Brookes

Justin Brookes — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:59:21 +0000

Is the problem just that climate change covers so many aspects with biodiversity being just one aspect.
Ie Climate change is mitigation, carbon accounting, alternative enrgy, sealevel rise etc etc . The many aspects of biodiversity such as habitat loss extinctions may be referred to differently in articles and so not captured in a general search.

However, I do feel we are unable to adequately explain why biodiversity is important. People care about climate change because it is in their face – bushfires, water restrictions, heatwaves etc.

Now that we have to pay for biodiversity in places like the Coorong will we value them differently? Engineering to maintain the status quo is not cheap let alone engineering to achieve restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem function. The relative costs of conservation now against restoration later must weigh heavily in favour of conservation. We may not be able to afford restoration later and almost certainly can not mimic natural biodivesity with onground works, engineering and planting.

In the past we had to convince people of the relative value of ecosystem services with estimates of fisheries, fresh water, biodiversityy etc. In the case of the Murray we have real values on what it will cost for conservation and restoration of biodiversity – will society cough up?