Who are the world’s biggest environmental reprobates?

5 05 2010

Everyone is a at least a little competitive, and when it comes to international relations, there could be no higher incentive for trying to do better than your neighbours than a bit of nationalism (just think of the Olympics).

We rank the world’s countries for pretty much everything, relative wealth, health, governance quality and even happiness. There are also many, many different types of ‘environmental’ indices ranking countries. Some attempt to get at that nebulous concept of ‘sustainability’, some incorporate human health indices, and other are just plain black box (see Böhringer et al. 2007 for a review).

With that in mind, we have just published a robust (i.e., to missing data, choices for thresholds, etc.), readily quantifiable (data available for most countries) and objective (no arbitrary weighting systems) index of a country’s relative environmental impact that focuses ONLY on environment (i.e., not human health or economic indicators) – something no other metric does. We also looked at indices relative to opportunity – that is, looking at how much each country has degraded relative to what it had to start with.

We used the following metrics to create a combined environmental impact rank: natural forest loss, habitat conversion, fisheries and other marine captures, fertiliser use, water pollution, carbon emissions from land-use change and threatened species.

The paper, entitled Evaluating the relative environmental impact of countries was just published in the open-access journal PLoS One with my colleagues Navjot Sodhi of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Xingli Giam, formerly of NUS but now at Princeton University in the USA.

So who were the worst? Relative to resource availability (i.e,. how much forest area, coastline, water, arable land, species, etc. each country has), the proportional environmental impact ranked (from worst) the following ten countries:

  1. Singapore
  2. Korea
  3. Qatar
  4. Kuwait
  5. Japan
  6. Thailand
  7. Bahrain
  8. Malaysia
  9. Philippines
  10. Netherlands

When considering just the absolute impact (i.e., not controlling for resource availability), the worst ten were:

  1. Brazil
  2. USA
  3. China
  4. Indonesia
  5. Japan
  6. Mexico
  7. India
  8. Russia
  9. Australia
  10. Peru

Interestingly (and quite unexpectedly), the authors’ home countries (Singapore, Australia, USA) were in either the worst ten proportional or absolute ranks. Embarrassing, really (for a full list of all countries, see supporting information). Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Asia, Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, The University of Adelaide, USA, carbon, conservation, corruption, deforestation, environmental policy, environmental science, exploitation, fisheries, habitat loss, harvest, human overpopulation, threatened species

Every extra human means fewer animals

8 02 2010

© The Sun

As promised some time ago when I blogged about the imminent release of the book Conservation Biology for All (edited by Navjot Sodhi and Paul Ehrlich), I am now posting a few titbits from the book.

Today’s post is a blurb from Paul Ehrlich on the human population problem for conservation of biodiversity.

The size of the human population is approaching 7 billion people, and its most fundamental connection with conservation is simple: people compete with other animals., which unlike green plants cannot make their own food. At present Homo sapiens uses, coopts, or destroys close to half of all the food available to the rest of the animal kingdom. That means that, in essence, every human being added to the population means fewer individuals can be supported in the remaining fauna.

But human population growth does much more than simply cause a proportional decline in animal biodiversity – since as you know, we degrade nature in many ways besides competing with animals for food. Each additional person will have a disproportionate negative impact on biodiversity in general. The first farmers started farming the richest soils they could find and utilised the richest and most accessible resources first (Ehrlich & Ehrlich 2005). Now much of the soil that people first farmed has been eroded away or paved over, and agriculturalists increasingly are forced to turn to marginal land to grow more food.

Equally, deeper and poorer ore deposits must be mined and smelted today, water and petroleum must come from lower quality resources, deeper wells, or (for oil) from deep beneath the ocean and must be transported over longer distances, all at ever-greater environmental cost [my addition - this is exactly why we need to embrace the cheap, safe and carbon-free energy provided by nuclear energy].

The tasks of conservation biologists are made more difficult by human population growth, as is readily seen in the I=PAT equation (Holdren & Ehrlich 1974; Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1981). Impact (I) on biodiversity is not only a result of population size (P), but of that size multiplied by affluence (A) measured as per capita consumption, and that product multiplied by another factor (T), which summarises the technologies  and socio-political-economic arrangements to service that consumption. More people surrounding a rainforest reserve in a poor nation often means more individuals invading the reserve to gather firewood or bush meat. More poeple in a rich country may mean more off-road vehicles (ORVs) assulting the biota – especially if the ORV manufacturers are politically powerful and can succesfully fight bans on their use. As poor countries’ populations grow and segments of them become more affluent, demand rises for meat and automobiles, with domesticated animals competing with or devouring native biota, cars causing all sorts of assults on biodiversity, and both adding to climate disruption. Globally, as a growing population demands greater quantities of plastics, industrial chemicals, pesticides, fertilisers, cosmetics, and medicines, the toxification of the planet escalates, bringing frightening problems for organisms ranging from polar bears to frogs (to say nothing of people!).

In sum, population growth (along with escalating consumption and the use of environmentally malign technologies) is a major driver of the ongoing destruction of populations, species, and communities that is a salient feature of the Anthropocene. Humanity , as the dominant animal (Ehrlich & Ehrlich 2008), simply out competes other animals for the planet’s productivity, and often both plants and animals for its freshwater. While dealing with more limited problems, it therefore behoves every conservation biologist to put part of her time into restraining those drivers, including working to humanely lower [sic] birth rates until population growth stops and begins a slow decline twoard a sustainable size (Daily et al. 1994).

Incidentally, Paul Ehrlich is travelling to Adelaide this year (November 2010) for some high-profile talks and meetings. Stay tuned for coverage of the events.

CJA Bradshaw

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Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, bushmeat, conservation, conservation biology, extinction, harvest, human overpopulation, pollution

Sick environment, sick people

30 10 2009

sickplanetA quick post to talk about a subject I’m more and more interested in – the direct link between environmental degradation (including biodiversity loss) and human health.

To many conservationists, people are the problem, and so they focus naturally on trying to maintain biodiversity in spite of human development and spread. Well, it’s 60+ years since we’ve been doing ‘conservation biology’ and biodiversity hasn’t been this badly off since the Cretaceous mass extinction event 146-64 million years ago. We now sit squarely within the geological era more and more commonly known as the ‘Anthropocene’, so if we don’t consider people as an integral part of any ecosystem, then we are guaranteed to fail biodiversity.

I haven’t posted in a week because I was in Shanghai attending the rather clumsily entitled “Thematic Reference Group (TRG) on Environment, Agriculture and Infectious Disease’, which is a part of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/World Health Organization Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) (what a mouthful that is). What’s this all about and why is a conservation ecologist (i.e., me) taking part in the group?

It’s taken humanity a while to realise that what we do to the planet, we eventually end up doing to ourselves. The concept of ecosystem services1 demonstrates this rather well – our food, weather, wealth and well-being are all derived from healthy, functioning ecosystems. When we start to bugger up the inter-species relationships that define one element of an ecosystem, then we hurt ourselves. I’ve blogged about this topic a few times before with respect to flooding, pollination, disease emergence and carbon sequestration.

Our specific task though on the TRG is to define the links between environmental degradation, agriculture, poverty and infectious disease in humans. Turns out, there are quite a few examples of how we’re rapidly making ourselves more susceptible to killer infectious diseases simply by our modification of the landscape and seascape.

Some examples are required to illustrate the point. Schistosomiasis is a snail-borne fluke that infects millions worldwide, and it is on the rise again from expanding habitat of its host due to poor agricultural practices, bad hygiene, damming of large river systems and climate warming. Malaria too is on the rise, with greater and greater risk in the endemic areas of its mosquito hosts. Chagas (a triatomine bug-borne trypanosome) is also increasing in extent and risk. Some work I’m currently doing under the auspices of the TRG is also showing some rather frightening correlations between the degree of environmental degradation within a country and the incidence of infectious disease (e.g., HIV, malaria, TB), non-infectious disease (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular disease) and indices of life expectancy and child mortality.

I won’t bore you with more details of the group because we are still drafting a major World Health Organization report on the issues and research priorities. Suffice it to say that if we want to convince policy makers that resilient functioning ecosystems with healthy biodiversity are worth saving, we have to show them the link to infectious disease in humans, and how this perpetuates poverty, rights injustices, gender imbalances and ultimately, major conflicts. An absolute pragmatist would say that the value of keeping ecosystems intact for this reason alone makes good economic sense (treating disease is expensive, to say the least). A humanitarian would argue that saving human lives by keeping our ecosystems intact is a moral obligation. As a conservation biologist, I argue that biodiversity, human well-being and economies will all benefit if we get this right. But of course, we have a lot of work to do.

CJA Bradshaw

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1Although Bruce Wilcox (another of the TRG expert members), who I will be highlighting soon as a Conservation Scholar, challenges the notion of ecosystem services as a tradeable commodity and ‘service’ as defined. More on that topic soon.


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Categories : China, anthropocene, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, disease, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental economics, environmental policy, function, governance, human overpopulation, malaria, pollution

Charles Darwin, evolution and climate change denial

5 08 2009

DarwinThis week a mate of mine was conferred her degree at the University of Adelaide and she invited me along to the graduation ceremony. Although academic graduation ceremonies can be a bit long and involve a little too much applause (in my opinion), I was fortunate enough to listen to the excellent and inspiring welcoming speech made by the University of Adelaide’s Dean of Science, Professor Bob Hill.

Professor Hill is a world-renown expert in plant evolution, systematics and ecophysiology, and he gave a wonderful outline of the importance of Darwin’s legacy for today’s burgeoning problem solvers. I am reproducing Prof. Hill’s speech here (with his permission) as a gift to readers of ConservationBytes.com. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, distinguished guests, members of staff, friends and family of graduates, and, most importantly of all, the new graduates, I am very pleased to have been asked to speak to you today, because 2009 marks one of the great anniversaries that we will see in our lifetimes. 200 years ago, on February 12th 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born. To add to the auspicious nature of this year, 150 years ago, John Murray published the first edition of Darwin’s most famous book, titled On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, better known to us all today as The Origin of Species.

I believe that from a modern perspective, Darwin was the most influential person who has ever lived. Darwin’s impact on how we think and work is much more profound than most people realise. He changed the entire way in which we go about living. Today, I want to talk to you briefly about how Darwin had this impact.

Darwin was a great observer and a great writer, but above all he was a great critical thinker. He became a scientist by a round about route, planning to be a doctor and a minister of religion along the way, although his passion was always natural history. He was not a great undergraduate student, but he benefited enormously from contact he had with University staff outside the formal classroom. His potential must have been obvious, because he was strongly recommended at a relatively young age, to take the position of naturalist and gentleman companion to Captain Robert Fitzroy on his famous five year voyage of the Beagle. Following this voyage, Darwin never physically left Britain again, but intellectually he roamed far and wide. Darwin was one of the great letter writers. He wrote thousands of letters to contacts all over the world, requesting specimens, data and opinions, and he worked relentlessly at analysing what he received back.

Over many years as a practising scientist I have met a lot of people with a passion for natural history, some of them trained scientists like Darwin, some of them gifted amateurs. There is a very obvious distinction between those with and without formal scientific training at a Tertiary level, but it took me a long time to work out what that distinction is. Let me digress slightly before I explain it.

In today’s terminology we talk a lot about graduate attributes. For some graduates, it is reasonably simple to define the kinds of attributes you expect them to have. I prefer engineers whose bridges don’t fall down, lawyers who keep me out of jail unnecessarily, accountants who can add up and doctors who do their best to keep me alive and healthy. However, the key attributes we expect of Science graduates are not so simple to define. You will all have one or more specialities where you have more knowledge than those who did not do the relevant courses, but if you are anything like I was when I was sitting out there waiting to graduate, you probably think you did what you had to do in order to pass your exams and you now think you have forgotten most of what you were taught. I can assure you that you haven’t, but I can also assure you that specific knowledge of a scientific subject is not the most important thing you have been taught here.

So what is that special something that separates out a professional scientist? It is the capacity for critical scientific thinking. You are now ready to work as professionals in many fields, and employers will actively seek to hire you because they know you have been trained here to apply a particular approach to problem solving. That approach is not easily obtained and has been taught to you in the most subtle way over the full breadth of what you have been exposed to during your time here. I suspect most of you don’t even know that you now have this skill, but you do. Darwin had it in the most sublime fashion.

When Darwin published the Origin of Species it was the culmination of decades of data gathering, backed up by meticulous analysis. Darwin never swayed from that rigorous approach, which strongly reflected the training he received as a student.

When you are exposed to a new problem, you will approach the solution in a similar way to Darwin. Let me consider the example of climate change. There is a remarkable parallel between the public reaction to the publication of the Origin of Species and the current public reaction to climate change. Darwin suffered a public backlash from people who were not ready to accept such a radical proposition as evolution by means of natural selection and this was reinforced by a significant number of professional scientists who were willing to speak out against him and his theory. As time went by, professional scientists were gradually won over by the weight of evidence, to the point where mainstream science no longer considers evolution as a theory but as scientific fact.

The reality of climate change and its potential impacts has not had a single champion like Darwin, but it has involved a similar slow accumulation of data and very careful analysis and critical thinking over the implications of what the data tell us. Initially, there were many scientists who spoke against the human-caused impact on climate change, but their number is diminishing. Most significantly, the critical analysis undertaken by thousands of mainstream scientists has gained broad political acceptance, despite the best efforts of special interest lobbyists. I suspect Darwin would be fascinated by the way this debate has developed.

Lobbyists who write stern words about how scientists as a whole are engaged in some conspiracy theory to alarm the general population simply do not understand or choose to ignore how scientists work. The world needs the critical and analytical thinking that scientists bring more than ever before. We live on a wonderful, resilient planet, that will, in the very long run, survive and thrive no matter what we do to it. But we are an extremely vulnerable species, and our survival in a manner we would consider as acceptable, is nowhere near as certain. That is the legacy of my generation to yours. I have faith that your generation will be wiser than mine has been, and I know that good science will lead the charge towards providing that wisdom.

Charles Darwin was the greatest scientist of all, and that is partly because he was a great observer and a great writer. But most of all, Darwin was the consummate critical thinker – he collected masses of data himself and from colleagues all over the world and he fashioned those data into the most relevant and elegant theory of all. I will conclude with a brief and well known passage from the first edition of the Origin of Species, which clearly demonstrates the power of Darwin’s writing:

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.“

I hope that the next Charles Darwin is sitting amongst you today. I know that at the very least I am standing in front of a group of people who have all the attributes necessary to be great contributors to the well-being of society and the planet. Be confident of your training and use your skills well. You have a grand tradition to uphold.

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Categories : Australia, South Australia, The University of Adelaide, climate change, conservation, evolution, human overpopulation, science, southern Australia

Few people, many threats – Australia’s biodiversity shame

31 07 2009

bridled_nailtail_400I bang on a bit about human over-population and how it drives biodiversity extinctions. Yet, it isn’t always hordes of hungry humans descending on the hapless species of this planet  – Australia is a big place, but has few people (just over 20 million), yet it has one of the higher extinction rates in the world. Yes, most of the country is covered in some fairly hard-core desert and most people live in or near the areas containing the most species, but we have an appalling extinction record all the same.

A paper that came out recently in Conservation Biology and was covered a little in the media last week gives some telling figures for the Oceania region, and more importantly, explains that we have more than enough information now to implement sound, evidence-based policy to right the wrongs of the past and the present. Using IUCN Red List data, Michael Kingsford and colleagues (paper entitled Major conservation policy issues for biodiversity in Oceania), showed that of the 370 assessed species in Australia, 80 % of the threatened ones are listed because of habitat loss, 40 % from invasive species and 30 % from pollution. As we know well, it’s mainly habitat loss we have to control if we want to change things around for the better (see previous relevant posts here, here & here).

Kingsford and colleagues proceed to give a good set of policy recommendations for each of the drivers identified:

Habitat loss and degradation

  • Implement legislation, education, and community outreach to stop or reduce land clearing, mining, and unsustainable logging through education, incentives, and compensation for landowners that will encourage private conservation
  • Establish new protected areas for habitats that are absent or poorly represented
  • In threatened ecosystems (e.g., wetlands), establish large-scale restoration projects with local communities that incorporate conservation and connectivity
  • Establish transparent and evidence-based state of environment reporting on biodiversity and manage threats within and outside protected areas.
  • Protect free-flowing river systems (largely unregulated by dams, levees, and diversions) within the framework of the entire river basin and increase environmental flows on regulated rivers

Invasive species

  • Avoid deliberate introduction of exotic species, unless suitable analyses of benefits outweigh risk-weighted costs
  • Implement control of invasive species by assessing effectiveness of control programs and determining invasion potential
  • Establish regulations and enforcement for exchange or treatment of ocean ballast and regularly implement antifouling procedures

Climate change

  • Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions
  • Identify, assess, and protect important climate refugia
  • Ameliorate the impacts of climate change through strategic management of other threatening processes
  • Develop strategic plans for priority translocations and implement when needed

Overexploitation

  • Implement restrictions on harvest of overexploited species to maintain sustainability
  • Implement an ecosystem-based approach for fisheries, based on scientific data, that includes zoning the ocean; banning destructive fishing; adopting precautionary fishing principles that include size limits, quotas, and regulation with sufficient resources based on scientific assessments of stocks and; reducing bycatch through regulation and education
  • Implement international mechanisms to increase sustainability of fisheries by supporting international treaties for fisheries protection in the high seas; avoiding perverse subsidies and improve labelling of sustainable fisheries; and licensing exports of aquarium fish
  • Control unsustainable illegal logging and wildlife harvesting through local incentives and cessation of international trade

Pollution

  • Decrease pollution through incentives and education; reduce and improve treatment of domestic, industrial, and agriculture waste; and rehabilitate polluted areas
  • Strengthen government regulations to stop generation of toxic material from mining efforts that affects freshwater and marine environments
  • Establish legislation and regulations and financial bonds (international) to reinforce polluter-pays principles
  • Establish regulations, education programs, clean ups, labelling, and use of biodegradable packaging to reduce discarded fishing gear and plastics

Disease

  • Establish early-detection programs for pathological diseases and biosecurity controls to reduce translocation
  • Identify causes, risk-assessment methods, and preventative methods for diseases
  • Establish remote communities of organisms (captive) not exposed to disease in severe outbreaks

Implementation

  • Establish regional population policies based on ecologically sustainable human population levels and consumption
  • Ensure that all developments affecting the environment are adequately analysed for impacts over the long term
  • Promote economic and societal benefits from conservation through education
  • Determine biodiversity status and trends with indicators that diagnose and manage declines
  • Invest in taxonomic understanding and provision of resources (scientific and conservation) to increase capacity for conservation
  • Increase the capacity of government conservation agencies
  • Focus efforts of nongovernmental organisations on small island states on building indigenous capacity for conservation
  • Base conservation on risk assessment and decision support
  • Establish the effectiveness of conservation instruments (national and international) and their implementation

A very good set of recommendations that I hope we can continue to develop within our governments.

CJA Bradshaw

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Categories : Australia, IUCN, IUU fishing, New Zealand, Red List, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, coral reefs, deforestation, disease, ecosystem function, education, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fish, fisheries, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, hotspot, human overpopulation, illegal fishing, invasive species, marine protected area, monitoring, protected area, research, reserve, restoration, threatened species

Conservation Scholars: Paul Ehrlich

4 07 2009

The Conservation Scholars series highlights leaders in conservation science and includes a small biography, a list of major scientific publications and a Q & A on each person’s particular area of expertise.

paulehrlichOur thirteenth Conservation Scholar could easily be placed on the ‘Grandfather of Conservation Biology’ pedestal – Paul Ehrlich. He really needs little introduction, but I’m honoured to do so here for those few wayward souls who don’t know about him. I had the immense pleasure of having lunch with Paul last week at Stanford University and found him to be immensely entertaining and stimulating. I’ve not yet worked with the ‘Grandfather’ (although I do have a chapter ‘in press’ in a book he has co-edited with Navjot Sodhi due out later this year), but I do hope I get the opportunity soon. Introducing one of the more thought-provoking scientists today, Paul Ehrlich (WARNING: you will probably feel inadequate after reading his bio).

Biography

Paul Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies and President of the Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biology, Stanford University. He has been a member of the Stanford University faculty since 1959. His research focuses on population biology (including ecology, evolutionary biology, behaviour, and human ecology and cultural evolution). Ehrlich has carried out field, laboratory and theoretical research on a wide array of problems ranging from the dynamics and genetics of insect populations, studies of the ecological and evolutionary interactions of plants and herbivores, and the behavioural ecology of birds and reef fishes, to experimental studies of the effects of crowding on human beings and studies of rates of cultural evolution. He collaborates with colleagues in biology and in the disciplines of economics, psychology, political science, and the law, in policy research on the human predicament.

As a writer, Ehrlich is prolific. He has authored and coauthored some 950 scientific papers and articles in the popular press and over 35 books, including The Population Bomb, The Process of Evolution, Ecoscience, The Machinery of Nature, Extinction, Earth, The Science of Ecology, The Birder’s Handbook, New World/New Mind, The Population Explosion, Healing the Planet, Birds in Jeopardy, The Stork and the Plow, Betrayal of Science and Reason, A World of Wounds, Human Natures, Wild Solutions, On the Wings of Checkerspots, One with Nineveh and The Dominant Animal. Ehrlich is a member of many scientific societies and organisations, serving as director or board member for many; and was President of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is an Honorary Member of the British Ecological Society. Among his many other honours: the First AAAS/Scientific American Prize for Science in the Service of Humanity; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Crafoord Prize in Population Biology and the Conservation of Biological Diversity (an explicit replacement for the Nobel Prize for disciplines where the Nobel is not given); a MacArthur Prize Fellowship; the Volvo Environment Prize; and the International Center for Tropical Ecology, World Ecology Medal; International Ecology Institute Prize; UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize; the Heinz Award for the Environment; the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement; the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences; the Blue Planet Prize of the Asahi Glass Foundation, Japan; the Eminent Ecologist award of the Ecological Society of America and the Ramon Margalef Prize for Ecology and Environmental Sciences. Ehrlich has appeared as a guest on many hundreds of TV and radio programs including some 20 on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show; he also was a correspondent for NBC News. In addition, he has given hundreds of public lectures in the past 40 years.

Major Publications

Questions and Answers

1. There have been many estimates of our changes to ‘background’ extinction rates. How much and in what ways do you believe humanity is changing  biodiversity extinction patterns?

The major ways we are accelerating rates of both population extinctions (most important because they reduce ecosystem services and presage species extinctions) include:

  1. Continuing land-use change, especially in aid of agriculture (including biofuels production), leading to habitat fragmentation and destruction,
  2. Causing ever greater climate disruption,
  3. Dispersing increasing quantities of toxic substances, especially those which are hormone mimics and may have non-linear dose-response curves,
  4. Moving organisms into areas they did not previously occupy.

The drivers of all of this are, of course, human population growth, over-consumption by the rich, and the continuing use of environmentally malign technologies.

2. Your famous 1968 scenarios in The Population Bomb have been highly contentious over the years. The events you envisaged may not have eventuated yet, but we still seem to be headed towards over-population and resource depletion. Since your last major book on this issue, The Population Explosion in 1990, how would you update your views now?

Signs of potential collapse, environmental and political, seem to be growing, many elements going in the same directions as suggested by The Population Bomb scenarios (which were explicitly stated not to be predictions): famine, disease, resource wars, etc. The pattern remains classic – population grows to the limits of current technologies to support it, followed by technological innovation (e.g., long canals in Mesopotamia, green revolution in India, biofuels in Brazil and U.S.) accompanied by more population growth and environmental deterioration, while politicians and elites fail to recognise the basic situation and focus on expanding their own wealth and power. The current failure to do anything serious about climate disruption is an instructive example.

On the population side, it is clear that avoiding collapse would be a lot easier if humanity could entrain a gradual population decline toward an optimal number. Our group’s analysis of what that optimum population size might be like came up with 1.5 to 2 billion, less than one third of what it is today. We attempted to find a number that would maximise human options – enough people to have large, exciting cities and still maintain substantial tracts of wilderness for the enjoyment of outdoors enthusiasts and hermits. Even more important would be the ability to maintain sustainable agricultural systems and the crucial life support services from natural ecosystems that humanity is so dependent upon. But too many people, especially those in positions of power, remain blissfully unaware of that dependence.

The Population Bomb certainly had its flaws, which is to be expected. Science never produces certainty. Nonetheless, we are all, scientists or not, always attempting to predict the future (will the stock go up or down? Will he be a good husband? Will it rain later?). And when we plan, we do the best we can. One of our personal strategies has always been to have our work reviewed carefully by other scientists, and The Population Bomb and Population Explosion were certainly no exceptions. Both were vetted by a series of scientists, including top leaders in the scientific enterprise. That is one reason that long ago the fundamental message of The Bomb moved from a somewhat heterodox view to a nearly consensus view of the scientific community. Consider the following two 1993 statements. The first was the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (1993) and signed by more than 1500 of the world’s leading scientists, including more than half of all living Nobel Laureates in science. The second was the joint statement by 58 of academies participating in the Population Summit of the World’s Scientific Academies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and the Third World Academy.

The World Scientists’ Warning said in part: “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.”

Part of the Academies’ pronouncement read: “the magnitude of the threat… is linked to human population size and resource use per person. Resource use, waste production and environmental degradation are accelerated by population growth. They are further exacerbated by consumption habits.… With current technologies, present levels of consumption by the developed world are likely to lead to serious negative consequences for all countries…. As human numbers further increase, the potential for irreversible changes of far-reaching magnitude also increases.”

These statements recognised that humanity has reached a dangerous turning point in its domination of the planet, a view even more common in the scientific community today. The same genius that allowed us to achieve that dominance now must be harnessed if we are to prevent our very success from sealing our doom. When The Population Bomb was written I was very optimistic about what could be done to avoid collapse and pessimistic about what humanity would do. Now I’m optimistic about what could be done, but very, very pessimistic about what will be done.

3. What would be the best ways to manage human over-population?

Work much harder to give women education, job opportunities, access to safe contraception and back-up abortion, and equal rights — world wide. The most overpopulated nation — third in numbers and first among large countries in per-capita consumption — the United States should recognise its impacts on Earth’s life-support systems and develop a comprehensive population policy.

4. Raising awareness in people to value species intrinsically has failed to curtail extinctions. Economic valuing of biodiversity and ecosystem services is another approach, but we still seem to be a long way off. What else can we do to convince people not to destroy biodiversity?

This is basically a problem of public education and changing the course of cultural evolution. We know more than enough science to know what directions humanity should be moving; the problems is now in the academic ballpark of the social sciences and humanity. A group of scholars is trying to get a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB) going. It is still in a very preliminary stage — among other things to initiate a global discussion among peoples on what people or for and how they can deal with the human predicament.

CJA Bradshaw

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Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, conservation scholars, ecology, ecosystem services, education, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, habitat loss, human overpopulation, population dynamics, poverty, research

Climate change’s ugly cousin – biodiversity loss

17 05 2009

uglybaby“…nobody puts a value on pollination; national accounts do not reflect the value of ecosystem services that stop soil erosion or provide watershed protection.“

Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent North (UK), Co-chairman, Global Legislators Organisation‘s International Commission on Land Use Change and Ecosystems

Last week I read with great interest the BBC’s Green Room opinion article by Barry Gardiner, Labour MP in the UK, about how the biodiversity crisis takes very much the back seat to climate change in world media, politics and international agreements.

He couldn’t be more spot-on.

I must stipulate right up front that this post is neither a whinge, rant nor lament; my goal is to highlight what I’ve noticed about the world’s general perception of climate change and biodiversity crisis issues over the last few years, and over the last year in particular since ConservationBytes.com was born.

Case in point: my good friend and colleague, Professor Barry Brook, started his blog BraveNewClimate.com a little over a month (August 2008) after I managed to get ConservationBytes.com up and running (July 2008). His blog tackles issues regarding the science of climate change, and Barry has been very successful at empirically, methodically and patiently tearing down the paper walls of the climate change denialists. A quick glance at the number views of BraveNewClimate.com since inception reveals about an order of magnitude more than for ConservationBytes.com (i.e., ~195000 versus 20000, respectively), and Barry has accumulated a total of around 4500 comments compared to just 231 for ConservationBytes.com. The difference is striking.

Now, I don’t begrudge for one moment this disparity – quite the contrary – I am thrilled that Barry has managed to influence so many people and topple so effectively the faecal spires erected by the myriad self-proclaimed ‘experts’ on climate change (an infamous line to whom I have no idea to attribute states that “opinions are like arseholes – everyone’s got one”). Barry is, via BraveNewClimate.com, doing the world an immense service. What I do find intriguing is that in many ways, the biodiversity crisis is a much, much worse problem that is and will continue to degrade human life for millennia to come. Yet as Barry Gardiner observed, the UK papers mentioned biodiversity only 115 times over the last 3 months compared to 1382 times for climate change – again, that order-of-magnitude disparity.

There is no biodiversity equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (although there are a few international organisations tackling the extinction crisis such as the United Nation’s Environment Program, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the International Union for Conservation of Nature), we still have little capacity or idea how to incorporate the trillions of dollars worth of ecosystem services supplied every year to us free of charge, and we have nothing at all equivalent to the Kyoto Protocol for biodiversity preservation. Yet, conservation biologists have for decades demonstrated how human disease prevalence, reduction in pollination, increasing floods, reduced freshwater availability, carbon emissions, loss of fish supplies, weed establishment and spread, etc. are all exacerbated by biodiversity loss. Climate change, as serious and potentially apocalyptic as it is, can be viewed as just another stressor in a system stressed to its limits.

Of course, the lack of ‘interest’ may not be as bleak as indicated by web traffic; I believe the science underpinning our assessment of biodiversity loss is fairly well-accepted by people who care to look into these things, and the evidence spans the gambit of biological diversity and ecosystems. In short, it’s much less controversial a topic than climate change, so it attracts a lot less vitriol and spawns fewer polemics. That said, it is a self-destructive ambivalence that will eventually come to bite humanity on the bum in the most serious of ways, and I truly believe that we’re not far off from major world conflicts over the dwindling pool of resources (food, water, raw materials) we are so effectively destroying. We would be wise to take heed of the warnings.

CJA Bradshaw

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Categories : alien species, biodiversity, bushmeat, carbon, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, decline, deforestation, disease, ecology, ecosystem services, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fish, fisheries, flood, habitat loss, harvest, human overpopulation, invasive species, pollination, threatened species

Too many mouths to feed

19 03 2009

The venerable Professor John Beddington has some stern warnings about over-population in the next few decades. In essence, we cannot ignore the human over-population problem any longer. There are simply too many people for the finite resources available and the consumption rates that do not appear to be declining (not surprising given our voracious appetite for economic growth – more like long-term economic suicide, really). Australia is certainly no exception – with most of our country essentially uninhabitable, we’ve already exceeded our carrying capacity (but try telling this to the pollies).

In my opinion, human over-population is THE principal driver of biodiversity loss in the modern context. Without some serious global efforts for population planning, expect a lot more conflict in your lifetime, and a lot worse effects of climate change. See also Global Population Speak Out.

This one from the BBC:

Growing world population will cause a “perfect storm” of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned. By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences, Prof John Beddington said. Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told a conference in London.

Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways, he added. “It’s a perfect storm,” Prof Beddington told the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference.’Perfect storm’ poses global threat, says Professor Beddington. “There’s not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don’t tackle these problems.”

Prof Beddington said the looming crisis would match the current one in the banking sector. “My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages,” he said.

“We’re relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise.” The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025. The amount of fresh water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply in that time. The issue of food and energy security rose high on the political agenda last year during a spike in oil and commodity prices.

Prof Beddington said the concern now – when prices have dropped once again – was that the issues would slip back down the domestic and international agenda. “We can’t afford to be complacent. Just because the high prices have dropped doesn’t mean we can relax,” he said. Improving agricultural productivity globally was one way to tackle the problem, he added. At present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested. Professor Beddington said: “We have to address that. We need more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better practices, better harvesting procedures. “Genetically-modified food could also be part of the solution. We need plants that are resistant to drought and salinity – a mixture of genetic modification and conventional plant breeding. Better water storage and cleaner energy supplies are also essential, he added.

Prof Beddington is chairing a subgroup of a new Cabinet Office task force set up to tackle food security. But he said the problem could not be tackled in isolation. He wants policy-makers in the European Commission to receive the same high level of scientific advice as the new US president, Barack Obama. One solution would be to create a new post of chief science adviser to the European Commission, he suggested.

CJA Bradshaw


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Categories : climate change, decline, environmental policy, fisheries, human overpopulation, planning

Perceptions on poverty: the rising Middle Class

16 03 2009

I’m being somewhat ‘lazy’ this week in that I have unfortunately less time to spend on pertinent blog posts than I’d like (lecturing, looming deadlines, that sort of thing). So, I start out this week’s posts with one of my favourite TED talks – Hans Rosling debunks myths about the developing world.

What’s the relevance to biodiversity conservation? I’ll admit, it may appear somewhat tangential, but there are a few important messages (both potentially good and bad):

1. POSSIBLE BENEFIT #1: The rising wealth in the developing world and associated reduction in family size may inevitably curb our human population growth rates;

2. POSSIBLE DISADVANTAGE #1: Rising wealth will necessarily mean more and more consumption, and as we know at least for tropical developing nations, resource consumption is killing biodiversity faster than anywhere else on the planet;

3. POSSIBLE DISADVANTAGE #2: As family wealth rises, so too do opportunities do opportunities for the Anthropogenic Allee effect (consuming rare species just because you can afford to do so);

4. POSSIBLE BENEFIT #2: Better health care associated with rising wealth and lower infant mortality might make education a higher priority, teaching more people about the necessity of safeguarding ecosystem services.

I’m not convinced the advantages will necessarily outweigh the disadvantages; regardless, Prof. Rosling’s amazing 20-minute presentation will both entertain and enlighten. I recommend it for a lunchtime sitting or that late-afternoon attention wain.

CJA Bradshaw

more about “Hans Rosling shows the best stats you…“, posted with vodpod

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Categories : Allee effect, conservation, ecological literacy, environmental policy, habitat loss, harvest, human overpopulation, poverty, video

Tropical Turmoil II

8 03 2009

In August last year I covered a paper my colleagues (Navjot Sodhi and Barry Brook) and I had in press in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment entitled Tropical turmoil – a biodiversity tragedy in progress. The paper is now available in the March 2009 issue of the journal (click here to access). We were also fortunate enough to grab the front cover (shown here) and have a dedicated podcast that you can listen to by clicking here about the paper and its findings. I encourage ConservationBytes.com readers to have a listen if they’re interested in learning more about the woeful state of tropical biotas worldwide, and maybe some ways to rectify the problems. The intro to the podcast can be viewed by clicking here.

CJA Bradshaw


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Categories : Africa, Amazon, Asia, Australia, Borneo, Central America, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sarawak, South America, anthropocene, bushmeat, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, decline, deforestation, disease, ecosystem services, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fisheries, flood, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, hotspot, human overpopulation, invasive species, protected area, recovery, threatened species, tropical

Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss III

24 02 2009

Some more (see previous ‘Cartoon Guide’ instalments I and II) comedic reminders of humanity’s environmental short-sightedness.

–

The Call of The Wild

CJA Bradshaw

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Conservation Scholars: Daniel Pauly

3 12 2008

This series on ConservationBytes.com takes a page out of our book Tropical Conservation Biology (Sodhi, Brook & Bradshaw) – therein we produced a series of ‘Spotlights’ describing the contributions of great thinkers to conservation science. Each highlight of a Conservation Scholar includes a small biography, a list of major scientific publications and a Q & A on the person’s particular area of expertise.

Our seventh Conservation Scholar is Daniel Pauly…

Biography

After completing my doctorate studies in Germany in 1979, I spent many years at the International Centre for Living Aquatic Resource Management (ICLARM), then in Manila, Philippines, where I developed methods for tropical fish stock assessment, which I applied and taught in many tropical developing countries. I became a Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre in 1994, and its Director in 2004. My scientific focus has mainly been on the management of fisheries and ecosystem modelling, comprising over 500 contributions to peer-reviewed journals, authored and edited books, reports and popular articles. The concepts, methods and software I have (co-)developed are in use throughout the world. This applies notably to the ecosystem modelling approach incorporated in the Ecopath software, to FishBase, the online
encyclopaedia of fishes, and the global mapping of fisheries trends. My work has received numerous awards, notably the Cosmos Prize (2005, Japan) and the Volvo Environment Prize (2006, Sweden). Profiles on me and my work were published in Science on 19 April 2002, Nature on 2 January 2003, The New York Times on 21 January 2003, and in other publications.

Major Publications

Questions and Answers

1. Which type of fisheries – commercial, recreational or artisanal – represents the greatest exploitative threat to tropical marine ecosystems?

All fisheries have the potential of depleting the resources they exploit. Industrial fisheries, however, are extremely effective at what they do, and they have over a short period a devastating effect on their resource base.

2. What fisheries management practices can be used to counter the phenomenon you have described as ‘fishing down marine food webs’?

Establishing large marine protected areas, and strict controls over the remaining, fished areas.

3. Why are freshwater and lacustrine systems so sensitive to human-induced environmental change?

Because they are small systems compared to the reach of our industries (fishing, pollution, habitat modification, etc). The oceans are larger, and hence the human impacts appeared later.

4. How effective are marine protected areas (MPAs) in conserving tropical biodiversity, and should alternative solutions also be pursued?

MPAs should never be seen as sufficient by themselves. Conventional management is needed too.

5. How can scientists work to overcome misconceptions in policy and public perception that arise from the ‘shifting-baseline’ syndrome?

We should use old records and data routinely, and always refer to the earliest time for which data are available. They should use a wide range of data, not only those compatible with the model currently fashionable.

CJA Bradshaw

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(with thanks to Navjot Sodhi, Barry Brook, Ward Cooper, Wiley-Blackwell and Daniel Pauly for permission to reproduce the text – buy your copy of Tropical Conservation Biology here)


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Categories : coasts, conservation, conservation scholars, decline, extinction, fish, fisheries, harvest, human overpopulation, marine protected area, protected area

Who gives a rodent’s bum about conservation?

14 11 2008

I thought this might be an interesting thing to ponder for a Friday – where in the world do people appear most interested in issues to do with biodiversity conservation science?

Impossible Difficult question to answer, but the map of ConservationBytes.com viewers since August might reveal some interesting trends:

© ClustrMaps
© ClustrMaps

The above map shows our viewers’ locations since 19 August 2008 (to 19 November). The salient features are:

  1. Most viewers are from Europe (especially UK) and the USA. Not really a surprise here given the availability of internet, the number of people and average education level.
  2. Australia comes out next as a centre of activity – again, no surprise here given I’m from Australia and I feature many Australian issues.
  3. Almost nothing from China – the most populous country. I originally thought that the Chinese weren’t interested, but I have since discovered that the Great Firewall of China blocks all WordPress blogs (see blogs and posts on this issue). While there are ways around this, it isn’t easy for this vast body of internet surfers to see what I write. My recent trip there highlighted to me how much this country needs to pay attention to the issues raised in ConservationBytes.com (extensive pollution, huge human population and associated demand, GHG emissions, massive livestock industry, demand for oil palm, etc., etc., etc.).
  4. India was a bit of a surprise. Sure, second-highest human population, so a lot of potentially interested people. It also suggests that increasing internet access and a growing middle class are driving greater awareness and concern in conservation issues.
  5. Very little from Africa and South America. Internet access issues, education, awareness?
  6. Canadians – don’t care? They should.
  7. Russia & the Middle East – not sure why nothing much from these areas.

Of course, my little survey based on web hits from one tiny blog isn’t necessarily the most representative tool to gauge these issues, but it does allow me to pose some interesting hypotheses.

CJA Bradshaw

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Wake Up, Freak Out

9 10 2008
© Leo Murray

© Leo Murray

An excellent, short animated film about the perils of climate change and its implications for biodiversity (including humans). Highly recommended.

This really isn’t about polar bears any more. At this very moment, the fate of civilization itself hangs in the balance.

It turns out that the way we have been calculating the future impacts of climate change up to now has been missing a really important piece of the picture. It seems we are now dangerously close to the tipping point in the world’s climate system; this is the point of no return, after which truly catastrophic changes become inevitable.

Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip is a short, animated film about climate change by Leo Murray.


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Categories : biodiversity, carbon, climate change, climate shift, corruption, ecosystem services, environmental policy, governance, human overpopulation

Tropical Conservation Biology

8 09 2008

An obvious personal plug – but I’m allowed to do that on my own blog ;-)

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I’d like to introduce a (relatively) new textbook that my colleagues, Navjot Sodhi and Barry Brook, and I wrote and published last year with Blackwell (now Wiley-Blackwell) Scientific Publishing – Tropical Conservation Biology.

We’re rather proud of this book because it was a timely summary and assessment of the scientific evidence for the degree of devastation facing tropical biodiversity today and in the future. I’ve summarised some of the main issues in a previous post covering a paper we have ‘in press’ that was born of the text book, but obviously the book is a far more detailed account of the problems facing the tropics.

This introductory textbook examines diminishing terrestrial and aquatic habitats in the tropics, covering a broad range of topics including the fate of the coral reefs; the impact of agriculture, urbanisation, and logging on habitat depletion; and the effects of fire on plants and animal survival.

One of the highlights of the book is that each chapter (see below) Includes case studies and interviews with prominent conservation scientists to help situate key concepts in a real world context: Norman Myers (Chapter 1), Gretchen Daily (Chapter 2), William Laurance (Chapter 3), Mark Cochrane (Chapter 4), Daniel Simberloff (Chapter 5), Bruce Campbell (Chapter 6), Daniel Pauly (Chapter 7), Stephen Schneider (Chapter 8), Stuart Pimm (Chapter 9) and Peter Raven (Chapter 10). These biographies are followed by a brief set of questions and answers that focus on some of the most pertinent and pressing issues in tropical conservation biology today. It is our intention that readers of Tropical Conservation Biology will benefit from the knowledge and be inspired by the passion of these renowned conservation experts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Chapter 1: Diminishing habitats in regions of high biodiversity. We report on the loss of tropical habitats across the tropics (e.g., deforestation rates). We also highlight the drivers of habitat loss such as human population expansion. Finally, we identify the areas in immediate need of conservation action by elucidating the concept of biodiversity hotspots. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tropical turmoil – a biodiversity tragedy in progress

18 08 2008
© Mongabay.com

We recently published (online) a major review showing that the world is losing the battle over tropical habitat loss with potentially disastrous implications for biodiversity and human well-being.

Published online in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, our review Tropical turmoil – a biodiversity crisis in progress concludes that we are “on a trajectory towards disaster” and calls for an immediate global, multi-pronged conservation approach to avert the worst outcomes.

Tropical forests support more than 60 % of all known species, but represent only about 7 % of the Earth’s land surface. But up to 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest are being lost every year and species are being lost at a rate of up to 10000 times higher than would happen randomly without humans present.

This is not just a tragedy for tropical biodiversity, this is a crisis that will directly affect human livelihoods. This is not just about losing tiny species found in the canopies of big rain forest trees few people will ever see, this is about a complete change in ecosystem services that directly benefit human life. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, alien species, anthropocene, biodiversity, bushmeat, conservation, corruption, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, governance, habitat loss, human overpopulation, invasive species, restoration, science, tropical