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6,000,000,000 Consumption Machines - environmental aspects of population growth

International Wildlife, Sept-Oct, 1999

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Reclaiming Mangroves

On the Philippine island of Negros, fisherman Wilson Vailocos talked his neighbors into planting mangrove trees along the coast to stabilize eroded shoreline and provide feeding and nursery areas for valuable fish. He also formed seagoing patrols to enforce a ban on dynamite and cyanide fishing. Result: Mangroves have reclaimed 100 hectares of land, and the illegal fishing has been eliminated.

ANIMALS

Plundering the Planet's Species

HUMAN LIFE cannot exist in the absence of complicated interactions of millions of species in biological systems. Yet we live in a period of the greatest loss of plant and animal species since the mega-extinctions of the Jurassic Period 65 million years ago.

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Every year over the course of the coming decades, 50,000 plant and animal species are likely to disappear, ecologists warn. The percentage of birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians threatened with extinction is now in double digits, and the loss of insects and microorganisms is incalculable. Overall, human-induced habitat loss, killing by bushmeat hunters in the Tropics and the introduction of nonnative species, among other problems, have conspired to change the lineup of species on Earth.

Loss of biodiversity is not limited to wildlife. Since 1900, about three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have also disappeared, according to FAO estimates, along with half the wild gene pool upon which domestic cattle are dependent for improving their resistence to diseases, pests and changing environmental conditions.

Increasing population density and pressure for faster but unmanaged economic development are largely to blame. In a study of 50 countries in Asia and Africa, the United Nations Population Fund found that the loss of natural habitat was greatest in high-density areas and least in low-density areas. In the 10 countries that had lost the most habitat, population density averaged close to 200 people per square kilometer. In the 10 countries that had lost the least amount of habitat, the population density averaged just 29 people per square kilometer.

The outlook is particularly bleak in some of the most biologically rich countries of the Third World, where population growth and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources is savaging habitat in "biodiversity hotspots" -- ecosystems with a superabundance of plant and animal species. So far, 24 of these hotspots containing half the planet's land species have been identified. Overall, five of the six most biologically diverse countries could see more than two-thirds of their original habitat destroyed or grossly degraded by the middle of the next century.

Meantime, the world's last great expanses of pristine, mostly uninhabited tropical forests now face imminent destruction. These large tracts of land -- in the Guayana Shield region of northern South America, Amazonia, Africa's Congo and the island of New Guinea -- are prime targets for logging. Together, they are about the size of the state of Alaska.

6,000,000,000 Consumption Machines - environmental aspects of population growth

International Wildlife, Sept-Oct, 1999

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