Conserving the world's biological diversity
Our species entered the industrial age with a population of one billion and with biological diversity - the total of genes, species, and ecosystems on earth - possibly at an all-time high. Biological resources - the portion of diversity of actual or potential use to people - were freely available for exploitation to support development. In the late 20th century, we are coming to realize that biological resources have limits, and that we are exceeding those limits and thereby reducing biological diversity. This is therefore a time of extraordinary change in the relationship between people and the biological resources upon which their welfare depends. Each year, more people are added to the human population than ever before, species are becoming extinct at the fastest rate known in geological history, and climate appears to be changing more rapidly than ever. Human activities are progressively eroding the earth's capacity to support life at the same time that growing numbers of people and increasing levels of consumption are making ever greater demands on the planet's resources. The combined destructive impacts of a poor majority struggling to stay alive and an affluent resource-consuming minority are inexorably and rapidly destroying the buffer that has always existed, at least on a global scale, between human resource consumption and the planet's productive capacity. The erosion of the planet's life-support systems is likely to continue until human aspirations come more into line with the realities of the earth's resource capacities and processes, so that activities become sustainable over the long term. The problems of conserving biological diversity therefore cannot be separated from the larger issues of social and economic development. Maintaining maximum biological diversity assumes far greater urgency as rates of environmental change increase. Diversity in genes, species and ecosystems provides the raw materials with which different human communities eill adapt to change, and the loss of each additional species reduces the options for nature - and people - to respond to changing conditions. The tropics harbor a major proportion of the planet's biological diversity. The industrialized countries also depend on tropical resources, as industrial materials, sources of breeding material, pharmaceuticals, tourism sites, and a wide range of other tangible and intangible benefits. So far, however, the exploitation of the tropics by the industrialized societies has yielded great benefits without making commensurate investments in conservation and without paying the environmental costs of over-exploitation. Cheap labor, raw materials with low prices that do not reflect their true value, inappropriate development aid, and the control of commodity prices and interest rates, among other factors, have encouraged much more rapid levels of resource depletion and destruction than would otherwise be the case. The situation is continually worsening through the ramifications of the developing world's debt crisis and related high interest rates. Governments, industry, development agencies, and the general public are therefore becoming increasingly concerned about the depletion of biological resources, with the growing awareness that development depends on their maintenance. How can the scientific knowledge be mobilized that will best enable the planet's biological diversity to be conserved? How can the process of change be managed so that biological resources can make their best contribution to sustainable development? What information is required to address the problems of conserving biological diversity be coordinated most effectively? Where can the financial resources be found to respond to these issues at a scale that will be commensurate with the problems? This document seeks answers to these questions.
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | biblioteca |
| Language: | eng |
| Published: |
Gland (Suiza)
1990
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| Subjects: | BIODIVERSIDAD, CONSERVACION BIOLOGICA, CONSERVACION DE LOS RECURSOS, CONSERVACION DE LA NATURALEZA, |
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| Summary: | Our species entered the industrial age with a population of one billion and with biological diversity - the total of genes, species, and ecosystems on earth - possibly at an all-time high. Biological resources - the portion of diversity of actual or potential use to people - were freely available for exploitation to support development. In the late 20th century, we are coming to realize that biological resources have limits, and that we are exceeding those limits and thereby reducing biological diversity. This is therefore a time of extraordinary change in the relationship between people and the biological resources upon which their welfare depends. Each year, more people are added to the human population than ever before, species are becoming extinct at the fastest rate known in geological history, and climate appears to be changing more rapidly than ever. Human activities are progressively eroding the earth's capacity to support life at the same time that growing numbers of people and increasing levels of consumption are making ever greater demands on the planet's resources. The combined destructive impacts of a poor majority struggling to stay alive and an affluent resource-consuming minority are inexorably and rapidly destroying the buffer that has always existed, at least on a global scale, between human resource consumption and the planet's productive capacity. The erosion of the planet's life-support systems is likely to continue until human aspirations come more into line with the realities of the earth's resource capacities and processes, so that activities become sustainable over the long term. The problems of conserving biological diversity therefore cannot be separated from the larger issues of social and economic development. Maintaining maximum biological diversity assumes far greater urgency as rates of environmental change increase. Diversity in genes, species and ecosystems provides the raw materials with which different human communities eill adapt to change, and the loss of each additional species reduces the options for nature - and people - to respond to changing conditions. The tropics harbor a major proportion of the planet's biological diversity. The industrialized countries also depend on tropical resources, as industrial materials, sources of breeding material, pharmaceuticals, tourism sites, and a wide range of other tangible and intangible benefits. So far, however, the exploitation of the tropics by the industrialized societies has yielded great benefits without making commensurate investments in conservation and without paying the environmental costs of over-exploitation. Cheap labor, raw materials with low prices that do not reflect their true value, inappropriate development aid, and the control of commodity prices and interest rates, among other factors, have encouraged much more rapid levels of resource depletion and destruction than would otherwise be the case. The situation is continually worsening through the ramifications of the developing world's debt crisis and related high interest rates. Governments, industry, development agencies, and the general public are therefore becoming increasingly concerned about the depletion of biological resources, with the growing awareness that development depends on their maintenance. How can the scientific knowledge be mobilized that will best enable the planet's biological diversity to be conserved? How can the process of change be managed so that biological resources can make their best contribution to sustainable development? What information is required to address the problems of conserving biological diversity be coordinated most effectively? Where can the financial resources be found to respond to these issues at a scale that will be commensurate with the problems? This document seeks answers to these questions. |
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