World Biodiversity

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Blencathra]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle the loss of world biodiversity caused by human activity.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, the matters that I wish to discuss today are largely taken from the excellent report by the IUCN Red List. By sheer coincidence, the latest list was published last Friday. It states that because of the melting ice at the North Pole, polar bear populations were expected to decline by 30%, confirming their vulnerable status. That was the headline announcement from the IUCN last week.

So, what is the IUCN and its Red List? The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental organisation, with almost 1,300 government and NGO members and more than 15,000 volunteer experts in 185 countries. Their work is supported by almost 1,000 staff in 45 offices and hundreds of partners in the public, NGO and private sectors around the world. Of crucial importance is the fact that it is absolutely neutral; no one has ever challenged its findings or criticised its integrity. It is the most respected and thorough conservation organisation in the world and is free from political or personal bias.

The Red Lists are the most comprehensive sources on the global conservation status of animals, fungi and plant species. They are the starting point for conservation action. By 2000 the IUCN had assessed slightly more than 15,000 species. By 2015 it had assessed 79,859 species, and it has set itself the ambitious target of 160,000 species by 2020. The assessments are carried out by a global network of scientists who have access to the best scientific data and knowledge available on the species being assessed. Each assessment then goes through a review process involving scientists who were not directly involved in the first assessment.

The Red List is published in eight categories. The first category is species where the data are insufficient or not evaluated. The second category is “least concern”, the third “near threatened”, then “vulnerable”, “endangered”, “critically endangered”, “extinct in the wild” and finally “totally extinct”. The latest list, published last week, shows that of those 79,000-odd species 834 have been lost for ever and are totally extinct, while 69 are extinct in the wild. However, there are also 4,898 “critically endangered” species, 7,323 “endangered”, 11,029 “vulnerable” and 5,204 “near threatened”. I suppose if you had asked the public—or me, before I read that—to name critically endangered species, I doubt if we could have named 10. We might have come up with rhinos, tigers, maybe elephants, gorillas, polar bears and leopards, and then we would all have got a bit stuck. So how on earth have we got to the stage where almost 5,000 species are in danger of extinction and another 7,000 endangered? In the UK we have lost to extinction the starry breck lichen, and the roundnose grenadier is critically endangered, fished to near extinction by the French and Spanish. That latter comment is mine, not the IUCN’s, I hasten to add. The IUCN has also just announced that the Atlantic puffin, of which we all thought there were millions, has moved up into the “vulnerable” category.

Most people would say that it would be a shame if we did not see polar bears, pandas or lions any more, but would ask why we should care about all the other things that do not matter too much, like starry breck lichen. Those things do matter, though, and in our general ignorance of our wanton destruction we do not know how much they matter. Most Governments in the world are trying to cut carbon emissions but we are ignoring the one massive natural resource that captures carbon: forests. The protection of ecosystems such as peat bogs and forests is critical to regulating carbon. The Amazon rainforest has been described as the lungs of our planet because it provides the essential world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide back into oxygen. More than 20% of the world's oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest, which also releases 20 billion tonnes of moisture every day, most of it watering crops tens of thousands of miles away.

The burning of the rainforest accounts for almost 20% of all carbon emissions in the world and that is far more than all the cars, lorries, buses, trains and ships put together. If we do not halt the total destruction of our rainforests we could close down all the transport in the world and we would still, eventually, die. We are destroying rainforests the size of England every year, and at the present rate they will be totally destroyed in 40 years’ time.

As rainforest species disappear, so too do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. The National Cancer Institute in the United States has identified 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells, 70% of which are found in the rainforests, and 25% of the active ingredients in today’s cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforests. However, of those 25% of western pharmaceuticals derived from rainforest ingredients, fewer than 1% of tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists. So we have tested 1% and are burning the other 99%, yet we are getting a quarter of our drugs from that 1%. How can we be so stupid as to destroy a habitat and species permanently when we have not looked at 99% of the species in it and what benefits they may bring to our survival?

Let us briefly consider the three following facts: a single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all the rivers of Europe put together; a 25-acre area of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees, and that figure is equal to the total tree diversity of north America; and the number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

With enormous effort and will on the part of all Governments in the world we could eventually reverse climate change, but we can never ever bring back to life a species that has been wiped out. Biodiversity is not just about saving the red squirrels—dear to my heart—or the polar bears, orang-utans, lemurs and tigers, whose loss would diminish us all; of perhaps far greater importance to the planet are the plants, bugs, mosses and lichens that we never see and which are not cuddly or iconic.

Look at that tiny insect which we have taken for granted for millennia, the bee, which holds the key to huge quantities of our food production. That is just one insect that we know about and which we have studied. We kind of know the bee’s place in the jigsaw of the survival of humankind but why, therefore, do we carry on destroying without checking hundreds of other species whose role we have not studied and do not understand, but which might be equally crucial to our survival?

The complex and crucial interactions between species can sometimes be unrecognised until one species is lost from an ecosystem and the imbalance results in sometimes disastrous consequences. One example is that when top predators are removed from an ecosystem, prey populations can sometimes grow to unstable levels and deplete food resources, which leads to a cascade of ecological effects.

Not many people like vultures—big ugly, nasty birds which eat carrion and rotten flesh. So who cares if their numbers decline? In India a few years ago, in order to protect cattle from flies a pesticide was rubbed onto their hides. It was good for the cattle but when the cattle died, say, out in the bush, and the vultures ate them, the pesticide killed the vultures. India lost 99% of its vultures and what were the consequences? There were no natural scavengers to clean the bones, and rotting, diseased animals were eaten by dogs, which greatly increased in numbers and passed on diseases to humans. There are now programmes to save vultures, and by saving vultures, we save humans.

Not many people like sharks either. We see daily news reports of killer sharks all over the place. I have never seen one but I suspect that 99% of the public would not care if all sharks were killed. Sharks are being killed—in their millions. The median estimate for kills of sharks is at least 100 million, with some estimates at over 200 million. Sharks are heading for extinction unless the Chinese stop eating the fins—the main reason for them being killed. If the top predator of the ocean is taken out, we would certainly get an explosion in seal and dolphin numbers and a catastrophic decrease in fish numbers. We would have an ecological disaster which would impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and it would be irreversible. However, when one species gets to the endangered or critically endangered category we can save it and reverse the process, with enormous effort.

I was privileged to work with the Cayman Islands Government for some time. The native blue iguana had shrunk to just 12 by 2005 and was functionally extinct. Thanks to the work of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, based in Jersey, and the National Trust for the Cayman Islands, the project led by the excellent Fred Burton has now reproduced about 1,100 blue iguanas in total and almost 700 have been released back into the wild. In 2013 the IUCN dropped them from the “Critically Endangered” list to the “Endangered” list. Of course, the Cayman Islands are a British Overseas Territory, where most of the UK’s biodiversity is found.

I congratulate Defra, which is the most respected government department amongst the overseas territories for the work it does with the OTs and in CITES. I am delighted at the creation of the Pitcairn Island Marine Reserve, which at 322,000 square miles is the largest continuous one in the world. I hope that we can work with other countries in the South Pacific to one day make the whole South Pacific a marine reserve.

The loss of animals and plants, their habitats and their genes, on which so much of human life depends, is one of the world’s most pressing crises. It is estimated that the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be if man were not interfering. The main drivers for this loss are converting natural areas to farming and urban development; introducing invasive alien species; polluting and overexploiting resources, including water and soil; and harvesting wild plants and animals in unsustainable levels. Cutting down rainforests in order to produce soya beans, palm oil and beef burgers is sheer madness.

We were not responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but we have been responsible for all the species losses in the last few hundred years. Every decision we take that affects biodiversity also affects our lives and the lives of other people. Biodiversity is crucial to human well-being, sustainable development and poverty reduction.

I conclude with the words of the double Pulitzer prize-winning biologist, Edward O. Wilson. In 1980, he said that, in the 1980s:

“The worst thing that can happen—will happen—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us”.

The late Dr John Sawhill of the Nature Conservancy said:

“In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy”.

I am sorry to have taken so long.