Biodiversity

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, this is an excellent debate to have just before we break for the Summer Recess and I thank my noble friend Lady Miller for introducing it. In, probably, two days’ time, I will be travelling from the biodiversity of urban gardens and suburban London—we are not quite there at the minute, but I will be travelling through it—westwards through the monoculture of Salisbury plain, where we have fantastic vistas but not a lot of biodiversity, down to where I live in the far south-west in Cornwall, where one of my great delights these days is that, almost whenever one looks skywards, one sees buzzards and other birds of prey that one would never have seen to that degree even a few years ago. That is perhaps one cause for optimism.

At that point, optimism will end in my speech, but it is good to remember that this is not just about the great joy that we get from seeing the diversity that we studied as children and as adults; we also have a moral need to look after our planet and the things that have been bestowed on us to pass on to future generations. We should not forget that there is also an important economic implication of the loss of biodiversity. It has been estimated—how you estimate these things, I do not know—that some 7 per cent of world GDP may be lost by 2050 if we carry on with the rate of depletion of species that we have at the moment. Then there is the whole area of medical science. We still find nature, rather than the synthetic chemicals that we produce, providing us with many of our solutions to disease, so those areas are important as well.

As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, said, there are a number of reasons for biodiversity loss. One is the destruction of habitat. Another is the overexploitation of particular species, which tend to be the larger ones that we all know, see and love. The third important one is climate change, on which I will concentrate today.

I remind noble Lords that five major extinctions have been identified over geological time. It is estimated that we are entering the sixth extinction. In the Permian period 250 million years ago—beyond even the living memory of those in this House—we lost an estimated 95 per cent of marine species and 75 per cent of terrestrial species. If we are moving towards that now, we should be very afraid indeed. The irony is that these mass extinctions are very good for biodiversity. In fact, there are more species on the planet today than there have ever been. The difficulty is that it takes several million years to recover from one extinction and get to the flowering of greater biodiversity later on. The human race is only some 200,000 years old and does not have that time.

The challenges of climate change, global warming, the decline in biodiversity and a further potential mass extinction are great. Why do species disappear in the UK or anywhere else? It could be because some species move northwards swiftly with their own habitats as temperatures go up in the UK, or because of invasive diseases and invasive species, which are bad news for human beings in some parts of the world—malaria is an example. Such diseases can affect other species as well. It could be because of food loss or the symbiotic relationship between species. A well known example is a certain species of plover, which is starting to hatch at a different time from its food, the crane fly, because of the different ways in which those species have reacted to global warming.

The largest threat, however, is probably the acidification of the ocean, as carbon dioxide gradually makes the oceans more acidic. Even now, that is affecting coral ecosystems in particular, which are the basis of food chains in the ocean. What really comes out of all this is the huge challenge for biodiversity, not just in the UK but globally. Clearly we all want to solve this through the mitigation of climate change. However, as so many noble Lords here know, that will not be the answer because many of those changes are already taking place.

I will be slightly unconventional in this debate now. I was delighted to see that the speaker who follows me on the speakers list is the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who is one of the champions of adaptation. Indeed, she is a member of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change. I looked up the sub-committee’s website before I left home and found a useful quotation:

“At present there is little evidence on what successful adaptation over the next five years would look like, how we might measure it and set priorities”.

I suggest to her, the Government and the Minister that one area that desperately needs looking at is the effect of climate change on biodiversity and species loss and what adaptation strategies are needed. I looked at the sub-committee’s work programme but could not find biodiversity mentioned. I know that the sub-committee is in its very early stages of work, but I commend that area as one to be looked at. What sort of strategies are the Government hoping through Defra to implement that will start to enable species in this country to adapt? For example, we could have a string of reserves, but we need to make sure that our existing habitats are resilient enough and that species can go a short distance upwards or from drylands to wetlands to give us more resilience in this area.

I am pessimistic. At the moment, with a background rate of species loss some 100 times greater than is normal in geological time, we have a great challenge. I believe, as do many noble Lords, that with sufficient concentration we can solve this adaptation problem, but it is one of our greatest challenges. I look forward to hearing how the Minister and perhaps even the Committee on Climate Change will be able to confront that problem.