• 2010 - International Year of Biodiversity

Starting on January 11th, 2010 becomes - and I’m sure this will come as a surprise to many of us - the start of the United Nations-designated International Year of Biodiversity (UN General Assembly Resolution 61/203).

2010 is supposed to be the year when commitments and agreements signed in 2001 under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will result in “halting the loss of biodiversity” on Planet Earth. 2010 is also the year identified in the Environmental Sustainability Targets of the Millennium Development Goals by which “a significant reduction in the rate of loss” of biodiversity should be achieved; and in October this year the Tenth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity will be held in Japan.

To say that 2010 is quite an important year for life on this planet should be one of the great understatements of the new decade. 2010 should in fact be the year in which concerns for biodiversity loss (i.e. the decline and extinction of species and the systems which maintain life) move much closer to the centre stage of global awareness and political action.

About bloody time, as I’m sure anyone interested in the desperate plight of life on our planet would agree.

• Crisis, what crisis?

As the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is organising the International Year of Biodiversity, says on its website, “We are facing a serious crisis in biodiversity, the elaborate network of animals, plants, and the places where they live on the planet.”

The IUCN maintains the renowned Red List of Threatened Species on which so many conservation decisions are made, so should be in a good position to know what they’re talking about.

As we’ve noted many times on 10,000 Birds the updated 2009 Red List indicates that:

• a minimum of 16,928 larger animal species are threatened with extinction: 21% of mammals, 12% of birds, 31% of reptiles, 30% of amphibians and 37% of fish.
• At present, 192 bird species are classified as Critically Endangered, meaning they are at imminent risk of global extinction.
• The European Red List, published by IUCN and the European Commission, reveals that 23% of amphibians and 19% of reptiles (2009), 15% of mammals (2007) and 13% of birds (2004) in Europe are threatened with extinction.

The depressing stats don’t stop there of course:

1. 35% of mangroves have been lost in just 20 years. More than 40% of a sample of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds that are restricted to mangrove ecosystems are globally threatened with extinction, according to an assessment published in the July/August 2009 issue of BioScience.
2. In 2008 a report by the IUCN noted that, “Thirty-five percent of the world’s birds, 52 percent of amphibians and 71 percent of warm-water reef-building corals are likely to be particularly susceptible to climate change”.
   

3. The abundance of species worldwide has declined by 40% between 1970 and 2000. Species present in rivers, lakes and marshlands have declined by 50%.
4. In the North Atlantic, fish have declined by 66% in the last 50 years.
5. Since 2000, 6 million hectares of primary forest have been lost each year.
6. In the Caribbean region, hard coral cover has declined from 50% to 10% in the last three decades.
7. Habitat loss and degradation affect 86% of all threatened birds, 86% of the threatened mammals assessed and 88% of the threatened amphibians.
8. 99% of threatened species are at risk from human activities.

• There’s another species that depends on global biodiversity, of course…

Do I need to go on or have most of you given up reading this?

Well, for those of you wavering under such an avalanche of depressing figures how about I add the second sentence to a passage I quoted earlier which began, “We are facing a serious crisis in biodiversity, the elaborate network of animals, plants, and the places where they live on the planet.”? The second sentence is a short one, but may make a difference to some: “And when we talk of animals, we also mean humans”.

You would think that by 2010 there would be no need to point out that biodiversity - which the CBD defines as “the variability among living organisms from all sources [...] this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” - includes humans. But remarkably there still seems to be a large percentage of people who just don’t seem to understand that if the world’s biodiversity collapses we will of course collapse with it.

A typically erudite quotation from 2005 by the then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the CBD website says that, “Failure to conserve and use biological diversity in a sustainable manner would result in degrading environments, new and more rampant illnesses, deepening poverty and a continued pattern of inequitable and untenable growth…the (Millenium Development) Goals embody the hopes of all people for a world without hunger and poverty, where all live in freedom, with dignity and equity. Biodiversity is crucial to those hopes, especially in the area of health.”

The IYB website (when it’s not crashing!) also focusses strongly on what benefits we humans derive from biodiversity, pointing out for example that without bees there is no pollination of agricultural plants (especially fruits); many cancer-fighting drugs are sourced from tropical plants; wild-caught animals (especially fish) feed many of the world’s poorer people. Etc etc

We are all totally dependent on the environment we live in and the biodiversity we share that environment with - but surely that’s a message that doesn’t need to be re-iterated on tens of thousands of blogs and websites which will only be read by a literate, mostly English-speaking, internet-connected wealthy elite? If people like us don’t get that by now then we are genuinely screwed.

• Changing the focus…

I have a feeling that what I’m going to write next will not go down well with some readers but personally I’m extremely disappointed that the focus of International Biodiversity Year seems to be ‘What can biodiversity do for you?’

We are the driver of the biodiversity crisis: it’s our unrestrained population growth, our demand for economic growth, our cries of ‘rights’ (to have as many children as we want, to buy what we want, to live in whatever style we want) that will be the cause of so many of the extinctions that we will undoubtedly see before the end of the 21st Century.

And many of the birds, mammals, amphibians, and insects which will disappear will be unremarked upon and unmourned when they go. Why? Because in a world that is so sickeningly anthropocentric so many species just don’t appear to matter to human development, human welfare, or human health.

If we all think like that - and it seems that major global conservation organisations like the IUCN believe that we do or their messages would be very different - then what does it matter, say, if the Spoon-billed Sandpiper, a bird that I personally have a deep passion for, disappears?

There’s little doubt that a highly-specialised East Asian shorebird that was never especially common, has a bill-shape that no other branch of shorebirds developed, and that needs a very specific type of substrate on a very specific type of tidal-flat has no influence in sensu stricto on any of the criteria I listed above that governments (supposedly) make their decisions on.

Adult Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Simpo, South Korea, April 22 2008
Photograph copyright Richard Chandler

The Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus, some might argue, headed up an evolutionary back-alley from which there is no escape: it can’t now adapt to feed in new habitats, is too picky in its choice of breeding and non-breeding areas, and was never abundant enough to survive the impact of massive developments along the Yellow Sea. It’ll go extinct fairly soon, but so what? It doesn’t apparently yield cancer-fighting chemicals, it doesn’t pollinate our almond trees, there’s not even enough of them to feed the poor…

It’s arguable that none of the 192 most Critically Endangered birds do anything of any value whatsoever for us either, so why bother save them? The Sidamo (Liben) Lark Heteromirafra sidamoensis will almost certainly very soon become the first mainland African bird to go extinct because of agricultural development: so what? Sharpe’s Longclaw might be one of the next. Your point, Charlie…?

What about if we become the generation that finally wiped out the Tiger? Tigers don’t really contribute very much to the human race. Okay, they’re quite attractive, and they’re something to look at when we go on holiday, but otherwise they’re not really all that useful. Has anyone’s life really changed since we lost the Yangtze river dolphin in 2007? I mean what did the Yangtze river dolphin ever do for us humans? So what if we lose a bunch of frogs? A few moths? Some bees? Oh, wait, bees we probably need…they seem to be worth keeping…

I’ve had the same argument over more years than I care to think about. I have tried to explain so many times to people why it matters to me so deeply, why it affects my moods, my sense of optimism or pessimism, why I will genuinely be angry beyond belief when the Spoon-billed Sandpiper is finally wiped away by us humans as if it were of no more relevance than a stain on a carpet.

How can we allow the Tiger to vanish? Surely a world without the most perfectly developed, most beautiful cat on the planet is unthinkable - especially while millions of so-called pet-owning cat-lovers sit by and do absolutely nothing to save it. And of course it matters that a once-revered species of dolphin which has existed for hundreds of thousands of years couldn’t survive in a major river so massively developed that it has become little more than an artery for the shipping business. Sharpe’s Longclaw will die out if its habitat of grassland is irrevocably altered: grassland that has for tens of thousands of years acted like a huge sponge holding and slowly releasing the water that feeds Lake Naivasha and hundreds of thousands of Kenyans. In the last thirty years much of the Kinangop Grasslands have been lost to thirsty crops and trees - and the level of water in the Lake has dropped by about half: much of what’s left is being taken by flower-growers supplying the international market.

Even the Spoon-billed Sandpiper, a speck on the consciousness of the planet, has an important message to tell us if we want to listen: changes in its population and distribution reveal changes to the environment that we might otherwise miss or choose to ignore. Declines indicate the degradation of ecosystems. And extinction reveals that whole habitats are being lost. The fact that its habitats are found in estuarine sites - the nurseries for many of the world’s fish species, places of abundance and remarkable diversity, areas of fresh air and fresh perspective that speak to the battered souls of so many of us - ought to make us all think a little harder…

• It’s up to us

Losing the Spoon-billed Sandpiper and a host of other fairly obscure species ought to make us all think a little harder but it probably won’t though.

In fact the laudable aim of the International Year of Biodiversity already seems to have as much chance as being achieved as, say, the world’s leaders coming together and stopping squabbling long enough to agree limits on carbon production in a bid to halt climate change…

And that’s not just the thought of an overwrought blogger. Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group, said in a press-release a few days ago that, “The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met. It’s time for governments to get serious about saving species and make sure it’s high on their agendas for next year, as we’re rapidly running out of time.”

Still, anyone who leaves anything so important as the survival of biodiversity on the planet to the world’s self-serving politicians is in for disappointment.

The only people who can do anything for the world’s biodiversity is us: either by kicking out any politician who puts appeasement of a few special interest groups ahead of preserving biodiversity, or by fighting in our small way to raise money, campaign, or just shout from the rooftops that - actually - yes, it DOES MATTER that we’re responsible for the next wave of mass extinctions, and that, yes, we do mind being led down a path that most of us don’t want to be on by economists, ’sustainable development’ gurus, and world leaders lining their own pockets.

So what can we do in a practical sense?

Well, and I don’t care if this sounds pompous or if I think 10,000 Birds can change the world, we’re going to continue working for biodiversity - especially by remaining BirdLife ‘Species Champions’ and by doing everything we can to fundraise for those ‘unimportant’ elements of biodiversity - the world’s most threatened birds - via the 10,000 Birds Conservation Club.

Will we achieve very much in 2010? We here at 10,000 Birds will certainly try. We don’t have the influence of a major NGO, or the political clout of a governmental department - but we do have the passion, we care, we’re not out to line our own pockets, and I for one absolutely will not get to the end of this critically-important year without feeling that I did my very best.

And, that, I’m absolutely certain goes for Mike and Corey too.

The big question now is - will you do the same? Because one thing’s for certain, if the people who claim to love birds as much as we all say we do can’t be bothered to ‘make a difference’ in the International Year of Biodiversity then you can bet your house then neither will the rest of the world’s population…

Thanks to Nial Moores and Birds Korea for their input and discussions that helped shape this article, and permission to use the Spoon-billed Sandpiper image.

For more on Birds Korea also see their Wikipedia page at Birds Korea wiki

The 10,000 Birds Conservation Club has been launched as part of our commitment to supporting projects on Critically Endangered/Endangered birds and to Birdlife International’s ‘Preventing Extinctions Programme‘, which we signed up to as Species Champions in January 2009.

Species Champions are ”a growing community of Companies, Institutions and Individuals who share our concerns and demonstrate their commitment to protecting the planet’s natural heritage by funding the work undertaken by our Species Guardians”.

There are different ‘levels’ of Species Champion (requiring different levels of financial commitment). Whilst we joined the PEP at a ‘lower level’ 10,000 Birds is now officially a Species Champion along with such conservation giants as Sir David Attenborough and the British Birdwatching Fair, conservation minded businesses like Swarovski Optik (who also sponsor 10,000 Birds of course), In Focus, and WildSounds (the Species Champions for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper), and a small number of unsung individuals like Dr. Urs-Peter Stäuble, Ed Keeble, and Peter Smith.

• For a full list of Species Champions please go to BirdLife Species Champions ‘Roll of Honour’.