Driven perhaps by
envy at the attention that climate change is getting, and ambition to set up a
great new intergovernmental body that can fly scientists to mega-conferences,
biologists have gone into overdrive on the subject of biodiversity this week.
They are right
that there is a lot wrong with the world’s wildlife, that we can do much more
to conserve, enhance and recover it, but much of the coverage in the media, and
many of the pronouncements of Sir Bob Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), are frankly weird.
The threat to
biodiversity is not new, not necessarily accelerating, mostly not caused by
economic growth or prosperity, nor by climate change, and won’t be reversed by
retreating into organic self-sufficiency. Here’s a few gentle correctives.
Much of the human
destruction of biodiversity happened a long time ago
Species extinction
rates of mammals and birds peaked in the 19th century (mostly because of ships
taking rats to islands). The last extinction of a breeding bird species in
Europe was the Great Auk, in 1844. Thousands of years ago, stone-age
hunter-gatherers caused megafaunal mass extinctions on North and South America,
Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar with no help from modern technology or
capitalism. That’s not to say extinctions don’t still happen but by far the
biggest cause is still invasive alien species, especially on islands: it’s
chytrid fungi that have killed off many frogs and toads, avian malaria that has
killed off many of Hawaii’s honeycreepers, and so on.
This is a specific
problem that can be tackled and reversed, but it will take technology and
science and money, not retreating into self-sufficiency and eating beans. The
eradication of rats on South Georgia island was a fine example of doing this
right, with helicopters, GPS and a lot of science.
We’ve been here
before. In 1981, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich predicted that 50% of all species
would be extinct by 2005. In fact, about 1.4% of bird and mammal species, which
are both easier to document than smaller creatures and more vulnerable to
extinction, have gone extinct so far in several centuries.
The idea that
“western values”, or “capitalism”, are the problem is wrong
On the whole what
really diminishes biodiversity is a large but poor population trying to live
off the land. As countries get richer and join the market economy they
generally reverse deforestation, slow species loss and reverse some species
declines. Countries like Bangladesh are now rich enough to be reforesting, not
deforesting, and this is happening all over the world. Most of this is natural
forest, not plantations. As for wildlife, think of all the species that have
returned to abundance in Britain: otters, ospreys, sea eagles, kites, cranes,
beavers, deer and more. Why are wolves increasing all around the world, lions
decreasing and tigers now holding steady? Basically, because wolves are in rich
countries, lions in poor countries and tigers in middle income countries.
Prosperity is the solution not the problem.
Nothing would kill
off nature faster than trying to live off it. When an African villager gets
rich enough to buy food in a shop rather than seek bushmeat in the forest,
that’s a win for wildlife. Ditto if he or she can afford gas for cooking rather
than cutting wood. The more we can urbanise and the more we can increase our
use of intensive farming and fossil fuels, the less we will need to clear
forests for either food or fuel.
Intensive farming
spares land for nature
It’s been
calculated that if today’s population were to be fed using the mainly organic
yields of 1960, we would have to farm 82% of the world’s land, whereas actually
we farm about 38%. Thanks to fertilisers, tractors, genetics and pesticides, we
now need 68% less land to produce a given quantity if food than we did in 1960.
That’s a good thing. Most sensible conservationists now realise that “land
sparing” is the right approach – intensive farming plus land set aside, rather
than inefficient farming with some nature in the fields. Professor Andrew
Balmford of Cambridge University led a team that did thorough research showing
that this is the better approach not just for land use but for other
environmental issues too: they found that organic dairy farms cause at
least 30% more soil loss, and take up twice as much land, as conventional dairy
farming for the same amount of milk produced, for example.
Doing more with
less
A favourite
nostrum of many environmentalists is that you cannot have infinite growth with
finite resources. But this is plain wrong, because economic growth comes from
doing more with less. So if I invent a new car engine that gets twice as many
miles per gallon, I’ve caused economic growth but we’ll use less fuel. Likewise
if I increase the yield of a crop, I need less land and probably less fuel too.
This “growth as shrinkage” happens all the time: think how much smaller mobile
phones are than they once were.
The fact that
species are recovering is ignored by the media
The BBC used a
humpback whale song to illustrate species under threat of extinction. Humpback
whales were down to a few thousand in the 1960s and listed as “endangered”. In
1996 as the population grew, they were downgraded to “vulnerable”. In 2008 as
they became numerous, they were downgraded again to “least concern”. Today
there are 80,000 of them, they are back to pre-exploitation densities in many
parts of the world, and groups of up to 200 are sometimes seen feeding
together, a success unimaginable when I was young. The same is true of many
previously exploited species such as fur seals, elephant seals, king penguins
and more.
For some reason,
environmental activists hate talking about the success stories of
conservationists in saving species, recovering their populations and
reintroducing them to the wild. They prefer to dwell on the threats. This brings
more publicity and donations, but it also spreads a counsel of despair, leaving
many ordinary people feeling helpless, rather than engaged. It’s time for an
honest debate about what we can do to save wildlife, rather than a Private
Fraser cry of “we’re all doomed”.
Matt Ridley, a member of the British House of Lords, is an
acclaimed author who blogs at www.rationaloptimist.com.
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