Sustainably utilised?
The weather report from LionAid this week – two high pressure areas collided to make our conservation climate forecast stormy and uncertain.
High pressure area 1:
A few days ago, a consortium of wildlife conservation agencies published a report to indicate that their global Living Planet Index (LPI) showed an overall decline of 52% of wildlife populations between 1970 and 2010.
This “analysis” was based on a number of species – terrestrial, marine and freshwater. Some populations declined more than others, especially in freshwater ecosystems highly susceptible to various sources of pollution. Note that it only goes to 2010.
Unusually, this report was mentioned in most of the print media as well as making it to various television news broadcasts. The journalists did not understand the report, but their hype could be positive. Overall I believe the indications of significant declines are acceptable. After all, lions have declined by over 85% in the last 50 years.
But what the media did not mention with sufficient emphasis was that the report also said that “We need 1.5 Earths to meet the demands we currently make on nature. This means we are eating into our natural capital, making it more difficult to sustain the needs of future generations.” Read that carefully, as it indicates very clearly that our current concept of “sustainable utilization” of wildlife resources has actually mined our wildlife and has therefore fallen well short of conservation necessities.
High pressure area 2:
Posed against that report came another high pressure area established by Karmenu Villa, the EU Commissioner designate for Environment, Fisheries and Marine Affairs. Watching his so-called “grilling” by members of EU Parliament (actually a highly orchestrated affair where questions were given one minute and replies two minutes as recorded by a big digital clock – oh, and also all questions seemed to have been provided beforehand) – he was evasive and always the politician.
His standard response was that it was all about sustainable utilization, despite that fact that it would appear that no utilization has been sustainable for many decades and has resulted in our current crisis in terms of conservation of fish, forests, and wildlife.
So where do we go from here?
Two high pressures areas have collided. Sustainable utilization has long proven to be unsustainable except in the opinions of some politicians and vested utilization parties like trophy hunters. We need forward thinking, not policies based on old and failed formulas that do not aid conservation of the few species and populations that remain. Let’s all challenge the performance of the “sustainable” utilization principle that has proven to be beneficial to commerce but not conservation.
Otherwise we will be left with rats, weeds, cockroaches and greenhouse flowers as “nature”.
Picture credit: http://bit.ly/1mVjR1Y
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