UNITED
NATIONS - It goes without saying that a faltering
economy is bad news for the Green Movement, because
priorities inevitably become skewed and protecting
the environment will always lose out to the bottom
line . But even before the downturn, careless humanity,
heedless of warnings, was doing a solid job of
screwing up the planet, a new report from the UN's
environment protection program suggests.
If
the present rate of abuse continues, within the next
30 years no less than 72 percent of the Earth's age-old
biodiversity will be under threat, UN scientists
estimate. Most severely at risk are countries in
south-east Asia, the Congo basin of Africa and parts
of the Amazon region, the UN report says.
If torch and chainsaw
continue to be employed
at their current mad
pace in the race to
turn vast tracts of
wilderness into crop
land, as much as 48
per cent of these areas
will be converted to
agriculture and plantations,
not to mention an accompanying
massive urbanization
as towns replace the
pristine jungle.
This compares to an
estimated 22 per cent
of the same regions
that are agriculturized
or urbanized today.
Klaus Toepfer, the
German head of the
UN Environment Program,
wants world leaders
who will gather in
Johannesburg at the
end of August for an
international conference
on sustainable development
to accord high priority
to the crisis of declining
biodiversity. (An Earth
Times team of correspondents
will be supplying on-the
spot, gavel-to-gavel
coverage of the meetings
with special daily
issues as well as Web
site reportage.)
"Humankind now
diverts about 40 percent
of the Earth's productivity
to its own needs and
much of this is being
carried out in a destructive
and unsustainable way," Toepfer
laments.
"It's
vital that we reverse
these unsustainable
practices while at
the same time taking
advantage of the opportunities
presented by the planet's
natural capital, its
natural wealth."
This wealth includes
some 250,000 different
species of tropical
plants that scientists
say are a vast potential
source of future miracle
drugs -- if only pharmaceutical
laboratories can get
to them before they
pass into extinction.
At the present rate
of extinction of plants
and animals, the Earth
is already losing the
prospect of at least
one major drug's development
every two years, according
to the UNEP report
on the damage being
done to biodiversity.
Yet less than one percent
of this huge resource
has been tested for
possible pharmaceutical
applications, it notes.
The document stresses
the enormous importance
for humanity of the
world's forests, wetlands,
marine and coastal
environments and other
key ecosystems.
The
subtext of the report
might well be, "We
have seen the enemy
and it is us." Ecoscientists
record in the UN document
that in just the past
150 years, a planet
hundreds of millions
of years in development
has had 47 percent
of its entire land
area directly impacted
and changed by a rampaging,
ignorant or careless
human population.
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