Biological+Diversity+Crisis,+Mooney

Jordan Mundell March 30th, 2015 Annotation #7 “The ecosystem-service chain and the biological diversity crisis,” Harold Mooney

In this article, Mooney comments on the loss of “biological diversity” that has occurred on this planet over the last half-century or so. Like many people who write about this subject, he mentions that if we don’t change our ways of science and policy making, we are doomed for the future. Many argue that we may have already reached this point of no return. Mooney notes that,

“…at local and regional levels, an ecosystem-service approach to conservation can bring new understanding to the value, and hence the need for protection, of the existing natural capital.”

One of the things I enjoyed about this article was that he shows the evidence for how diversity has been declining.

“…according to the most recent IUCN Red List, nearly half of the world's primate species and subspecies are in danger of extinction .”

Scientists have been warning that if we continue on current trends, that we may be approaching a next mass extinction on this planet. Thanks to the industrialization of the agriculture business, livestock and crops have loss genetic diversity as well, meaning that even a subtle change to the environment could be catastrophic to the species as a whole. Diversity isn’t the only thing that has been affected by human interactions; we have physically changed the landscape as well:

“Over a third of the ice-free surface is devoted to livestock production and another 8 per cent to crop production used directly for human consumption .”

Mooney remarks that we are changing the environment faster than we can react to it, which sounds suspiciously similar to species that go extinct by not being able to adapt according to Darwinian evolution.

“…both the policy and scientific processes are moving too slowly to keep up with the rapid changes that are unfolding, leading to a view of despair by those who keep close track of these trends and unfavourable scenarios. ”

The problem with policy making is that it seems that many are too vague. For example, some of these conventions might call for a more “sustainable” world, yet there is no groundwork or foundation on how to achieve it. This means that there may not necessarily be a large enough incentive to persuade countries. For example, western countries seem to be willing to sacrifice a little in order to make a more sustainable future. But developing countries such as India and China aren’t necessarily willing to sacrifice the economic advantage that they have been building up the last few decades.

My last remarks regarding this article, is that it is similar in nature to many articles in this area. It does a great job in creating awareness for the issue, it says that we need to make a change, but we don’t exactly know how to make that change.