Reading Materials: 

6.1 Natural Ecology in the Present Earth

Even though human beings are not here long enough to see what is going on in the long term in the earth , we can negatively affect ecosystems even when we are not physically present in them.

We usually have a false sense of security and perhaps of optimism, and we rarely  stop to think that ‘we’re a species whom almost all other species could easily live  without.Human beings are certainly the dominant species, but we are clearly not a  keystone species, for when you remove a keystone species biodiversity itself collapses. When we humans are added to an ecosystem, as the history of human migration and  imperialism  shows  clearly,  biodiversity  collapses.  Unfortunately,  we  can’t  live  without these other species and our actions are a direct cause of their rapid decline  and frequently their extinction.

Despite   captive   breeding   programmes,   transdisciplinary   research   projects, conservation initiatives, including moving people and animals to different locations and an array of political and economic measures, we continue to witness an alarming decline in global biodiversity.

The fundamental problems of overpopulation, overconsumption  and ignorance  seem  to be  deeply  rooted  in  the human psychology.We must  therefore address  the  important  psychological  and  social/cultural  issues  that  underpin  our mismanagement of the planet - our only home - and the psychological barriers that prevent  people  from  facing  and  solving  these  complex,  frustrating  and  pressing human-induced problems.

We need to extend efforts to inform people as part of a social movement that is concerned with losses in biodiversity and the implications of these losses for animals and for us.We consequently need a paradigm shift in human thought.

Communication, sustainable education and political action are ways in which the current irresponsible paradigm of unsustainable development can be shifted.A useful starting point for this is to go beyond the limits to growth debates and to actually describe what  a  safe  planetary  operating  space  for  human  life  in  concert  with non-human life entails. We need to keep the following global planetary boundaries in mind.

• climate change

• global fresh-water use

• biogeochemical flows

• rate of biodiversity loss

• stratospheric ozone depletion

• ocean acidification

• change in land use

• chemical pollution

• atmospheric aerosol loading

These boundaries  are  clearly interlinked, and  changes in one may impact on others, causing these others to exceed what the Centre firmly believes to be  safe operating spaces for humanity. The interconnected nature of the planetary crisis and a science-based framework for a transition to sustainability forms the core of this topic.

What’s more, the  financial  crisis  is not just  an  economic  one  as  it  involves repaying all our debts, especially those we owe to nature, the climate, ecosystems, the oceans, and so on.

Many   of  the  points   are  related  to  politics,   the  policy   formulation   and implementation.  Population,  for  instance,  is  often  a  key  driver  of environmental problems, but the boundary model that states so many and no more does not offer any ready-made policy solution

Industrial-scale agricultural production was also a cause of rural impoverishment, local  conflict and  severe  water  shortages.  The  central  paradox  posed  by  the  Green  Revolution  and  biotechnology  development  is  that  modern plant  improvement has been based  on the  destruction  of the biodiversity  which it uses as raw material.

When agricultural modernization schemes introduce new and uniform crops into the farmers’ fields, they push into extinction the diversity of  local varieties.The impact of genetic  engineering  on  local  people  and ecosystems  powerfully   advocating   organic and  small-scale community-based agriculture.

However, this kind of farming not only creates a major carbon sink, and thereby addresses climate change issues to a degree, but they also  address  issues  of poverty,  hunger  and  nutrition.  The  loss  of biodiversity  is publicly most evident in the decline and loss of rich habitats and the disappearance of increasing numbers of other creatures with whom we share the planet.

The  population  growth  slows  the  development  of poor  nations  and  has  a disproportionately negative impact on our life-support systems. In other words, we seem to need, and consequently take, too much from the planet. We also need to see many  animals, birds  and plants  actually thrive  in  some  of the new  environments humankind has created and new hybrid species are developing all the time. Because the natural world is highly  dynamic  and highly  adaptive. That's why we need to steadily move forward with sustainable development to reduce the damage to nature.

       6.2 IUCN Red List

The IUCN Red List itself is the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of plant and animal species; it is updated annually and is freely available online.It is based on contributions from a large global network of scientific experts who have helped produce an objective system which assigns all species, except the micro-organisms, to one of eight Red List Categories according to various criteria relating to population trend, size, structure and geographic range. It is therefore an invaluable source of scientific data and an important policy-making and campaigning tool.

Vulnerability  and  irreplaceability  are  two  key  principles  guiding  systematic conservation planning. Vulnerability is the likelihood that biodiversity values in a site will be lost, and the Red List contributes valuable information that can be used to measure  it. Irreplaceability is the extent to which  spatial  options  for conservation targets are reduced  if the  site is  lost. Measurement  of site irreplaceability is thus dependent on information about population size, dynamics and distribution of species, all of which are being collected in increasing detail to support Red List assessments.

One of the IUCN Red List’s main purposes is to highlight those species that are facing a high risk of global extinction. However, it is not just a register of names and associated threat categories.

The real power and usefulness of the Red List is the rich scientific evidence on species’ ecological  requirements,  information  on  their  geographic  distribution  and threats that it offers. It offers some indications as to how these issues can best be addressed, but  it  is important to realize that however  full  and  comprehensive the IUCN data appears, the knowledge it presents is uncertain.

Despite the fact that IUCN data represents just the  tip of the iceberg,the  Red  List  does  help  answer  a  number  of  important  questions,  which  the organization usefully identifies as:

• What is the overall status of biodiversity, and how is it changing over time?

• How  does  the  status  of  biodiversity  vary  between  regions,  countries  and subnational areas?

• What is the rate at which biodiversity is being lost?

• Where is biodiversity being lost most rapidly?

• What are the main drivers of the decline and loss of biodiversity?

• What is the effectiveness and impact of conservation activities?

The   information   the   IUCN   produces   on   the   distribution   and   ecological requirements of species is used in numerous large-scale analyses, which frequently identify gaps in threatened species coverage by the existing network of conservation or protected areas.

This  helps  with  conservation  planning,  the  identification  of  conservation priorities and in informing specific species requirements at particular sites and at a variety of spatial scales and levels, including the global. It should be remembered that biological diversity includes not just species but also encompasses ecosystems and genetics. Species that remain are certainly the building blocks of biodiversity and they are readily comprehensible to both the public and policy makers.

The  information  the  IUCN  produces  is  essential  to  ensuring  that  a  good decision-making process can exist, for species play an important role in the proper functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide.And the IUCN Red List is continuously revised  and updated  as more  information  about  specific  species  and habitats is gained and environmental threats worsen or weaken.

       4.3The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is  an  independent  intergovernmental  body  established  in  2012  to  strengthen  the  interface  between  science  and  policy  making  so  as  to  ensure  more  effective  conservation  measures,  to  protect  biodiversity   and  promote   long-term  human  well-being  and  sustainable  development.  Membership  of this body  is  open  to  all  member countries of the United Nations.

The  IPBES has  a  secondary  aim  of developing  assessments to match policy needs and to support capacity building on a wide range of topics at multiple levels of governance.  The  IPBES  Conceptual  Framework  is  anthropocentric  rather  than ecocentric, for it aims to enable human society to make the best use of biodiversity for its own purposes – namely, improving a better quality of life for human populations.

The  framework  identifies  as  central  the  role  of institutions,  governance  and decision making using multiple knowledge systems to ensure linkage between the six major elements that link people to nature. These elements are:

1. Nature: understood as the diversity of living things and their interactions between themselves and their environment. Key concepts include: biodiversity, ecosystems, functioning,  the  biosphere,  living  natural  resources and biocultural diversity.

2.  Anthropogenic assets: understood as built infrastructure, health facilities, technical and scientific knowledge, technology, financial assets and more.

3. Nature’s  benefits  to  people:  understood  essentially  as  referring  to  ecosystems goods and services.

4.  Institutions  and  governance  systems  and  other  indirect  drivers:  understood  as including various institutions including systems of property (public, private, common) and access to land as well as different conceptions of quality in defining ‘quality of life’ .

5.  Direct drivers: understood as those assumed to be ‘natural’ such as natural climate and   weather   patterns,   floods,   earthquakes,   etc.   and   those   that   are   clearly ‘anthropogenic’ such as environment degradation, climate change, carbon emissions, pollution, etc.

6.  Good quality of life: understood as the achievement of a fulfilled human life which may differ between cultures but will almost certainly include the absence of poverty and disease.

In its apprehension of quality of life, however, the IPBES makes a distinction between the natural values and anthropogenic values, but recognizes that nature’s benefits to people include those that are essentially instrumental and those that are essentially relational.

Economic market-based values are therefore instrumental and human spiritual well-being largely relational. Debate, dialogue and negotiation will occur in designing and applying approaches and techniques of will.

 4.4 The Political Ecology of Conservation and Development

The  IUCN’s  World  Conservation  Strategy,  published  in  1980,  was  the  first mainstream  document  that  combined  development,  poverty  alleviation  and  wider environmental  management.  It was powerfully  informed by the views  of wildlife conservationists within both the WWF and IUCN who believe that conservation and development are complementary, if not integrated goals.

Poor communities, particularly in rural areas, do not always clearly benefit from being developed and it was felt that properly managed conservation would be better able  to  meet  their  needs  than  what  was  predominantly  a  Western  model  of modernization  based  on  economic  development,  industrialization,  free  trade  and urbanization.

However,  two  models  of  conservation  emerged.  The  social  construction  of wilderness,  and  by  extension  nature,  is  largely  designed  to  divert  attention  from environmental dilemmas and to support their occurrence.When this idea of a nature and conservation model was adopted by colonial and then independent governments in Africa and other ‘developing countries’, local people were systematically displaced too, because the dominant belief among Western conservation scientists and the big conservation organizations that dominated the late and postcolonial period was that human  beings  harmed  the  environment  by  local  indigenous  people  was  labeled ‘poaching’, although licensed big-game hunting by colonial whites continued in many cases and still exists today.

Western  conservationists  have  felt  that  the  indigenous  human  presence  was not really appreciating that these areas were actually created by a continuous interaction of human beings with the landscape  over centuries. Indeed, the whole field  of human ecology and environmental  history  is  a  rich  exploration  of how  human  communities  and  the natural environment shape each other.The three conservation organizations have carried out projects on their lands, while the indigenous peoples have become increasingly hostile.

One of their primary disagreements is over the establishment of protected natural areas, which, according to the human inhabitants of those areas, often infringe on their rights.  Sometimes  the  indigenous  people  are  evicted,  and  the  conservationists frequently seem to be behind the evictions.

In other cases, traditional uses of land have been declared 'illegal', leading to residents being prosecuted by government authorities. In addition, conservationist organizations  and multinational companies - particularly the gas and oil, pharmaceutical and mining industries - have been directly involved in the destruction of indigenous-owned forest areas.

An alternative approach to conservation and economic development is associated  with  community  engagement  and  participation  initiatives  developed  in  response.  These initiatives by contrast needed to be locally conceived, flexible and participatory, and based on sound information about the local ecology and local economy. However,  participation can take many forms and, far from being a panacea to all the ills of imposed  top-down  solutions,  can  also  be  fraught  with  and  plagued  by  political interests, power plays and vested economic and other sectional interests.

In the  1960s,  Sherry Arnstein  (1969)  developed the ‘ladder  of participation’, showing  that  participation  can  in  practice  range  from  manipulation  by  powerful groups  at  one  end  of the  ladder  to, more  rarely,  full  citizen power  at  the  other. However, this participation/ conservation from below, together with a very effective and sometimes fierce resistance from indigenous peoples to forced  exclusion, has led to a greater respect for traditional ecological knowledge respect for local conditions, skills, cultures and values, and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples.

As  well  as  involving  local  people  in  conservation  policy  and  practice,  the community-led approach also saw the national parks being integrated into economic development planning processes, resulting in education and healthcare schemes, and local  people  contributing  to  management  decisions  and  activities.  The  IUCN recognizes eight different types of protected areas, ranging from scientific reserves to resource reserves and multiple-use management areas, including what have become known  as  ‘biosphere  reserves’,  which  allow  for  the  sustained  production  and consumption of natural resources  such as fish, water, timber, wildlife and outdoor recreation.

The idea is that sustainability and development, conservation and production are compatible  and  complementary  rather  than  contradictory  and  opposed,although  in practice this is quite hard to achieve practically and conceptually.

There are the essence of the biosphere reserve according to three aspects or roles:

• A conservation   role   including   the   conservation   of  genetic   material, ecosystems and species.

• A   logistic   role   providing   interconnected   facilities   for   research   and monitoring within and internationally coordinated scientific programme.

• A  development role fostering a connection with human populations near the protected area through the rational and sustainable use of ecosystem resources.

• Nature  conservation  and  accommodating  the  interests  of  disadvantaged groups are often quite distinct: biologists are concerned with wildlife preservation and maintaining biodiversity while local people are concerned with earning a living and protecting their crops from whoever may decide to feast on them.

One solution to this problem is to apply a market mindset to wildlife resources. This non-consumptive use of wildlife does not always deliver the expected environmental dividends,because  the locals do not always benefit from this commercial activity. And tourism is subject to fashion, taste and the caprice of the rich.

What’s more , wildlife may need to pay its way through ‘consumptive-use’, which  may  involve  the  harvesting  or  hunting  of animals  for  their  economically valuable tasks, meat or fur, or being the targets for vacationing rich people.

4.5 Capitalism and Conservation

Conservation and capitalism are shaping both the protection of nature and the sustainable  development  industry,  according  to  neoliberal  market  logics  and  the ideology of economic growth and capital accumulation.

For a growing number of environmentalists and ecologists, wildlife conservation has become a crude exercise in materialism, economic valuation and development        The application of neoliberal market ideologies and policy prescriptions are in effect re-regulating nature,  creating new forms of territorialization that basically  exclude local people.

Neoliberalism has also created new networks linking governments, conservation organizations and private businesses  that  share  the  same  or very  similar values. A new political economy of the oceans may undermine conservation imperatives, including local involvement in protected areas such as the biosphere reserves, whether they are on land or in the ocean.

At the core of this is the notion of the commons and that of property rights, collective  or  individual  privatization,  and  the  imposition  of  quotas  in  the  new enclosures.   Ecotourism   resorts   define   themselves   as   private-sector, profit-driven companies and are frequently the unstated locations for respected natural history and wildlife films conservation and tourist industries  work together to produce the best possible spectacle for their customers and viewers.

No  one  strategy  or  approach  is  going  to be  effective  on  its  own  and  many conservationists  argue  for  multifaceted  strategies  and  continuous  and  meaningful dialogue among all parties concerned in order to understand the challenges--illegal hunting, habitat loss, rapid human population increase, development, etc.--and to derive realistic but effective actions to arrest a generally worsening situation.

And the following range of practical measures would produce positive outcomes.

(1) Balancing the costs of wildlife conservation with benefits by ensuring that the benefits  are  sufficient  to  offset  the  conservation-induced  costs  and  contribute notably to poverty reduction.

(2) Enhancing conservation education to provide people with basic knowledge and clear understanding of the long-term consequences of their actions on species and habitats and the legal and policy aspects pertaining to wildlife conservation.

(3) Enhancing regular contacts with communities in order to avoid conflicts between conservation  authorities  and  local  communities  that  may  result  due  to  poor communication of development and conservation policies.

(4) Increased  personal  contact  can  be  a  really  important  factor  in  developing understanding and trust between wildlife staff and local people.Activities involving media-based, community-orientated storytelling, image production and film making can also have significant beneficial effects, too.

4.6 Urban Biodiversity  

One  obvious  component  of  economic  development  is  urbanization  and  the  encroachments of the built environment, particularly urban areas, on the natural world. By 2050, 70 per cent of the global population will be living in cities and in the  twenty-first century many new cities will be built.

Biodiversity in urban environments is extremely important but often depends on individual context. Many cities throughout the world are located in areas rich  in  biodiversity.  Therefore,  urbanization  is  rapidly  transforming  many  critical habitats and biodiverse hot spots.

Many cities contain sites that are of major importance to conservation because they  protect  threatened  species,  natural  vegetation  and  habitat.  Many  cities  have encouraged biodiversity, and the phenomenon of urban wildlife is familiar in many urban environments in all parts of the world as industrial agriculture has reduced the ecological richness of the countryside.

Urban residents often encourage wildlife by deliberately creating natural habitats in urban areas - in residential gardens, parks, roadsides, etc.The relatively recent   innovation   of   vertical   forests   and   rooftop   gardens,   combined   with supplementary  feeding  and  watering,  have  created  ecological  places for  some threatened species.

The value of urban biodiversity can be shown below:

• Towns and cities are both important experimental areas and fields of experience in the interrelationship between humans and nature.

• The case for urban biodiversity in relation to the aims of the CBD is compelling.

• Urban ecosystems have their own distinctive characteristics.

• Urban areas are centers of evolution and adaptation.

• Urban areas are complex hot spots and melting pots for regional biodiversity.

• Urban  biodiversity  can  contribute  significantly  to  the  quality  of  life  in  an increasingly urban global society.

• Urban biodiversity is the only biodiversity that many people directly experience.

• Experiencing  urban  biodiversity  will  be  the  key  to  halt  the  loss  of  global biodiversity, because people are more likely to take action for biodiversity if they have direct contact with nature.

A growing proporting of urban community-based action now revolves around the protection of specific wild animals and animal populations within and beyond urban environments.  Many  of these  go  beyond  the  issue  of animal  rights  and  welfare, looking towards rebalancing human attitudes and relationships with other creatures.

The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2012) have ten clear messages for urban planners and citizens alike. These are:

• Urbanization  is  both  a  challenge  and  an  opportunity  to  manage  ecosystem services globally.

• Rich biodiversity can exist in cities.

• Biodiversity and ecosystem services are critical natural capital.

• Maintaining  functioning  urban  ecosystems  can  significantly  enhance  human health and well-being.

• Urban ecosystem services and biodiversity can help contribute to climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

• Increasing the biodiversity of urban food systems can enhance food and nutrition security