The Chinese river dolphin is just one of the thousands of species lost in recent times (© Idolector)
The great Douglas Adams once said: "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." He was no doubt talking about writing deadlines but another deadline is fast approaching, one Adams would have been very interested in and one which is far more significant than whether a manuscript gets delivered on time.
Back in 2002, parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - or in other words, most nations on the planet - agreed on a target to stem the loss of biodiversity by 2010, which by no coincidence is also the International Year of Biodiversity. There are still more than six months to go before that deadline officially expires but the results of the global efforts already being called and it's not good news.
A study recently published in Science revealed that on virtually all levels, we've failed miserably in stopping the reduction of species, species populations and habitats. Top-line findings included reductions in animal populations by 30 per cent, mangrove areas by 20 per cent and coverage of living corals by 40 per cent. At the same time, threats such as invasive species and climate change have increased, adding further pressure.
Now today, the CBD has released the third edition of its Global Biodiversity Outlook (pdf) which reports on the latest data and provides the foundation for the CBD's future strategy. The summary makes for grim reading as it warns that what it describes as "essential services to human societies" provided by various ecosystems are at risk. The peculiar phrasing indicates that the report's authors are keen to stress the impact ecosystem reduction or collapse will have on our economy and our civilisation.
It's a fair point that nature shouldn't be treated as a commodity and it's not something I'm entirely comfortable with either. But if money really does make the world go round,so perhaps the only way to make people really understand is by putting a figure on how much the Amazon rainforest or the Great Barrier reef is worth, and what the economic damage would be if they were to vanish.
Dr Achim Steiner from the UN's Environment Programme puts it better than I could:
"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other life-forms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems from forests and freshwaters to soils, oceans and even the atmosphere.
"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."
Some scientists believe we're living through the sixth major extinction event that our planet has witnessed - indeed, we are the extinction event, with an extinction rate at around 1,000 times the background rate. As Dr Steiner points out, the mission to protect the wealth of biodiversity cannot be conducted purely for its own sake, but to ensure that the planet is able to support us. That's why the marine reserves and protected forest areas we campaign for are so important, yet only 8 per cent of the remaining forests and a piffling 1 per cent of the oceans are under protection.
And going back to Douglas Adams, about 20 years ago he made a radio series and wrote a fine book called Last Chance To See. By the time Stephen Fry came to retrace his steps a couple of years ago, he was unable to track down the baiji river dolphin which Adams had tracked down. In fact, the team didn't bother - the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species still lists it as critically endangered, but it's now thought to be extinct. Yet it's just one of the thousands (millions?) of species we've pushed into oblivion over the last few hundred years, and we'll soon run out of deadlines.
