Biodiversity

The totality of Earth's genes, species and ecosystems is commonly called its biological diversity or biodiversity. This is a term first used by biologist Edward Wilson in his book 'The Diversity of Life', ISBN 0393319407 – although scientists, agriculturalists and naturalists have been familiar with the concept for much longer.

Key issues outlined here include:

1. why Biodiversity
2. the United Nations Earth Summit
3. threats to species and species extinction
4. safe food and the threat of genetic engineering

There is also a list of useful sites and sources on biodiversity and safe food.

A rich whole

The numerical multiplicity, the variety and infinitely rich relationships between, and behavior of, living beings are of inestimable value to everyone and everything on Earth: clean air, uncontaminated water, healthy, sustainable vegetation all depend on this richness. It can be forcefully argued that it is not enough merely to classify example-species and attempt to preserve them one by one. It is respect for the whole that counts just as much: after all, we cannot (nor should we try to) predict or select how specific strains, genes and species evolve.

Diversity of the gene pool in agriculture tends towards crops that are disease-resistant and higher-yielding. Diversity of animal species strengthens and enriches the food web and supplies medicines. Diversity of the ecosystem produces oxygen and helps prevent soil erosion. Equally important, both informed and casual contemplation of biodiversity invites us to a unique inspiration, curiosity and understanding of the Earth and our part in its life systems.

The Earth Summit

An attempt was made at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio (June 1992) to enshrine principles of biodiversity in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. The Convention of Biological Diversity was signed by 159 governments at the Earth Summit. It came into force on December 29 1993 – the first treaty to provide a legal framework for biodiversity conservation. It called for national strategies to be created and enforced and for action plans to conserve, protect and enhance biological diversity.

A UN-sponsored summit, also known as 'Rio + 10' to review progress since the UNCED will take place in Johannesburg in September 2002. Other major international and official initiatives on biodiversity are the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Ramsar Convention on Wetlandsand UNESCO's World Heritage.

The year from 2001 – 2002 have been designated International Biodiversity Observation Year, during which scientists and educators throughout the world are working collaboratively to increase the successful communication of scientific information about biodiversity to a wide audience.

Human damage

Although extinction is, of course, a natural process, biologists have calculated that human activities have increased the rate of extinction on Earth over 100 times in the last century. Species and habitats are critically threatened by (deliberate) habitat destruction such as clearcutting, pollution, invasive species, overexploitation, and climate change.

What is more recent research suggests that regeneration of biodiversity after species loss takes much longer than was previously thought. What is more, calculations published in November 2002 are that three times as many species as previously estimated, or between one quarter and one half of all plants, are threatened with extinction.

Various organizations maintain information on the most endangered species and how to help in their survival. Leaders in the field are the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. Among international initiatives CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) works to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) World Conservation Monitoring Centre provides information for policy and action on matters of species conservation. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) maintains its Red List of Threatened Species organizing data by the 1994 IUCN Red List Categories according to taxonomic, conservation status and distribution information. This system sets out the relative risk of extinction, highlighting taxa at the greatest risk of global extinction.

The ALL Species Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the complete inventory of all species of life on Earth within the next 25 years.

Why save species?

First, it is wrong to destroy what cannot be recreated. All species have equal rights to exist. Our own 'quality of life' and that of future generations depend on the maximum preservation of all plant and animal species. It is also generally accepted that plants and animals must be saved for present and future generations for their medicinal, agricultural, ecological, commercial, aesthetic and recreational value:

• medicine: about 40% of all medical prescriptions written today contain natural compounds of different species. Although the medicinal value of only 5% of known plant species has been assessed, roughly 100 species are destroyed each day
• agriculture: it is estimated that 80,000 edible plants exist in the world although humans use about two dozen of these to provide nearly all the world's food. Related varieties of these common crops contain substances resistant to diseases and thus as essential as varieties promoting the development of new crops
• ecology: healthy ecosystems – on which everything depends – are composed of plants and animals abundant in quantity and variety. It has been estimated that the loss of a single plant species can cause the loss of up to 30 other insect, plant and animal species
• commerce: such destruction as clearcutting of forests and overfishing of the oceans loses the world's economies billions of US dollars annually in income and jobs; this includes the huge tourism and non-consumptive recreational industries

Safe food

Genetic engineering attempts to demolish the natural divisions between species. Combining genes from dissimilar (and unrelated) species – permanently altering their genetic codes – creates new organisms whose 'offspring' inherit these changed genetics. The interference in life forms now being practised, and of which consumers are often unaware, present real threats to agriculture, the environment, and to human and animal health and welfare:

• agriculture as it has essentially been practised for 8,000 years could be destroyed: (the 'formulae' for) transgenic plants and food-producing animals will be 'patented' and farmers will have to lease their plants and animals from biotech multinationals, paying for seeds and offspring. There is a very real danger that farming will no longer be based on the soil, but on biosynthetic industrial factories controlled – for profit – by chemical and biotech companies. Inevitably, if this happens, millions of farmers and other agricultural workers will lose their livelihoods and jobs
• genetically engineering and 'patenting' animals and plants reduces living beings to the status of 'manufactured products': currently, more than 200 genetically engineered 'freak' animals are awaiting patent approval from the Federal government of the United States
• cruelty and suffering results from experiments where animals 'created' to suffer have gone wrong: 'mistakes' in cattle-engineering, for example, are born deformed, crippled, blind…
• genetically engineered 'biological pollutants' can be even more destructive than chemical pollutants: they are alive, more unpredictable and can reproduce, migrate and mutate. Attempts to 'protect' crops from insects by planting crops genetically engineered with the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) bacterium have resulted in growing immunity to both chemical pesticides and the modified crops
• once released, genetically engineered organisms cannot be brought back to the laboratory: their release leads to irreversible, devastating damage to the ecology. There are unexpected and dangerous results because no-one can know the variations on every experiment. Recent experiments trying to genetically alter plants for greater virus-resistance, for example, caused the viruses to mutate into new, stronger forms, or forms that can attack other plant species
• unnatural genes from genetically-engineered plants are carried by pollen, insects, wind, or rain. They can find their way into other crops for which they were not intended: imagine insect- and virus-resistance getting into weeds and genetically altered plants producing toxins. What will happen to wild species in rivers, for example, when fish 'engineered' to be twice as big are released (accidentally) into the wild and begin eating twice as much?
• biodiversity is seriously threatened by genetic engineering: the variety necessary to sustain a healthy ecosystem is reduced. Species engineered for their 'superior' genes will overpower natural species in the same way that artificially introduced exotic (nonnative) species, such as kudzu vine and Dutch elm disease have caused mayhem in North America and elsewhere. Similarly, attempts are already being made to develop what is considered 'the perfect potato' or 'the perfect orange'. It will be these varieties – and only these varieties – that will be (re)produced in quantity. 'Less desirable' (that is, less apparently marketable) species will decline in number reducing even further the Earth's gene pool
• there will be more pollution: plants are being engineered to be more tolerant of herbicide; this is leading to increased use of chemicals in agriculture and to further contamination of the environment. Such Biotech companies as Monsanto, Du Pont, and Rhone-Ponlenc who 'manufacture' new crops also sell the chemicals needed to control the weeds that surround them. Pests resistant to current strength controls are evolving and require even more toxic chemicals. All profit for the biotechs
• genetically engineering crops and food-producing animals are already producing toxic and allergic reactions in humans
• genetically engineered foods use proteins from bacteria found in the soil and ocean: never having been in the food chain before, their toxic or allergenic characteristics are unknown and can be life-threatening to humans and animals
• genetically engineered foods have a poor safety-record: in 1989 and 1990, a genetically engineered brand of the common dietary supplement, L-tryptophan, killed more than 30 people in the United States and permanently disabled or afflicted more than 5,000 others with a potentially fatal and painful blood disorder, eosinophilia myalgia syndrome; it was recalled by the US Food and Drug Administration
• incredibly, the results of genetic engineering are not regulated adequately or properly, nor tested for safety. In the US there is no effective overseer of genetically engineered foods. So neither government nor consumers will know whether foods have thus been polluted. Vegetarians and those whose religions which forbid the eating of animals, for example, may unwittingly eat vegetables and fruit that contain genetic material from animals – including humans

The global companies who stand to profit most from unsafe food claim that they are developing ways to 'feed the world'. They are not:

• to concentrate on 'more food' is to misstate the issue and mislead: it is inequalities in political and economic power that cause world hunger, not lack of food. Enough food is produced now for everyone to have one and a half times as much nutritious food as they need. Genetically engineered food is unnecessary!
• it would be a remarkable turnaround if such companies abandoned money-making for the effective relief of hunger now
• the main genetically engineered crops grown commercially (soybeans and maize, in the United States, for example) are used to feed livestock, not people; even livestock devoured by humans requires about 13 times as many natural resources as would the equivalent production (in weight) of vegetable food
• genetic engineering concentrates on the convenience of the companies who practise it, not on relief for the hungry: most research in food has been directed towards delaying the ripening or rotting of fruits and vegetables and for improving their appearance so that they can be transported over ever longer distances and kept on supermarket shelves for longer
• biotechnology is aimed at growing tropical cash crops in the rich North: Canola, for example, has been genetically engineered to produce oils which would replace palm and coconut oils. Coconut oil provides 7% of the total export income of the Philippines and direct or indirect employment for 21 million people, about 30% of the country's population
• genetically engineered crops will only be available to growers at costs which will lock them into greater and greater debt – and inevitable loss of livelihood
• genetically engineered crops promote inefficient farming: in Thailand, for example, although holdings under one hectare have been found to be almost twice as productive as holdings over 40 hectares, there is already a predictable push towards larger-scale farming to take advantage of 'manufactured' crops
• since genetic engineering in agriculture has adverse environmental impacts, the natural, ecologically-sound basis of food production will significantly reduce the quality and quantity of agricultural output. The adoption of genetically engineered crops will reduce genetic diversity there will be fewer and fewer types of food. At the least the narrowing of the gene pool makes pest and disease epidemics more likely. It is known that such monoculture leads to lower crop yields. Indeed large-scale field trials in Puerto Rico in 1992 of Roundup Ready plants, Monsanto scientists found statistically significant reduced yields, averaging some 11.5%; in 1997 many of the first growers of Roundup Ready cotton in the Mississippi Delta in the United States experienced low yields and poor quality. Over 50 growers filed complaints; Monsanto paid out substantial compensation
• as few as 10 global companies own 40% of the world seed market: Monsanto has an almost total grip on the US soybean crop, for instance. There will be little or no motive for these companies to continue to make the variety of seeds available to agriculture. Again, reduction in biodiversity will severely compromise healthy food production

Sources on biodiversity and safe food

The Biodiversity Education Summit and the search/gateway section of the National Biodiversity Network. The Natural History Museum in the UK's Biogeography And Conservation Lab has a somewhat technical section reflecting work on measuring diversity and setting priorities for conservation. The World Wildlife Fund has an excellent section on endangered species. On safe food look at theOrganic Consumers Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, whose position is that 'Genetic engineering may do as much damage to forests and wildlife habitat as chain saws and sprawl', the Center for Food Safety and Greenpeace.