BIODIVERSITY: WHAT'S AT STAKE

Norman Myers

What has biodiversity to do with population? Lots. For instance, certain types of contraceptive pills are based on startpoint materials from wild plants. Still, when an American hears that most of the world's biodiversity is located in the tropics, he or she might reflect "What has far-away biodiversity to do with me?"

People might consider that whenever they visit their neighborhood pharmacy, there is one chance in two that their purchase would not be available on the counter if it were not for startpoint raw materials from a wild plant. The purchase could be an antibiotic, antiviral, analgesic, diuretic or laxative among many other products.

Even more to the point, one of the most virulent forms of cancer, childhood leukemia, is almost entirely a matter of history thanks to two potent drugs from the rosy periwinkle, with commercial sales in the United States of over $250 million a year and economic benefits several times greater. Experts believe that tropical forests alone could contain another dozen plants with potential to generate superstar drugs against other forms of cancer, provided the scientist can get to look at them before the chainsaw destroys their habitat.

So we all have a stake in the mass extinction of species underway. According to scores of front-rank biologists, there is no doubt that we are into the opening phase of a mass extinction as species disappear at a rate 100 to 1,000 times greater than in the prehistoric past.

There is a further dimension to the biotic holocaust overtaking the planet. The crisis will profoundly affect the future course of evolution, no less. It will not only eliminate large numbers of species, but, still more importantly, it will reduce the capacity of evolution to generate replacement species within a recovery phase of 5 to 10 million years (the usual period following the five mass extinctions of the prehistoric past). The biotic crisis will have this depletive impact by degrading if not destroying tropical forests and wetlands that in the prehistoric past have served as the main "powerhouses" of evolution, supplying the bulk of replacement species following mass extinctions. That is to say, the current crisis will severely curtail evolution's capacity to make good the losses of the mass extinction. As has been well said, "Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else."

In short, we look set to impoverish the planet for a period at least twenty times longer than humans have been humans. By what we do-or don't do-during the next few decades, we shall affect the planetary prospect for future communities totaling, in principle, as many as 500 trillion, or 10,000 times more people than have existed to date. Even one trillion is a large number. To put it in perspective, calculate the length of time made up of one trillion seconds.

We are today making an implicit "decision"-through our lack of sufficient action and through its impact on the unconsulted behalf of future generations-that must surely rank as the biggest decision in the whole of human history. Yet it is almost entirely disregarded by the general public and its political leaders. Yes, you've guessed it, there is another population angle to all this. Roughly 40% of all species are confined to 25 "hotspots"-areas featuring exceptional concentrations of endemic species (found nowhere else) and facing exceptional threat of habitat destruction. All 25 hotspots cover a mere 1.4% of Earth's land surface. One hotspot is made up of the Caribbean islands plus the tip of Florida. Another comprises Hawaii and other Pacific islands. A third is in California. If we could safeguard these hotspots, we could knock a huge dent in the mass extinction. But Florida and California are two of the fastest-growing and most densely populated areas in the U.S. Consider the fact that southern California alone contains more people than the entire continent of Australia.

Most of the hotspots are in developing countries, where they are subject to population pressures among other problems. Within the 840,000 square miles of all the hotspots (one quarter as big again as Alaska), plus their hinterlands totaling another 10% of Earth's land surface, there are more than 1.2 billion people, approximately one fifth of humankind, with an average population density almost twice that of the world and with an average annual growth rate almost two fifths higher than that of the world.

All this arises at a time when more than one billion young people worldwide are entering their childbearing years, many blissfully unaware of the risks of sex and reproduction. Regrettably this is also the time when the United States has abandoned its former position as world leader in the family planning field. For much of the past twenty years and because of the reactionary policies of the Reagan and Bush Senior eras, the country drastically slowed the global effort towards family planning. Throughout the period 1960-80, the U.S. did more to fund family planning than other donor countries combined. But by 2000, the country ranked last among the top twenty donor nations in terms of its per-capita support for family planning.

In a mind-boggling move, the present Bush administration announced in July that it will withhold all of the $34 million that Congress appropriated for United Nations family planning and reproductive health programs overseas this year. Bush's decision to eliminate the funding rejects the recommendation of his own fact-finding team, which reported in May that the UN program does not support coerced abortions in China and, in fact, helps prevent abortions through education and contraception.

Rep. Nita Lowey stated, "I am absolutely outraged by the possibility that, despite a clean report from the China investigation team, the administration could still consider cutting off funding to the UN agency. If this is true, it is clear that petty politics, rather than prudent policy, is the main consideration here."

If President Bush had released the family planning aid appropriated by Congress, approximately 12 million more couples in developing countries would have been able to use modern contraception. As a result, 4.3 million women would have been able to avoid an unintended pregnancy, leading to 1.5 million fewer unintended births, 2.2 million fewer abortions and 0.5 million fewer miscarriages. U.S. family planning assistance would have meant that 92,000 fewer infants and 15,000 fewer women would have died this year. The loss of American support clearly will be paid in human suffering.

What a missed opportunity, full of win-win outcomes-for our fellow species as well.

Dr. Norman Myers is a Fellow of Oxford University. He was a Senior Advisor to the World Conference on Population and Development, as he is to the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development. He has consulted on population issues with the UN, USAID, the World Bank, the Population Council and Population Action International among other bodies, both governmental and non-governmental.