According to last week’s Living Planet report from WWF, we have lost half of the living individual vertebrates on the planet in the last years 45 years. Quite a lot of people wanted to quibble about this, and it is an eminently quibble-able claim, but the essence of the arresting claim must be true.
You can quibble because the data on which the claim is based come from studies of c10,000 vertebrates and there would be questions over how representative are those studies of all such species. We probably know more about the status of the Black Rhino than of the Brown Rat.
However, quibble ye as much as ye like, it will only influence the time period over which the claim is true. Maybe you have to go back another 10 years before, strictly speaking, it is true. Or maybe we would have to go back to 1900. Let’s imagine that you must go back to 1850 rather than 1970 before you would find that there were twice as many living vertebrates on the planet than there are now. This still means that one species has got rid of around half the back-boned life on the planet in just a few generations.
How ashamed should we feel about that? Deeply, I say.
What a good job that governments all agreed to halt this loss by 2010 – except that they failed! So what a good job that they then agreed to halt this loss by 2020 – except that another study published last week showed that they are still failing. A paper published in Science by a very large number of conservation scientists from across the world had the following abstract:
‘In 2010 the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related “Aichi Targets” to be achieved within a decade. We provide a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On current trajectories, results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis, the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020. We highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the Aichi Targets, and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress.’
So, we have done badly and are still doing badly at letting other species inhabit this precious, special, life-filled, corner of the universe. We are a pest.
But Liz Truss is most worried about apple imports.
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Well I suppose we should be grateful that the Conservative party conference gave time to allow the Environment Minister time to talk at the Conference, even though it was Economy section of the day. And home grown and locally grown food can be good for the environment. All the same the speech was fairly tame with no real call to action for people to vote Conservative and save the environment! I wonder how forceful the Labour and LibDem Environment party spokespeople were at their conference speeches?
“fairly tame”
… and delivered with the conviction of an animated plank. It’s on that Tube thing – toe-curling stuff.
Just read Liz Truss’ speech…my goodness me. Her speech writers have had to go back 30 years to find the most recent positive news that the Tories did for the environment.
And I missed the press conference when the NFU announced it was a political party. The media was so caught up with a reckless decision to defect to UKIP that they missed a minister defecting to the NFU!
This of course doesn’t mention the factually incorrect statements about linnets and goldfinch…
She comes across as a bewildered, clueless individual, out of her depth.
Dreadful.
And how does “local” apply to Birtish pork (raised on Brazilian soya) when it is exported to China?
yes, deeply ashamed. If only we could stop being obsessed with ourselves the solution could be expressed in five words:
consume less, have fewer children.
I am quite confused how this comes as any surprise! As the human race expands numerically and takes more and more resources per capita how can it be different? I doubt that many people actually care. There is so much talk of carbon neutral travel (by offsetting), sustainable development etc it is easy for people to be hoodwinked into believing it, it is however not true all travel, development etc has a huge impact on the ecosystems of the world. I do sometimes feel that single issues (dare I say grouse moors) have the effect of taking the debate away from the real question about human impact on the world.
“I do sometimes feel that single issues (dare I say grouse moors) have the effect of taking the debate away from the real question about human impact on the world.”
Of course you’re right that we need to look at the big picture and demand that our politicians implement policies that address global problems such as this. However, the reality is that the big picture is made up of lots of small pictures – if we seek to show that we care deeply every time a planning permission will lead to destruction of a key nightingale habitat, or a ‘sport’ is intrinsically bound up with illegal persecution of raptors, the message that we care about biodiversity in general will hopefully, eventually seep through. Conversely if we don’t pay attention to these ‘single issue’ items, politicians will be able to blather on about global targets in a non specific way that actually demands little change from business as usual. The problem is too big to grapple with in people’s minds and when its all in terms of statistics it is easy to cop out. We need politicians to understand that nature is suffering death by a thousand cuts and that every pocket of habitat that is built over, every local population of plants or animals that is displaced is a loss that is directly linked to the overall downward slide of biodiversity described by this report.
Mark – which single issue is ‘grouse moors’? the grouse moor debate encompasses: protected species and legal enforcement, protected habitat and legal enforcement, protected areas and legal enforcement, carbon storage, flood risk alleviation, water quality, public good v private profit, science v dogma, public investment in land management, the role of the statutory nature conservation organisations, the role of NGOs, the role of government, the role of the public etc etc
Hardly a single issue, I’d say.
“Numbers of important birds like the linnet and the goldfinch are on the rise.”
Well that’s ok then – lets just forget about all the species that are in free fall. Talk about cherry-picking! What we need is more automated celery rigs!
Unfortunately when politicians spout idiocy, the media rarely challenges them on it, as by and large, the media are as uninformed as the politicians. Either that, or they are happy to dance to their agenda. We live in a simplified and warming environment, and naturally those species that can exploit the simplified and warming environment most effectively might thrive. Woodpigeons, Magpies and Goldfinches by the looks of it. But we shouldn’t let idiotic technocrats like Liz Truss get away with calling these successes.
You only have to look at the way that serious television journalism has disappeared – panorama, world in action etc. Hardly anyone is speaking truth to power. And yet, as Mark and others have shown, the internet gives us all an opportunity to do so.
We are half way through BAPv2, whatever it’s called, and despite the utter failure of BAPv1, we’re basically doing exactly the same thing again. The failure to develop long-term evidence-based policy, lack of willingness to make tough decisions and lack of interest in properly evaluating outcomes is at the heart of many of our environmental problems. Lets make sure they know we know it.
Talk about politicians talking nonsense,Martin Harper can give them a run for their money.HIs latest blog amongst other things talks of RSPB improving Hen Harrier conservation.Where was he when needed for Vicarious Liability petition and does he not think banning Grouse shooting would help Hen Harriers.RSPB in cloud cuckoo land on this issue of Hen Harriers.Makes me wonder if some of the large shooting community are large contributers to RSPB funds
Dennis – I do think you have an unnecessarily harsh view of Martin Harper and the RSPB. I think you can rest assured that the RSPB is not influenced by money from the grouse shooting community.
I agree with you that the RSPB response is rather limp – but these are matters of judgement.
Cut Martin and the RSPB a bit of slack, why don’t you? They aren’t the ‘enemy’, although I agree that they aren’t the toughest fighting allies either.
This possibly Dennis is my point, the fact is that we have extirpated half the animals on this planet is short order and the currently fashionable (thanks to Mark!) grouse debate becomes the major topic. We need to totally rethink everything……….
Mark, I entirely agree that the management of uplands or indeed any other habitat type is important to the conservation debate however increased emphasis should be given to how we all live our lives, how much we consume etc.
The original post was about politics and conservation, with me being as kind as I could to the Conservative stance on the environment, yet the blog ends up grousing about a conservation organisation and individuals within in it.
I humbly suggest that all our effort has to be focussed on politians and get them debating environmental issues – otherwise we will end up with a new government next year with no environmental ambitions whatsoever.
This is a genuinely new experience for me. I’m going to come to the defence of a Conservative environment minister.
She was speaking to a national audience for sure, but she also had to throw red meat to the conference activists. Even mentioning that climate change actually exists is a big step forward for a Conservative politician; certainly in front of that audience, a fair proportion of which will think climate change is some kind of socialist plot. That might seem like damning her with faint praise, but you have to understand just how ingrained the rejection of science is on parts of the political right.
Her comments on linnets and goldfinches were picked up by Andy Musgrove, who tweeted some clarifications on her claims, and invited her to the BTO to discuss how bird research data is collected an used. A day or so later, Liz Truss had clearly taken up the invitation, a she tweeted in reply, having visited and talked to the BTO about bird conservation.
Now, I’m prepared to give the time of day to anyone who (a) is prepared to recognise the value of science and (b) talk to scientists and give them a fair hearing. We actually need an environmental narrative on the right, because polarising the debate as a left/right issue does us no favours. The environment, and particularly climate change, is too big an issue for that.
Andrew – thank you.
Dennis – thanks for that. You are always welcome here.