Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/planet-earth-needs-a-global-biodiversity-watchdog-by-m-rajshekhar-10056.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Planet Earth needs a global biodiversity watchdog by M Rajshekhar | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Planet Earth needs a global biodiversity watchdog by M Rajshekhar

Have you heard of the Yangtze River Dolphin? For the longest time, it used to be found along 1,700 kilometres of the middle and lower reaches of the mighty Chinese river. The Baiji, as it is known, was white finned, a little over two metres long, had poor eyesight and relied mainly on sonar for navigation. A few decades ago, as populations along the river grew, as shipping traffic rose, as more and more dams fragmenting the Baiji's habitat came up, as fishing by increasingly impoverished Chinese intensified, Baiji numbers began to crash.

In late 2006, after an expedition failed to spot any Baiji in the river, it was declared "functionally extinct". It was the first aquatic mammal to go extinct since the Japanese Sea Lion and the Caribbean Monk Seal in the 1950s. And it was the first Cetacean (whale) species in recorded human history to go extinct.

The loss of the Baiji points at a new trend in the earth's natural history. Sure, species go extinct. Usually because the world around them changes and they are unable to adapt. Others were hunted by man into oblivion, as in the case of the trusting Dodo. But the Baiji fell to a more modern threat - rapid changes in its environment wrought by humans.

This is the story across the planet. In Mama Poc, Anne LaBastille describes how habitat destruction pushed the Guatemalan Giant Grebe into extinction. In Africa, a combination of bush meat hunting and habitat destruction is hammering wild ape numbers. Closer home, India is left with no more than 200 Gharials. The rest fell to fertiliser runoffs accumulating in rivers, fish stocks in rivers dwindling due to over-fishing, and habitats fragmenting due to dams.

There are two points to be made here. One scientific, the other administrative. First, as Samuel Turvey writes in Witness to Extinction, his account of the doomed battle to save the Baiji, the Yangtze Paddlefish has not been seen in recent years either. With habitat destruction, species do not march singly into extinction. They exit the stage as a large body of interconnected species. On the whole, between hunting and habitat destruction, the earth is haemorrhaging biodiversity. Take India.

How many wild species do we have whose numbers are rising? Hardly any. Second, the current model of wildlife conservation - where countries are responsible for conserving their biodiversity - is not working. Wildlife is a poor lobby group. Almost every time, its welfare is weighed against the demands of growth and development, and found wanting. If not at a national level, is conservation working at a local or global scale? Not really. In some places, local communities like the Bishnois of Rajasthan protect biodiversity. However, as the ongoing attacks on leopards in a few states show, it is not an attitude shared by all communities.

At the global level, we have treaties like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. But it merely stops trade in such species. And, as the Baiji, the Gharial and the Yangtze Paddlefish suggest, more species are threatened by habitat destruction and pollution than poaching. And while there are other international covenants that enshrine the principle of conservation, all they draw from governments is platitudes. Not action. Which is something that looks unlikely to change. Why would governments voluntarily agree to have a watchdog ruling over them? The outcome? Mankind is pushing other species off the planet. This is a moral crime. All species have as much of a claim to the planet as humans do.

How does one fix this? And fast? In The Last Panda, his angry denunciation of Giant Panda conservation efforts by WWF and China, Schaller ends by wondering if we need a body that fights for biodiversity the way Amnesty fights for human rights. It's an intriguing thought. An independent body that lobbies for biodiversity, and names and shames countries callous towards their biota, could (even partly) ensure that the interests of these species are factored in by policy makers.

This, however, is a role international wildlife NGOs cannot perform. A part of the problem is scale. The larger an organisation gets, the more cash it needs. And transaction costs being what they are, bodies like the WWF have increasingly turned to larger and larger donors. Which includes polluting industries. What is required is a body which doesn't raise funds in ways that trigger conflicts of interest. Planet Earth needs that.