The International Year of Biodiversity–From Talk to Action

Abstract

Conservation almost always takes a backseat to human economic concerns even though the human economy relies on nature. The economic turmoil of the last year has reinforced this prejudice, yet the downturn in the economy offers some lessons for conservation professionals. For example, the political leaders who were supposed to provide oversight of economic institutions ignored repeated warnings about weaknesses in the financial system, and when the crisis came they acted shocked and surprised. Their response has been to pump hundreds of billions of dollars of public money into mismanaged businesses to keep the global economy from collapsing while genuine economic reform languishes. If leaders ignore warnings about the economy, their highest priority, then how can conservation professionals make their warnings heard about the dire consequences of losses of biological diversity? Linking biological diversity to economic concerns will not suddenly attract attention, and not all aspects of biological diversity have obvious economic value. Nor will leaders likely heed warnings about how continued degradation of the natural world will cause much greater human suffering than economic depression. Reminders that it took millions of years following past mass extinctions to recover high levels of biotic complexity and diversity, that a biological depression cannot be short-circuited like a depressed economy, and that humans cannot pump new species into the system like they can inject cash or credit into an economy are too distant or abstract. Also rather abstract for decision makers and contrary to their hubris is the argument that the complexity of biological systems dwarfs that of human economic systems and makes them much more difficult to repair and therefore worthy of protection. What might encourage political leaders to heed warnings about declines in biological diversity? More than a few voices are necessary. They must be many and pow-