The recent report by the Intergovernmental Science PolicyPlatform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPPBES) created globalheadlines when it claimed the possible extinction of about one million speciesin few decades because of the reasons triggered by the anthropogenic activitiesalone.
Compiled by experts from fifty nations, the report is one ofthe most comprehensive and scientific evaluations ever made, and highlights thedarkest reality which our “beloved” environment is already facing and shallface in the near future.
The biodiversity loss which the report claims isn’thappening for the first time, rather it has always been happening since theevolution of the mankind. However, the gravest loss has occurred only since theadvent of the industrial revolution. The industrialisation coupled withincrease in the human population, growing urbanisation, consumerism and thedomestic and public waste have all led to the formation of a complex web.
According to the report’s estimates, since the early 1970’sthere has been a whopping 105 percent increase in the human population acrossthe globe though with national and regional variations. This ever increasingpopulation has also increased the urbanisation process, nearly hundred percentsurge in the cities since 1990.
These whopping urbanised and densely populated “modern humancivilizations” have in turn lead to an increase in the overall food productionand animal husbandry which has now been recognized as the sector with thelargest carbon footprint. The problems would worsen with the doubling ofpopulation by next thirty years or so.
The harrowing revelations regarding biodiversity lossclaiming forty percent loss of amphibians and thirty three percent of reef formingcorals, sharks and other marine life threatened with extinction in less than adecade has created a deep sense of distress among the environmental activistsacross the globe.
The current human induced climate change has already startedthe era of destruction as visible through the annual rise in the global averagesea level by three millimetres over the past two decades and about one degreeCelsius average global temperature difference in 2017 compared to the preindustrial level.
The other “significant man made contribution” of plastic tothe environment has led to the plastic pollution surging ten times due to theadvent of consumerism and waste and throw culture. The plastic now being a partof the food chain, entering via the marine food chain is no myth today and isexemplified by the great Pacific garbage patch.
The gross mismanagement by humans in search of the “numberseconomy” with least focus on the green economy has led to more than twenty fivehundred conflicts over fossil fuels, water, food and land, globally. Theseissues are bound to increase and shall aggravate with change in theinternational political scenarios.
The withdrawal ofthe United States from the Paris deal testifies the fact that despite of facingthe worst ever environmental crisis, international treaties can be easilybreached by adopting protectionist measures, keeping economy in the mind andleaving aside the environment and collective responsibility.
The current global scenario reminds me of Greta Thunberg, asixteen years old Sweden climate activist who delivered a heartfelt speechduring cop 21 in Katowice. She said “you cannot solve a crisis until you treatit as a crisis” Her message was clear; climate crisis needs to be seen as acrisis and that too be placed on the topof the priority list of all the nations as part of their “developmentalagendas”.
Greta’s revolutionary “Fridays for future” strikes need tobe taken seriously by all the governments alike. A meticulously designed programmewhich brings about a structural change in working of the current institutionscoupled with behavioural change among the masses who are motivated to do awaywith the waste and throw culture needs to be formulated. Active role of theindigenous people and the local communities also hold a great potential tosolve the crisis, as suggested by the report.
The collective responsibility and the idea of shared butdifferentiated responsibility has to be imbedded in the international treatieswith great vigour. After all, Lady Bird Johnson once famously proclaimed “Theenvironment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it isthe one thing all of us share.”
The author is an environmental activist, engineeringgraduate and former Secretary of the Rotaract Club, Sankalp