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| WRI President Jonathan Lash |
By Tom Davey
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| WRI President Jonathan Lash |
The global web of life is fraying, warned the President of the Washington World Resources Institute, Jonathan Lash, as he powerpointed some dramatic statistics on ecological decline. His presentation, The Fraying Web of Life, was part of a recent CH2M Hill Canada seminar in Toronto. In lucid, self-deprecating prose, he said he was a lapsed lawyer, a recovering bureaucrat, and a refugee from the too quiet university life; but, never, he stressed, had he had as much fun anywhere as with what he did at WRI. Using poetic imagery to focus attention on scientific realities, he spoke about the fabric of nature's goods and services that humankind is both a part of, and utterly dependent upon; it is a web in which all lives are connected, with the strength of each strand supporting every other strand.
"This web is resilient, exquisitely complex, and marvelously durable. We can pull out a strand here and there, yet we seldom see the distortion of the whole. Six billion people and their needs for food, fuel, fibre, water, space -- all pull at the web's strands constantly, yet we see the consequences only as anecdotes, such as the terrible decline of ocean reefs, or landscapes changed by invasive species. Rarely do we see the entire picture of human impact on the earth," he stressed. "Many of the goods and services that ecosystems produce are not commodities and so seem to have no obvious market value. Natural water filtration, erosion control, biodiversity and climate protection are all ecosystem services that have always been considered free goods. But undervaluing ecosystem services has contributed to many shortsighted management practices," he stressed.
We cannot improve lives by destroying the web on which life depends; ecosystem is not an alternative to development, it is part of it. Until we understand the web of life and its connections to our lives, we will continue to weaken it by how we live.
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| Coral reefs were the rain forest equivalents of our oceans. |
His talk was illustrated with global statistics which showed that industrial, commercial and engineering projects cannot be undertaken in isolation. Integrated ecosystem approaches must guide our political and economic activities to restore the natural abundance of nature's web of life. "Coral reefs were the rain forest equivalents of our oceans yet few realize just how severely human intervention has degraded them through pollution, overfishing and other human activities," he warned.
He repeatedly cited data which showed how quite separate human endeavours such as logging, fishing or industrial production can collectively have far-reaching effects on a global scale. While providing some thought-provoking data on the massive environmental degradation which has taken place around the world, his message was not without hope that science and technology could meet the global ecological remediation challenges. Companies can, and must, he said, look beyond mere environmental compliance. At the same time, he stressed that a sustainable work ethos, harnessed with scientific methodologies, could also create business opportunities.
Earth's ecosystems and its peoples are bound together in a grand but tenuous symbiosis. Yet nearly every measure we use to assess the health of ecosystems tells us we are drawing on them more than ever and degrading them at an accelerating pace. His powerpoint presentation showed how global forest cover has been reduced by 20 percent since pre-agricultural times, and possibly as much as 50 percent. Surprisingly, forest area has increased slightly since 1980 in industrial countries, but declined by almost 10 percent in developing countries. Tropical deforestation probably exceeds 130,000 square kilometres a year. Less than 40 percent of forests globally were relatively undisturbed by human action. The great majority of forests in industrial countries, except Canada and Russia, are reported to be in "semi-natural" condition or converted to plantations.
Many developing countries today rely on timber for export earnings. At the same time, millions of people in tropical countries still depend on forests to meet their every need. He warned that the greatest threats to forests were conversion to other forms of land use or fragmentation by agriculture, logging, and road construction. Logging and mining roads appeared to lead the way in opening up formerly intact forest to pioneer settlements and increases in hunting, poaching, fires, and exposure of flora and fauna to pest outbreaks and invasive species.
Destroying trees may seem counter-intuitive as ecosystem protection. Watershed conservation usually involves efforts to prevent deforestation, but in South Africa, the opposite strategy has proved effective. The new South African government launched the Working for Water Program which employs more than 42,000 people. It has cleared invasive plants from half a million hectares of land and water flow has increased as much as 120 percent in some areas.
Mr. Lash said the WRI had announced a three-year sustainable coastal and marine resources program that combines global marine issues with a focus on people and fishing communities. He said that 40 percent of the world's population lives within 100 kilometres of a coastline, an area that accounts for only about 20 percent of the land mass. Population increases result in conversion for development, agriculture, and aquaculture. This reduces mangroves, coastal wetlands, seagrass areas, and coral reefs at an alarming rate.
He said fish and shellfish provide about a sixth of the animal protein consumed by people worldwide, and one billion people, mostly in developing countries, depend on fish for their prime source of protein. In a comprehensive review of data on freshwater species, 37 percent of freshwater fish species, 67 percent of mussels, 51 percent of crayfish, and 40 percent of amphibians are threatened or have become extinct. Ironically, coastal ecosystems have already lost productive capacity because of overfishing, destructive trawling techniques, and destruction of nursery habitats. Moreover, rising pollution levels are associated with increasing use of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers.
Ralph R. Peterson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CH2M Hill Companies, introduced the speaker while giving a global overview of the ways that ecological and economic progress could be pursued in harmony with environmental sustainability.
A subsequent question period turned into high level exchanges of sophisticated environmental and economic realities, a web of life which certainly captured our imagination that evening.
Mr. Lash, who flew in from Washington DC, also spoke at York University earlier the same week at an event which was also sponsored by CH2M Hill Canada and York's Faculty of Environmental Studies.
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