The city of Bangkok and the staff at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center can be proud of the professional job done in hosting more than 2,000 delegates from 170 countries at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) meeting that ended on Thursday. Likewise, the delegates and Cites officials deserve credit for the progress they made in establishing protective measures to prohibit or limit the trade in endangered species. These measures strike out at those who shamelessly profit from the often cruel poaching of wild animals and the subsequent trade in them and their parts.
Yet the biggest threat by far to the planet's biodiversity is the "collateral damage" of development, which wipes out and pollutes natural habitats, and in this we are all guilty to an extent. Scientists tell us that humans are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If present trends continue, it is estimated that 20% to 50% of all species on Earth will be extinct in less than 100 years as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species and, last but not least, climate change. Plant life is not excluded. A recent study of plant diversity concluded that at least one in eight known plant species is threatened with extinction.
A large majority, nearly 70%, of the more than 400 scientists who participated in a survey conducted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York said they believed a "mass extinction" was under way, and nearly all attributed it to human activity, especially the destruction of plant and animal habitats.
The term "sustainable development" has become something of a cliche and is easily cast aside when it comes up against economic considerations, but it is clear that unless there is a real commitment to that goal the future of a great many species is in doubt, including one day perhaps our own.
Ensuring environmental sustainability is the seventh of eight Millennium Development Goals established following the United Nations' 2000 Millennium Summit. All 193 UN member states signed off on achieving these goals by the year 2015.
Target 7A is the integration of the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programmes and reversing the loss of environmental resources. Target 7B is the reduction of biodiversity loss, achieving a significant reduction in the rate of loss by 2010, and includes progress in reversing or at least slowing down deforestation, the return of fish stocks to safe biological levels and an increase in the number and total area of protected terrestrial and marine parks.
Target 7C, halving the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water by 2015, pertains to humans, but obviously clean water is a prerequisite for animal life as well.
There has been progress in some areas toward reaching these goals, but on the whole since 2000 the planet has continued its general downhill slide with respect to sustainable development. There seems little chance that the seventh Millennium Development Goal will be met by 2015.
That doesn't mean it has been a total failure; it's good to have clear aims, and in a sense all of the goals hinge on the seventh. For example, the first goal of poverty reduction, in which there has been encouraging progress, and even the third of gender equality, are fairly meaningless without environmental sustainability upon which the planet's biodiversity is also dependent. Achieving this will require a different global mindset, one that puts the environment before personal profit, but the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
In a piece entitled "From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals", Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute, says "the success of [sustainable development goals] will need societies worldwide to invest adequately in their success", but he goes on to say that "meeting the major goals of poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and primary health for all would need perhaps 2-3% of global income".
The question is, for the sake of all the inhabitants of the planet, can we afford not to make the investment?