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| With shrinking habitat Polar Bear is well on on way to extinction |
In
matters relating to environmental one repeatedly comes across the word
eco-system which does not quite convey its meaning clearly to many. While the
Planet Earth is full of ecosystems of various kinds many wouldn’t know what precisely
they are and how do they affect us. De-mystification of the word “eco-system”
would go a long way to enhance understanding of our environment so as to be
able to foster its conservation.
Simply stated, an eco-system, as defined by
Wikipedia, is a community of living organisms and non-living components such as
air, water and “mineral” soil. It can also be defined as a network of
interactions among organisms or between organisms and their environment.
An eco-system can be of any size but it has to
have a limited specific space. Some scientists say that the entire planet is
one huge eco-system. That may well be true but the fact is that the earth is
full of eco-systems of varying kinds and varying sizes, of varying organisms
interacting with varying physical components which, in turn, may be interacting
with each other or various organisms in their own respective ways.
Questions
have been asked why eco-systems are important for us, humans. They are
important because we live in various eco-systems and avail of the services
rendered by them without being even conscious of that. Eco-systems are
delicately balanced phenomena that cannot suffer any imbalances in the mix of their
constituents. If the constituents undergo changes of any kind – from their size
to intensity – the ecosystems tend to degrade and become harmful to its
constituents, including us.
The biggest and the most important example of
imbalance in our eco-system is climate change wrought by the industrial
revolution of the 19th Century. This change has been brought about
by pumping of greenhouse gases over decades into the atmosphere by burning of fossil
fuels in factories, automobiles, ships and aeroplanes, etc. Carbon in the
atmosphere has risen beyond what it could take and took the form of a greenhouse
over the earth trapping the heat radiated by it towards space. This has given
rise to global warming (a warming that mimics warming in a greenhouse) that has
set off chain reactions harmful to us like climate change adversely impacting
our habitat, our water resources, agriculture, our climate and bio-diversity
and so on.
Scientists have estimated that were the
earth’s temperature to rise by 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature that
prevailed before the Industrial Revolution as a consequence of global warming
it would be almost impossible to save the earth as we know it. This assumprion
(yes, for the present it is only an assumption) is born out of a general
consensus but many have said the 2 degrees Celsius, in fact, was determined by
happenstance. Nonetheless, a sliver of opportunity is, seemingly, still
available to prevent the earth from further heating as currently the
temperature is hovering around 1 degree Celsius higher than what prevailed in
pre-Industrial era.
The
United Nations Environment Programme has recently emphasised the way
eco-systems are helping humanity by buffering it against the worst impacts of
global warming. According to the groundbreaking Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity published last year, the UNEP chief Achim Seiner said the “world’s
bio-diversiity and eco-systems might seem abstract and remote to many people
but there is nothing abstract about their role in economics and in the lives of
billions of people.”
Further,
he went on to say,
“the
range of benefits generated by these ecosystems and the biodiversity
underpinning them are all too often invisible and mainly undervalued by those
in charge of national economies and international development support,”
According
to the UNEP, continued loss of animal and plant species and eco-systems soch as
forests is causing poverty as well as environmental damage. Steiner went on to
reiterate the economic value of corals and forest eco-systems. According to the
Economics of Eco-systems and Biodiversity study coral reefs generate up to $189,000
per hectare in coastal defense and even more in fisheries and tourism revenues
while continued deforestation and forest degradation is costing $2 to 4
trillion a year.
Steiner
said one-fifth of the coral reefs were already degraded or were at the risk of
collapse due to over-fishing, pollution and coastal developments. The most
exotic example is the degradation of the Great Barrier Reef along the eastern
coast of Australia. The reasons for its degradation are classical like global
warming, over-fishing, pollution and, of course, human interference. Closer
home, a report in Down to Earth recently said the people of Lakshadweep could
well be the first environmental refugees as the corals around it have started
bleaching owing to ocean warming. It is being said that the Indian Ocean waters
have never been so warm. Warming of the globe is being credited for this
unlikely aberration which might make the localsto run for their lives.
Stiener
goes on to say that it is similar story in respect of all the planet’s
nature-based resources – from forest to freshwaters to mountains and soils. We
all know how in India the eco-systems of fresh waters, forests , grasslands,
mountainous and coastal regions of the country have been damaged over the last
few decades. The process goes on without any let or hindrance giving rise to
changing climate, violent weather, rising temperatures, a general warming of
the earth that is speeding the process of melting of polar ice sheets severely
threatening the survival of that symbol of polar eco-system – the polar bear.
The
UNEP is going to decide shortly about establishment of a platform similar to
Inter-governmental on Climate Change and Biodiversity for dealing with
degrading eco-systems.
The
proposed International Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
would use the latest science to help drive forward policy recommendations.
Steiner hopes that the new body, apart from demystifying the terms biodiversity
and eco-systems, will start convincing countries to include the value of
natural capital in their national accounts and economic decisions.
Such a strategy is urgently called for in this
country as all of our natural assets are being depleted or degraded ata
reckless pace.
7th
April, 2018
*Photo
from unternet
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